You should check out NEX. It offers a lot of the preview functionality that max has on a lot of tools. I'm not sure how stable it is with newer versions, I've heard it's been kind of buggy in 2011 and I haven't tried it since 2009. Considering you have to pay for it, it better be rock solid... But I think you can try…
joebount: Whenever you add a polygon command, if you have construction history active, there will be a new node added to the object's history, which you can see in the Channel Box. If you select a node like polyBevel (if you'd done a bevel) or polyExtrude (for ... extrude!) then when you click on it in the Channel Box it…