AE CS6 11.0.1 CUDA BENCHMARK PROJECT – test your graphics cards!

[Ricardo Van den berg]

LAPTOP: MSI GT70 ONE late 2013

Intel I7 – 3630QM ( 4 cores, 4 threads at 3,4 GHZ )
Chipset Intel HM77 Chipset
Memory DDR3 1600MHz, 4 slots, 8 GB
Graphics nVIDIA Geforce GTX680M ( compairable with the dektop gtx 660 TI , its a downclocked gtx 670 for what i’ve heard )
Graphics VRAM GDDR5 4GB
+ ofcourse the intel hd graphics 4000
HDD (GB) 750GB HDD at a speed of 60 to 80 mbps

benchmark: 10 minutes and 35 seconds

————————————————–

does anybody know what my best upgrade will be?

– 1 msata ssd
– more ram
– 2 msata ssd in raid 0
– throw away system?

[Rudi Kirschen]

so here is my new system:

2min 43sek

CPU: 4930k @ 4.4Ghz
RAM: 64Gb Corsair Venegance Pro 1866Mhz
GPU: Asus GTX Titan Black 6GB VRAM

Macbook Pro Retina with GT 650M wouldn´t even start to render. i canceled after 10min and not a single rendered frame. Maybe caused of the few vram of less than 1GB

but with the titan black setup i am pretty happy

[Ali Demirtaş]

cpu: xeon e5-1650 @5ghz oc
gpu: zotac 780 ti 1240×7800 oc
ram: 32gb kingston 2133

2min.21sn

[Paul Roper]

So…after all this research and testing, can anyone suggest where I could get a reasonably high-end AE system, preferably a Hackintosh, built? I haven’t got mega-money to throw at it, but I’d obviously like something that’s future-proof(ish) and can run AE (plus Premiere, Photoshop and some 3D – probably C4D) at a decent pace. I don’t need any video in/out. Most of my work will (for now) be 1920×1080, so no need (yet) for 4K support.

Ideally, I’d like the power of a new Mac Pro (preferably with more powerful graphics) for the price of an iMac. Or less! I’ve had a quick look through some other Hackintosh sites, but most people’s ideas of a powerful computer is not the same as an AE user’s idea of a powerful computer; hence asking in this forum for some advice.

My Mac Pro (on loan to me from my previous employer) has been taken away – I’m now properly freelance again, but I’d like something of similar spec. It was 2011 model with 2x 6 core 3.06GHz Xeons, 64GB RAM and 2x 2GB Quadro 4000. And it cost a lot!

If I can get more power for less £££, then I could be persuaded to make the jump to a PC.

I know this is all a bit vague, but I’m trying to get an idea of what price/performance I can get.

– Paul

[Teddy Gage]

Hi folks, thanks everyone for contributing to this project, it was a real eye-opener. However I am no longer supporting this benchmark, I have a new project that does total CPU / RAM / GPU testing in AE CC here:

https://www.teddygage.com/AfterBenchCC/

RESULTS:

Add yours! email me at fstopdigital@gmail.com or on twitter @teddyrocksteady

https://goo.gl/JrNIXd

@ Paul Roper –

I would NEVER rely on a hackintosh for real production work. They are too unreliable even if you know what you are doing. And even if built by a 3rd party (which will never happen, because they are breaking the law) you need to know how to work with a PC way before you’d consider messing around with faking OSX bootloaders and the like. They require a very specific combination of hardware and many features remain unsupported. Not to mention the hardware will be limited – you are probably losing a good percentage of CPU performance because it is not perfectly tuned for the OS.

You may be better off saving up for a new mac pro, although I’ve heard mixed reviews.

Honestly, my advice would be, if you are looking to stay Mac, is to look on the used market (ebay, classifieds) for a topped-out, but used, last-gen Mac Pro with the specs of your old work computer. You may be surprised what you can get for way less money.

Additionally, I have heard firsthand that the new mac pro GPU implementation is really crappy. The only app to seriously take advantage of their power is FCPX, and who cares about that. Not to mention zero CUDA or directX support. So I’d recommend looking at a PC with 2x GTX Titan or 2x GTX 780 in SLI if graphics is truly your priority. Yet you claim you need the speed solely for AE, and the GPU dependent effects are few and far between, unless you use AE raytracing all the time. People seem to believe GPU performance is all that matters when that couldn’t be further from the truth.

So I would save money and focus on getting a capable graphics card and spending money on CPU – you would want an overclocked intel i7 3930K or 4930K hex-core CPU – which in many tests on the benchmarks above performs much faster than dual-quad xeons. In a pc environment it is currently the fastest consumer processor on the market for after effects.

If you are out for pure speed in AE, you should switch to windows. I’m sure people will disagree, but there is no mac out there that touches the price / performance ratio of a custom built pc workstation. I’m not biased: I own and use both systems, but I would never do 3D work on a mac, and only do AE stuff on OSX in a pinch.

[Paul Roper]

Thanks for that, Teddy.

I think you’ve confirmed my suspicions – making the jump to the world of Windows is probably the way to go. I need to do some serious research on what’s out there in the world of Windows boxes that’s great for AE. I’ll be reading through the results of your new benchmark test with great interest.

Thanks again,

Paul

[Roy Foliente]

I agree with your comments, Teddy. I think they are spot on. I, too, am in the process of evaluating my next hardware platform for both Premiere Pro CC and AE CC work. Coming from the Windows side, I thought it was a forgone conclusion I would get another Windows box. My only complaint with most Windows boxes are they very noisy and typical of most serious workstations, they pay no heed to energy efficiency, which is a shame. This is the strength of the new Mac Pro to me. I just returned from the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) meeting in Las Vegas last week and spent a lot of time in the Adobe booth. I can tell you Adobe is now very “bullish” on the new Mac Pro. They were previewing their next release of Premiere Pro and AE and their booth was littered with Mac Pro machines. They were using Mac Pros for almost of of their presentations and as they showcased some of their new features, they ran very briskly. Apparently, their new release (due out next month?) will fully leverage the new Mac Pro hardware including the dual AMD gpus. While only a single CPU workstation and limited in its expansion capabilities, it might be premature to completely dismiss the Mac Pro for serious CC work. I hope your benchmark can be modified to include the new CC release when it comes out.

Roy

[Hendrix To]

4 mins 1 Sec

I think it a good one for 2010 base line Mac pro with only 8G of RAM .

with a change to Flashing and Mod GTX 780 , 3G Memory . going to add more Ram for it ..

[Tenchi Muyo]

4960X@4Ghz with 3-way-Titan SC classic:

[Ian Mapleson]

Tenchi, am I reading that correctly? 2 mins and 3 seconds? Strange, I thought
it would be a lot quicker with three Titans…

Anyway, I’ve finished upgrading my 3930K system, it now has four identical
MSI GTX 580 3GB Lightning Xtreme cards; at stock core speed of 832MHz I get
1 min and 40 secs:

Oc’ing the cards doesn’t help much, eg. at 900MHz the time only drops to 1m 35s.

Ian.

SGI Guru