You will see massive amounts of improvement in everything you do on your computer. I don't know if Toms has I7 in their cpu charts yet, but take a look at those and see just how poorly your current cpu compares to a modern C2Q. If they don't have I7 benchmarks yet, trust me its a good step above C2Q in multithreaded performance. I don't know how many cores 3ds max can truly utilize, but it takes good advantage of the 8 logical cores the I7 throw at it. By the way, Toms does have a 3ds max render in their charts.