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AE CS5 – which iMac would be better, 2012 or 2014?
Okay, so my apologies if this has been asked before. I’m an amateur user of After Effects and I’m looking to get a refurbished iMac for home computer usage, including non-professional use of After Effects CS5.
I’m between two different models (both have a 1GB Fusion drive and I will later be maxing out the RAM to 32GB). For $1829 I could get the 2012 iMac with 3.4GHz i7 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX with 2GB vRAM, or for $360 more I could get the Retina iMac with 4.0GHz i7 and AMD Radeon R9 M290X with 2GB vRAM.
I read that After Effects now supports Open GL and CUDA, but since this is CS5, I wasn’t sure if that would be applicable. Since I’ll be using CS5, would the Retina iMac’s graphic card hurt me rather than help me? I guess I’m wondering if, nicer screen aside, I’ll actually see any improvement in After Effects performance if I get the newer model, or if I’m better off saving the $360. Most of the footage I’ll be editing will be 1080p.
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3 Replies
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[Mayka Mack] “I read that After Effects now supports Open GL and CUDA, but since this is CS5, I wasn’t sure if that would be applicable. Since I’ll be using CS5, would the Retina iMac’s graphic card hurt me rather than help me?”
Don’t worry about the GPU. The only feature in Ae that the GPU really matters for is the Ray-Tracing Rendered, introduced in CS6. Even then, this feature is not the future of 3D in Ae [link]; C4D integration is.
Personally, I’d go for the newer, faster machine.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “Personally, I’d go for the newer, faster machine.”
That said, I don’t know how well CS5 runs on Yosemite, and I don’t think you can install older versions of OS X on newer Macs. You may want to do a little research and see what kinds of results people are having, or you may want to upgrade to CS6 or CC.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Thank you for your input. I ended up taking your advice and got the newer machine. Everything looks so crisp on the retina display; I definitely don’t regret it! After Effects performance isn’t stellar yet, but that is to be expected as 8GB of RAM doesn’t allow AE to really utilize my i7 CPU effectively. I expect once I get the 32GB in the next few weeks that it will get zippier. 🙂
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