Which config for after effects?

[chfilm]

Hi,

I'm mostly doing motion design in after effects and editing in premiere pro or fcp x.
I own a maxed out late 2012 iMac which serves me quite we'll, but you know it could always render faster...
I was finally happy with the Cuda support gfx card in there and am sad they didn't chosen vodka for nmp, but what can u do.

My cap is 5-6000€ with edu. Wanna wait for that sharp 4k display under 1000€ and pair those two.
I tend to get an 8 core because after effects seems to make no use of gfx cards at all, but only of CPUs..element 3d might be the exception..

 

[Gav Mack]

Adobe explains their GPU support here:

http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2012/05/gpu-cuda-opengl-features-in-after-effects-cs6.html

The GPUs will no doubt work accelerated in FCPX great as they've coded it for them.

The six core model with upgraded d700's seems a good option, if the CPU can be upgraded throw in a faster 8 core e5 in off the grey market at a later date as Apples mark up on the Xeons is rather excessive I reckon.

I would personally wait for a proper 4k display though, Dell have released a much cheaper model than the very expensive Sharp. Later this year we will see true 4k panels instead of the stuck together pairs of LCD they are offering right now.

 

[legreve]

I think the consensus is that the 6 core is the best bang for buck of all four setups. The 8 core is too expensive for 2 extra cores, and the questions begs if you really need the cut down in render time when going for the 12 core, ie. can you justify the expense.

I'm dreaming of this setup:

6 core
16gb ram (take those out, sell em and buy 48gb from some place else. OWC has cheap ECC ram…)

Why 48? Well, CC can eat 6gb pr. core, but recommandations are that you reserve 25% of available ram to processes outside AE, so 6 core x 6gb ram = 36. 25% or 48gb is 12. 48 - 12 = 36. Weee. (2x 16gb and 2x 8gb)

512gb SSD
2x D700
Thunderbolt display (and then wait out till the 4K market gets flooded forcing the brands to lower their prices)

Hefty price, but would make my day easier (a little bit…)

 

[chfilm]

Sorry I meant the dell 4k display that's been announced of course, not sharp

It would be so amazing if Adobe would just optimize after effects for better gpu usage.
It's u unclear wether it will be possible to upgrade the CPUs later isn't it?

 

[echoout]

Sorry I meant the dell 4k display that's been announced of course, not sharp

It would be so amazing if Adobe would just optimize after effects for better gpu usage.
It's u unclear wether it will be possible to upgrade the CPUs later isn't it?

After Effects benefits most from clock speed and lots of RAM for most operations. Premiere benefits more from GPUs. However, as soon as you start Dynamic Linking the CC suite, you start needing all hardware to be as fast and great as possible. You might Dynamic Link encoding a Premiere file that is referencing an After Effects project that is referencing a Cinema 4D file. That's a lot going on.

Often overlooked for the Adobe CC pipeline is the need for a dedicated fast drive for your Disk Cache. I have a system SSD, disk cache SSD, enterprise RAID0 for live media and then send everything off to a RAID10 NAS.

Long story short, at least for the near future, GPU is one of the lowest priorities for AE but a well-rounded system is needed for general motion design using CS6/CC.

 

[peabo]

I'd say the more cores the better for AE. It can take advantage of all 12 in the top end model. Same goes for RAM.

 

[chfilm]

THX guys, just as i thought..
I currently have the disk cache on my Pegasus raid 5, where he footage lies as well.. Bad?
If getting the nMP, I would have gone with the 256gb ssd, since I only use about 120gb of software on my boot drive right now.

So I could assign the rest for afx disk cache. Of course I can upgrade the ssd later. But would the 512 gb ssd make a big difference for afx? I never really understood the concept of th dosk cache and how it can speed up my tasks..