Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

I made a mistake. My comment didn’t post.
I believe for just after effects the current i7 at 4.5ghz is equally good option while AE is only single thread from the CPU.
I’d planned to get a pro iMac but after much research I don’t see the point.
Multi core is irrelevant. Vram is irrelevant.
128gb ram is nominal difference to 64gb with Ae.
On a single thread the 4.5 ghz 580 Radeon will equal or out perform the 3.0 ghz iMac pro. The Gpu doesn’t really come into it either.
If your running C4D as primary tool then the multi cores and Gpu is ace.
Final cut HD and 4K editing is still fine on iMac too. I’ll be saving £3000 for ordering the standard iMac fully spec’d Without compromising my work.
 
  • Like
Reactions: OddyOh
I made a mistake. My comment didn’t post.
I believe for just after effects the current i7 at 4.5ghz is equally good option while AE is only single thread from the CPU.
I’d planned to get a pro iMac but after much research I don’t see the point.
Multi core is irrelevant. Vram is irrelevant.
128gb ram is nominal difference to 64gb with Ae.
On a single thread the 4.5 ghz 580 Radeon will equal or out perform the 3.0 ghz iMac pro. The Gpu doesn’t really come into it either.
If your running C4D as primary tool then the multi cores and Gpu is ace.
Final cut HD and 4K editing is still fine on iMac too. I’ll be saving £3000 for ordering the standard iMac fully spec’d Without compromising my work.

Yep, BUT i did compared the Imac 5k i7 2017 64gb RAM+580m with the Imac PRO 8-Core 64GB RAM, Vega 64 in After Effects (Motion Graphics). The Imac Pro is slightly faster in RAM-Preview and and final Rendering. (Project Settings set on METAL support) Is it worth the extra 3000$?? thats up to you. I really like the Spacegrey and the new Speakers and its always quiet, the Imac 5k is much louder.
 
All very true mate. I already have external speakers for editing, so that’s a saver for me. Please don’t think I’m questioning your choice as I’m not. I just wanted to inform people generally of my choice as a professional motion designer and short form film maker who uses Ae and final cut 80% of the time, and your thread comes up top in google for those looking at AE after effects on an iMac pro. If I could prove to myself I was using C4D regularly ( every week ) then iMac pro all the way. But I’d be lying to myself so I could buy the pro. I hope your enjoying it. It looks mint! I might spend the change on a new MacBook Pro for mobile editing or iPad Pro for a cintiq drawing tool. ; )
 
Im with you, i understand it. In my Case the Agency bought it ;) so that was an easy decission for me :D. You wrote in your first Post das money dosnt metter... so thats why i wrote it. But like you said, the Imac i7 5k is the rational decission
 
Go with the 8 or 10-Core and the Vega 64 and 128gb RAM if money money is no issue. 14 and 18 Core are wasted money with Adobe Products...

Ahh, no that was the quote from the Author astralize - I tried to reply to. Not my words. I thought you the author for a while. I clearly dont use forums enough. o_O
 
The key is to know whether the 10 core or the 18 core will perform better with After Effects. My worry is the 18 core runs at a much lower speed (2.3Ghz) and the 10 core is at 3.0Ghz - which could cause a slow down for single threaded apps. So even with so many cores, if AE is not using them, it wouldn’t be a good thing having the 18 core. For rendering, something like RenderGarden would be good to exploit the cores - but everyday use is questionable.
Do not worry about the base frequency for single core performance. The base frequency is what all cores would get if all cores are in use. When considering single core performance, look at the 'turbo' speeds. The 10 core should have the highest single core @ 4.5 GHz, but the 18 / 14 core options are not far behind at 4.3. Are you really going to notice the .2 GHz difference? I doubt it, and you definitely WILL notice the extra 8 cores any time multi-threading or multi-processing comes into play.
 
Do not worry about the base frequency for single core performance. The base frequency is what all cores would get if all cores are in use. When considering single core performance, look at the 'turbo' speeds. The 10 core should have the highest single core @ 4.5 GHz, but the 18 / 14 core options are not far behind at 4.3. Are you really going to notice the .2 GHz difference? I doubt it, and you definitely WILL notice the extra 8 cores any time multi-threading or multi-processing comes into play.

Yes if your using software that will use the multicore like finalcut and c4d but I disagree when it comes to AE and adobe which was part of the original question.Here are some usful links and stats. especially the first one showing performances where the quad core beats the 18 core for single thread processes.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...-Performance-Core-i9-7940X-7960X-7980XE-1037/
http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/how-to-render-faster-and-speed-up-adobe-after-effects
 
  • Like
Reactions: itdk92
Yes if your using software that will use the multicore like finalcut and c4d but I disagree when it comes to AE and adobe which was part of the original question.Here are some usful links and stats. especially the first one showing performances where the quad core beats the 18 core for single thread processes.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...-Performance-Core-i9-7940X-7960X-7980XE-1037/
http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/how-to-render-faster-and-speed-up-adobe-after-effects
Quick critique, there are no benchmarks for the 18 core. You are comparing it to the consumer i9 with 18 cores. Why is this? Because Intel has dropped the ball (har-har) with the 18 core processor, and it is why users like me are waiting so long for our iMPs to be delivered.

