"I thought 3DS max was for the big name companies, and I see them go for XSI?" Depends on what "big name companies" you mean. Pixar uses their own proprietary software mostly, and Weta uses Maya for certain things. ILM has used XSI. But 3dsMax is still the one most big name game developers use, and companies like Blur Studio and Animal Logic both use 3dsMax. They're small studios, but big names.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.