MAYA RULEZZ!!! Started out with 3DSMax but never got anything cool out of it. Got nothing but those amature looking renderings. I tried maya once. And in a day I got this beautiful rendering of some simple test model. I never wanted to get back to Max again. But than .... Max does work way better with AutoCAD stuff .. so for my freelance architectural projects I still use Max.

The biggest difference I've noticed is the texture interface. 3DSMax has this click-thru interface (u see only where u are in the texture-hierarchy) while Maya has this hierarchy structure overview to see the big picture.
Remember that good texturing, to me, is the most important to atcheve a successful rendering.