Also you are assuming that AE is the only process running on the system. He may be using multiple applications at once, which would benefit from this (multi-processing vs multi-threading).
 
If you are making an investment for the future though AE isn't going to run faster with 18cores over 10 now, 18 cores might become a welcome bonus down the road in a few years.

Example those of use still working away on our 5,1 MacPro's with 12 cores, someone might have assumed they where overkill back when they came out, now it is the only thing keeping these dying beasts relevant.

Also if Intel and Others are pushing core count over speed, all software companies will try to take advantage of the extra cores down the road.. Adobe won't, but they don't care about speed, efficiency and it's pro users since it doesn't make you buy more monthly subscriptions, but their are other more pro software companies, and if you start using those apps will be "super stoked" on those extra cores.
 
If you are making an investment for the future though AE isn't going to run faster with 18cores over 10 now, 18 cores might become a welcome bonus down the road in a few years.

Example those of use still working away on our 5,1 MacPro's with 12 cores, someone might have assumed they where overkill back when they came out, now it is the only thing keeping these dying beasts relevant.

Also if Intel and Others are pushing core count over speed, all software companies will try to take advantage of the extra cores down the road.. Adobe won't, but they don't care about speed, efficiency and it's pro users since it doesn't make you buy more monthly subscriptions, but their are other more pro software companies, and if you start using those apps will be "super stoked" on those extra cores.
These are good points. In 6 months / 1 year time when there’s more info and developers have time to adapt you might be right. I’ll adapt with it.
What ‘other more pro software’ are you talking about? Node based stuff like Nuke and flame? I couldn’t comment on how they work with multi cores but this thread was discussing adobe in part.
 
These are good points. In 6 months / 1 year time when there’s more info and developers have time to adapt you might be right. I’ll adapt with it.
What ‘other more pro software’ are you talking about? Node based stuff like Nuke and flame? I couldn’t comment on how they work with multi cores but this thread was discussing adobe in part.
I have worked on Autodesk and The Foundry Products. Nuke will always push hardware limits, so they will always be trying to utilize all future and current cores and software advances within the CPU. Autodesk sells more turnkey systems, but they will always push for full utilization of cores as well. Adobe is kinda an odd duck because they do make software that Pro's use, but their company is sloppy when it comes to utilization of hardware and software as well as some more unified acceleration platform.. Like some apps are OpenGL, some OpenCL, some Mercury.. The Adobe suit is a sloppy mess..
 
  • Like
Reactions: ThatSandWyrm
If only there was time to learn all the softwares and run a studio! i struggle to keep up with AE & C4D let alone a new compositing platform. If its big work Ill hire in specialists who have special PC built rigs.
I do hope Adobe pull there finger out though. Ive used it for 15 years so it hard to move on. Apparently the internal dev team for Ae is only a few people! I know more and more 3rd party AE plugins are using GPU which helps including red-giant and foundry I think. Hey Ho.
 
Hi everyone. I've already ordered the 18 core fully speced iMac Pro. But now am second-guessing and thinking that since After Effects has lost its multi-threading abilities since 2015, maybe I'm better off with a 10 core that has a higher clock speed. Does anyone have any insights or experience on choosing the best configuration for After Effects and Motion Graphics work with lots of Photoshop, Illustrator and other Adobe apps? Which configuration would you pick if money is not an issue?

I only use After Effects for green/blue screen keying, but on my 10-Core iMP, it never breaks 10% processor utilization. Apps that are properly multi-core optimized will average out to 80% utilization on my system.

More cores is not always better, and even if your apps are properly optimized, 8 more cores will probably add only about 20% to your computational speed over the 10-core model. While being a lot slower on single-thread, or apps optimized for the usual 4 cores.
 
Any other experiences with AE animation on these machines? Trying to decide which config to get.
 
Any other experiences with AE animation on these machines? Trying to decide which config to get.
I just received my iMac Pro 10 core (maxed out) and that was based on feedback from Apple Engineers and other purchasers. The 18 core doesn't fully justify itself for AE and the 10 core is 3Ghz. I did a render yesterday on my iMac (7 years old) and the new iMac Pro and the same project was twice as fast! It's working great and Photoshop barely has a second to show the splash screen.
 
I just received my iMac Pro 10 core (maxed out) and that was based on feedback from Apple Engineers and other purchasers. The 18 core doesn't fully justify itself for AE and the 10 core is 3Ghz. I did a render yesterday on my iMac (7 years old) and the new iMac Pro and the same project was twice as fast! It's working great and Photoshop barely has a second to show the splash screen.

Thanks. What did the apple engineers advise you? What are the other specs of your machine? I'm debating whether upgrading the GPU will have much of an effect on After Effects work, do you have any advise there?
 
They advised the 10 core with max RAM and the 64 video card for sure. It makes quite a difference when handling things like Element 3D and Nodes. I ordered the 10 core with everything else maxed out. Hope that helps. Super happy with the machine....the space grey actually makes a huge difference on visibility and focus. Very nice.
 
They advised the 10 core with max RAM and the 64 video card for sure. It makes quite a difference when handling things like Element 3D and Nodes. I ordered the 10 core with everything else maxed out. Hope that helps. Super happy with the machine....the space grey actually makes a huge difference on visibility and focus. Very nice.
Thanks. I don't use Element 3D or Nodes, and I think I use very little within AE that uses the GPU, maybe the odd effect here and there. I dont use many plugins. I only use Cinema 4D infrequently and very lightly. Because of this, do you think I can save some cost by skipping the GPU upgrade? I can't stretch to 128GB RAM, but I can do 64GB. I think RAM is very important for AE? I can afford to upgrade the CPU, but only if it's worth it for AE work?

By the way, where did you speak to Apple engineers? All the sales staff I spoke to were not clued up on After Effects (understandably).
 
This wasn't through sales - this was a Pro group for FCPX via IDR. Good luck with the specs...yes, ram is always good. Get as much as you can afford.
 
This wasn't through sales - this was a Pro group for FCPX via IDR. Good luck with the specs...yes, ram is always good. Get as much as you can afford.
Thanks so much for your insight .Would you mind running this benchmark and posting your results?
 
Thanks so much. Have you ever tried Rendergarden? Would be interested to see the benchmark's results with something like 5 seeds and 5 gardeners.
 
Go with the 8 or 10-Core and the Vega 64 and 128gb RAM if money money is no issue. 14 and 18 Core are wasted money with Adobe Products...

I've actually been using the RenderGarden plugin for a few months now and I have to say the more cores you can get, the better: https://www.mekajiki.com/rendergarden

It has excellent tutorial videos to get you going. Basically it lets you run as many instances of AErenderer (called Gardeners) as you want, though the plugin's creator recommends no more than the physical number of cores in your CPU. So my 2015 MacBook Pro with 4 cores can run 4 Gardeners at a time. This is waaaaaaay faster than doing Ae's native multi-machine rendering option with networked computers.

Put it this way: if it takes AE 1 second to render a frame (almost never, but just for purposes of explanation), then having 4 Gardeners going at once gets me 4 frames each second instead of AE's natively rendered 1 frame/sec.

It also lets you divide your Ae comp into as many "seeds" or bits as you want, and each Gardener looks in a "Seed Bank" folder and constantly renders all the seeds until they're complete, then AUTOMAGICALLY stitches the seeds' video segments into the main video for you. So you have 8 seeds? RenderGarden will render 8 movie files, then stitch them together into 1 master movie file, then generate a log telling how long it all took.

Not to mention you can network render easily. I currently connect my 8-core Mac Mini to my 4-core MacBook Pro via ethernet, then share with my Mac Mini my MacBook Pro's "Seed Bank" folder, create as many Gardeners on each machine as they each have cores and point them to the location of the "Seed Bank" folder, then tell Ae on my MacBook Pro to create the seeds and let 'er rip.

I've learned that it's best to have your slower machine (in my case, my 4-year-old MacBook Pro) launch the render job, so that the faster machine (my two-month-old Mac Mini) is not hosting the "Seed Bank" folder. I do have the host machine (laptop) running Gardners too, though.

One note: this works best for long comps, because it takes about 15-20 seconds for each Gardener to start up the AErenderer, look in the Seed Bank folder, find the next seed to render, and start rendering. But when you have a complicated composition in Ae that takes 13 hours to render on just my 8-core Mac Mini with 8 Gardeners going, it's awesome to add my laptop's 4 cores/Gardeners and bring the render time down a bit.

Imagine how fast you can render a 13-hour job with 8 cores, networked to an additional computer with 18 more cores (26 instances of AErenderer running simultaneously)? As in our 1 frame/sec Ae render speed example above, you'd be rendering 26 frames/sec. Bam. So more cores is actually better in this case (using RenderGarden). Try it out, it's only $99 I think and has changed my motion design life, but I'm mostly working in Ae with only occasional Pr or Ps or Ai work thrown in.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.