Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity Forums Adobe After Effects After FX best Computer system

  • After FX best Computer system

    Posted by Joel Mielle on October 27, 2009 at 11:49 pm

    I’m looking at configuring a new computer for my editing system. After FX is the software I seem to have the most problems with mainly with:
    Case: open GL or dynamic ram. Can anyone suggest what a top system would be?
    Here’s an option I’m looking at:

    Case: Antec – P193
    Power supply: Corsair Micro – CMPSU-850TXAU
    Ram: Corsair Micro – HX3X12G1600C9
    Motherboard: Gigabyte – GA-EX58-UD5
    Raid Drives: Hitachi – 0B22132
    CPU: Hitachi 0B22132 UltraStar 300GB 15K300 3.5″ SAS HDD – 15,000RPM,16Mb, 3Gb/s SAS, 3.4 ms
    Graphics card: Leadtek – QuadroFX 3800
    Raid card: LSI – 9260-4i-SGL
    OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64bit DVD OEM

    Can anyone advise if a dual XEON CPU workstation with a 2 x BX80602E5520 CPUs would be better?

    Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks,

    Joel, Australia

    Joel Mielle replied 16 years, 6 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • David Johnson

    October 28, 2009 at 1:54 am

    I’m not an IT guy, but I’ve been using a half dozen Adobe programs since their early versions (as well as similar suites & and many other NLEs) so I’ll just mention my partial 2 cents …

    I (and about 90% of the editors I’ve ever known) strongly prefer Nvidia graphics cards … “Leadtek – QuadroFX 3800″ sounds like an Nvidia chipset, but it sounds old since I think Nvidia is up into the 8 or 9 thousand series now, but again, I’m not an IT guy … check Adobe’s approved card list for your AE version.

    Get as much RAM as you can afford.

    Avoid OpenGL like the plague.

    My view of Win7 (or anything else not tried & true) is, if you’re using your computer tools to make a living, stay on technology’s cutting edge, but leave the bleeding edge to those who don’t rely on technology (to deal with all the conflicts, bug reports, etc.), then adopt it once it’s solid … maybe it’ll be perfect right out the gate, but then again, no O/S of either platform has ever been thus far so why expect different?

  • Theo Veltman

    October 28, 2009 at 2:16 am

    Hi there, I don’t know what CPU you’re looking at but that’s a hard drive you’ve specified there.
    I don’t know exactly how you’re going to use this system but as far as After Effects goes forget OpenGL, I (and I think most people) turn this off, I have never seen any advantage to using a professional graphics card over a powerful run of the mill card either (I could be wrong).
    CPU’s and memory are the two main priorities here and simply the more the merrier. memory is cheap these days so whatever you get make sure it has as much memory as you can fit (or afford). I work on an Octo-core Mac and depending on what I’m running it will use all 8 (16 via Hyperthreading) processors rendering with only one instance of After effects so 2x Quadcore processors won’t go unused. It was announced recently that CS5 will be 64bit also which will benefit from the extra memory significantly.
    As for your hard drives you’ll want a raid for editing but I’m not sure you’ll need sas drives. You could save yourself some money by using fast sata drives instead. I use Velociraptor drives myself but even a couple of the 1TB HDD’s available on the market now (Western Digital Black e.t.c.) in a raid5 are fast enough for uncompressed playback. Have a good backup system to cover yourself and you’ll be set.

  • Joel Mielle

    October 28, 2009 at 2:18 am

    Thanks for your info!
    How much ram is recommended? I’m looking at 12 megs, should I get more?

    The Nvidia QuadroFX is a current card as far as I know. High numbers must indicate other models. I would also like to use boris continuum which I believe can only work with open GL on for the 3D Text in AE. Currently I’m running a five year old Xeon twin CPUs and it runs like a slug! Used to be fast with earlier versions of AE but now I need to update.

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy