Your manipulation problems are sue to insufficient video card memory.

You'll need to play with both Vue's and your card's display options.
One thing that should help is to switch to wireframe only.

As far a system memory is concerned, like just about all 3D related programs, the more you have the better you'll get on.
Remember that if your using Vue in integrated mode, Max will consume memory as well as Vue, which will affect the size/complexity of scene you'll be able to deal with compared to Vue or Max alone.