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After Effects PC Specification
Hi all
I hope this is the correct forum that I have posted this to but if not please don’t flame me 🙂
I was hoping that I might get some feed back on custom building a PC for use with After Effects. Tips on what is good and what it not to make the PC perform as well as can be.
I will be using Windows Vista.
I was planning on using a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor. How much of a benefit would I have from using a quad processor with AE etc?
Is it worth using raid 0 with hard drives? In some articles I have read the difference in speed is negligible compared to just using one.
I planned on installing 4gb of PC2-8500 1066MHz SLI-ready memory. I would expect 4Gb is going to make a considerable performance and with the right motherboad and SLI-ready memory I would think this is one of the key areas where a PC really can run fast or slow.
For the motherboard, I did consider the Asus STRIKER EXTREME 680I SLI motherboard but I am now unsure if this is a good move because it seems to me this board is really for the purist who loves to over clock which is something I would not know how to do. Therefore, it seems I would have a motherboard with features that I do not need so right now I am unsure as of a good alternative. What I do know from experience is ASUS for me have been very reliable.
That just leaves the graphics card, which I thought I would be an Nvidia 8800GTS. Most have this anyway but I would want to run two DVI monitors and have the ability to output HDTV to my main television etc.
Nothing is set in stone and if anyone has recently gone through the same process and knows just what would make a good PC I would love to know :).
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5 Replies
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Don’t use Vista if possible. I have heard awful things about it, especially concerning Pro apps.
A quad will help the most if you buy Nucleo.
RAID will help somewhat, though not as much as it does with video editing apps that need fast access to drives for real-time playback.
Yep, get 4 GB of RAM.
Can’t speak for the MoBo, but that’s getting pretty picky for AE. Make your choice for reasons other than AE.
If Adobe supports the graphics card, then it’s fine. Any other decisions would be made for reasons that don’t involve AE.
Just my opinion … 🙂
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[Steve Roberts] “Yep, get 4 GB of RAM.”
I agree with pretty much everything that Steve said, only I’d point out that if you’re getting a Quad core processor (for use with Nucleo as Steve said or CS3… otherwise AE won’t benefit from multiple cores at all) you will probably want more RAM than this.
On Windows AE can use 2GB of RAM per process (Nucleo and CS3 operate by creating background instances of AE) so with a possible 4 instances running (1 per core) you would need 8GB of RAM to really shine. Or if you have the 3GB switch thrown in your boot.ini you might want 12GB to maximize your fun. This isn’t to say that a quad core with 4GB of RAM will be slow, but it could be faster (;
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Just my 2 cents here – Unless you are really familiar with building newer PC’s – I’d go with a Dell or Boxx computer built to order. I say this only because I built one last year and it was a nightmare. The new Intel processors are hotter and a lot more complicated and sticky – I mean this literally, heat sink goo – and my experience was it never cooled right or ran right. I ended-up buying a Dell XPS Dual Core with 4 Gigs of RAM and I’ve been very happy with it, and it cost about $2K less than the one I built! Also – ditto what’s been said about Vista – stick with XP. Good Luck!
-Cathy -
Yep, I concur. Showing my age. 😉
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I could be wrong, but I think you’d need XP 64bit to use more than 4GB RAM?…XP32 only sees 4GB for the whole system (less than that if you have PCI-Express) so you probably wont be able to effectively use more than about 3GB to share between the 4 instances of AE. From what Steve Forde of Gridiron has said in the past (do a cow search on PCI black hole and there’s a tonne of stuff about RAM and AE/Nucleo) 3GB shared between 4 proc cores will not be at all effective, you need at least 1GB per core.
Go for XP64 and then fill her up I say!
*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0
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