If you are rendering a large single frame in 3DS Max, you can use Strip Rendering to render your scene more quickly and efficiently.  First, go to Launch Render, fill out General Settings and then click on Next Step.  After the Scene Analysis is complete, select Single Split Frame as the Render Type.

Once Single Split Frame is selected,  you can specify the amount of "Render Strips" you would like to use under Render Settings (the default value is 20).  The minimum value that can be used is 2.  

How does Strip Rendering work?  It splits your scene up into "strips" which are rendered individually.  This allows more CPUs to render different strips at the same time, as opposed to a single CPU rendering the entire scene.  Once all the strips have been rendered, they are stitched together to create the final single frame.

When using Strip Rendering, you need to save a Final Gather map so that no new FG points are calculated during the rendering process.  Without a Final Gather map, your scene will suffer from subtle color and light differences due to differences in calculations for each strip.

You can find more information on saving a Final Gather map at the Autodesk website: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&i...