• Adobe After Effects

  Correct graphics card for After Effects on iMac

  Posted by Phil Snyder on September 18, 2014 at 12:46 am

  I just started using After Effects CC 2014. Everytime I open the program I get a message saying that in order to run Ray-tracing
  on the GPU, I need a different graphics card and CUDA 5.0 or later driver (see photo). My 27 ” iMac with 3.4 Intel Core i7 is running a AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024 MB graphics card with 20 GB. Adobe’s website lists the following cards:

  GeForce GTX 285
  GeForce GTX 675MX
  GeForce GTX 680
  GeForce GTX 680MX
  GeForce GT 650M
  Quadro CX
  Quadro FX 4800
  Quadro 4000
  Quadro K5000

  The Adobe tech support said to ask Apple which card would be compatible for my system.
  I called Apple and the tech support said that my AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024 MB graphics card is more than sufficient.
  My question is: do I need to a buy a new graphics card and download a CUDA driver?
  So far, everything seems to be running OK.

  

  Michael Szalapski replied 11 years, 8 months ago 4 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Brian Charles

  September 18, 2014 at 1:00 am

  CUDA is an nVidia only technology. After Effects only benefits from this for Ray Traced 3D, its not required for it but it does speed up Ray Traced rendering.

  The iMac video card is not upgradeable so there is nothing you can do. The message should only appear when you work in Ray Traced compositions, when the composition is set to Classic 3D it shouldn’t appear.

  
• 

  Walter Soyka

  September 18, 2014 at 9:50 am

  That’s disappointing support. Adobe support should know that the iMac GPU isn’t upgradeable, and Apple support shouldn’t guess at requirements for third-party applications.

  For 3D, you might consider learning CINEMA 4D. It’s highly integrated with Ae, the LITE version is already included with Creative Cloud, and Adobe is moving away from Ae’s current ray-tracing renderer [link].

  Walter Soyka
  Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
  Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
  @keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]
• 

  Michael Szalapski

  September 18, 2014 at 6:24 pm

  As others have said, don’t worry about it. Tick the box to Never Again show it and put it out of your mind. You won’t want to use the ray-traced renderer anyway. After Effects comes with a much more powerful tool now. Details here [link].

  – The Great Szalam
  (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

  No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

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