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New Machine & Graphics Card
Hi there, I’m pricing out a new MacPro for my company that I’ll be using on a daily basis with After Effects. Currently I’m running the last generation 8 core 3.0Ghz with NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 card. This machine is getting passed down the line and I’m getting the new one.
I’m looking for this machine to feel like a big enough step up to warrant migrating the machines. Basically I guess my main question is outside of adding more RAM and a beefy graphics card, is there anything else I can do to make After Effects run faster? Are the 2 cards that Apple currently offers (NVIDIA GeForce GT 120) (ATI Radeon HD 4870) a step down from my Quadro 5600 or a step up? Does adding a 3rd or 4th video card really improve performance? Sorry, I’ve tried searching for info, but video cards are just an area I’m not that experienced with.
Any suggestions on creating the best possible system would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you
Justin -
4 Replies
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here’s a link to some ae (and other apps) benchmarks on various macs:
https://www.barefeats.com/nehal04.html
it doesn’t list an 8-core 3.0, but it does show the 8-core 3.2 compared to the new 8-core 2.93…
as far as the gpu/graphics card… i doubt you’ll notice the difference between a consumer/gaming card and the quardro in ae. for the most part ae doesn’t utilize the gpu very well — there are some effects, mostly 3rd party, that are built around opengl, but unless you utilize those a lot i don’t think you’ll miss the quadro. besides with opengl enable for preview renders, you won’t utilize the ‘render multiple frames simultaneously’ feature in cs3 & 4 for previews… which would you rather use, 8-cores with up to 32gb of ram, or 1 gpu with 512mb of vram….
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Thanks Kevin! I’ve also read that FCP doesn’t take advantage of the GPU so I’m probably better off investing the money in lots of RAM.
I’ve looked into Nucleo Pro 2 as well, seems like a great advantage for AE. Outside of that, it doesn’t seems like there’s much more I can do to beef up AE. Any other suggestions?
Cheers
Justin -
i don’t have nucleo, but i have been hearing a fair amount of discontent with it recently, maybe others can chime in on it for better feedback…
there are a few free things i’d recommend at aescripts.com. throttle, video preview throttle and bg render are all useful scripts to allow better functionality and setting tweaking in ae.
i’m unsure about fcp and gpu, some color correction and blur effects/filters may utilize the gpu… but if you have fcp and also use motion, i know motion will benefit from a better graphics card. here are some benchmarks for motion with various graphics cards and macs:
https://www.barefeats.com/nehal06.html
(i really don’t work for rob or barefeats.com, i just find his articles useful)
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
for the record, i just read in an article from nab, that nvidia has released a quadro fx4800 for the new macpros…
here’s a link to card on nvidia’s site:
https://www.nvidia.com/object/product_quadro_fx_4800_for_mac_us.html
(i’m not recommending this, just that there is now a quadro option for the 2009 macpros…)
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW
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