Max value for total_count?

I have a grid. It has ~500 000 total_count on my development box, and 1 500 000 on production. On dev it works on production only the initial rows are loaded and smart rendering doesn’t seems to work, the grid ends on those initial rows. If I set total_count on my dev box to 1,5 million or more I get the same effect.

What’s the max total_count value and/or is there a workaround such limit?

Actually there is no limit of the total_count but there is with your element height.
Different browsers have different limits with available height of the element.
Unfortunately it is not available to change this behavior.
You may try to turn to the paging mode. In this case the height of your grid will be equal to the height of your grid page.