8core vs Quad for AE

[Steve Forde]

No worries – not stupid at all….

How big really depends on what you do, how you do it etc.

From a performance perspective though A Striped RAID configuration (I believe RAID 0,3,4,5,6 – all except 2 – RAID 0 being fastest) will give you the performance. As long as its not Mirrored (RAID 2 – which is more of a backup/failover solution).

It really then becomes how much disk you can throw at it. The more drives in the RAID array – the better the performance.

Since you are most interested in preview times, you have to look at your projects. Are there alot of source assets? If so – AE must read those from your disk, and it can fit only so much into memory. The more AE needs to read, the more your disk will be used, and the more a RAID will help you.

Keep in mind that Reads for previews are not as expensive in terms of performance as when AE writes files to the disk. There is a tipping point though – if you have alot of source assets.

Steve
Gridiron Software Inc.