Max doesn't render off-screen.
There's a big difference between loading a large image from the harddrive as you need it, rather than having it in all in memory prior to it being used and displaying as required.
This doesn't mean that you have to load all graphics in before the games starts (you can do this, but if you have lots of large images, this could take a while and waste time/memory when you can do it more efficiently later), it means loading all required graphics for that individual level/screen/scene into memory prior to setting up the scene.
There's a big difference between loading a large image from the harddrive as you need it, rather than having it in all in memory prior to it being used and displaying as required.
This doesn't mean that you have to load all graphics in before the games starts (you can do this, but if you have lots of large images, this could take a while and waste time/memory when you can do it more efficiently later), it means loading all required graphics for that individual level/screen/scene into memory prior to setting up the scene.