Turbosmooth performance in 3ds Max

Ghostscape

I normally use a single turbosmooth modifier, instanced around on all of my geometry, so I can quickly make global changes to the smoothing if I need to do so.

However, when I start hitting several hundred objects in a scene, I get massive performance hits. Would not instancing the modifier give me better performance? My gut says it probably would but I'm not certain and I'm not in a spot where I can really afford the time to properly test it out.

gamedev

Instances in max are huge performance killers on their own. Stacking on instanced mods just makes things worse. I'm using 2008 and I've got the same issue whether I place a single turbosmooth modifier on an instance, or one modifier on all instances.

Crappy, but I'm not sure there is a work around. I don't seem to really get a performance hit unless I'm interacting w/ them so layers and isolate mode seem to really help.