Hey Danio,
looks like SMT OFF does make my 3dsMax experience smoother but I don't have patience to stopwatch it somewhat more scientifically :- )
Interesting! I should have tried some CPU, single threaded modifiers rather than just file opening and max opening times. GrowFX was way faster years ago when I tried with SMT off.
I mainly tested the concurrent use of IR and Material Editor. My main culprit of laggy workflow.
Yeah it's miserable. I'm always like 4 clicks ahead and drumming my fingers and getting agitated. I genuinely think my life inside and outside work would be better if I used less laggy software, but...
Anyway, I'll try SMT off again. Thanks for the tip.