Operating System¹: Windows 7 Professional x64 or Windows XP Professional x64 edition (SP3 or higher)²

For general animation and rendering (typically fewer than 1,000 objects or 100,000 polygons):

• Intel® 64 or AMD64 - AMD processor with SSE2 technology³
• 4 GB RAM (8 GB recommended)
• 4 GB swap space (8 GB recommended)⁴
• 3 GB free hard drive space
• Direct3D 10 technology, Direct3D 9 or OpenGL-capable graphics card⁵
• 512 MB or higher video card memory (1 GB or higher recommended)
• Three-button mouse with mouse driver software
• DVD-ROM drive⁶
• Internet connection for web downloads and Autodesk Subscription-aware access

For large scenes and complex data sets (typically more than 1,000 objects or 100,000 polygons):

• Intel 64 or AMD64 processor with SSE2 technology³
• 8 GB RAM
• 8 GB swap space⁴
• 3 GB free hard drive space
• Direct3D 10, Direct3D 9 or OpenGL-capable graphics card⁵
• 1 GB or higher video card memory
• Three-button mouse with mouse driver software
• DVD-ROM drive⁶
• Internet connection for web downloads and Autodesk Subscription-aware access

1. The 3ds Max Composite feature requires one of the following 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems:

• Windows XP Professional operating system (SP3 or higher)
• Windows XP Professional x64 operating system (SP3 or higher)
• Windows 7 Professional x64 operating system

2. Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 and Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2013 English only. Additional language support requires a Windows 7 operating system.

3. Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 and Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2013 have been optimized to take advantage of the SSE2 extended instruction sets supported on Intel Pentium 4 processor or higher, AMD Athlon 64, AMD Opteron, and AMD Phenom™ processors. 3ds Max 2013 will not operate on computers that do not support SSE2. Several utilities are available on the Internet that report CPUID, including supported instruction sets.

4. Autodesk recommends settings that allow Microsoft Windows to manage virtual memory, as needed. There should always be at least twice as much free hard disk space as system memory (RAM).

5. Some features of 3ds Max 2013 and 3ds Max Design 2013 are only enabled when used with graphics hardware that supports Shader Model 3.0 (Pixel Shader and Vertex Shader 3.0). In addition, Quicksilver hardware rendering requires additional GPU resources to work effectively. A minimum of 512 MB of graphics memory should be used. A minimum of 1 GB is recommended for the most complex scenes, shaders, and lighting modes. The integrated NVIDIA® iray® rendering technology operates well solely with CPU processing but processing can be accelerated by NVIDIA GPU CUDA technology.

Check to see if the graphics card is CUDA ready here.

Learn more about graphics hardware compatibility.

6. Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 and Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2013 are available only on dual layer DVD media (or electronic download where available). CD media is no longer available. DVD-ROM drive is not required if installing using electronic download. However, to accommodate the installation files, you will need 9 GB of hard disk space and an additional 16 GB of space for temporary files created during the installation.