After FX best Computer system

[David Johnson]

I’m not an IT guy, but I’ve been using a half dozen Adobe programs since their early versions (as well as similar suites & and many other NLEs) so I’ll just mention my partial 2 cents …

I (and about 90% of the editors I’ve ever known) strongly prefer Nvidia graphics cards … “Leadtek – QuadroFX 3800″ sounds like an Nvidia chipset, but it sounds old since I think Nvidia is up into the 8 or 9 thousand series now, but again, I’m not an IT guy … check Adobe’s approved card list for your AE version.

Get as much RAM as you can afford.

Avoid OpenGL like the plague.

My view of Win7 (or anything else not tried & true) is, if you’re using your computer tools to make a living, stay on technology’s cutting edge, but leave the bleeding edge to those who don’t rely on technology (to deal with all the conflicts, bug reports, etc.), then adopt it once it’s solid … maybe it’ll be perfect right out the gate, but then again, no O/S of either platform has ever been thus far so why expect different?

[Theo Veltman]

Hi there, I don’t know what CPU you’re looking at but that’s a hard drive you’ve specified there.
I don’t know exactly how you’re going to use this system but as far as After Effects goes forget OpenGL, I (and I think most people) turn this off, I have never seen any advantage to using a professional graphics card over a powerful run of the mill card either (I could be wrong).
CPU’s and memory are the two main priorities here and simply the more the merrier. memory is cheap these days so whatever you get make sure it has as much memory as you can fit (or afford). I work on an Octo-core Mac and depending on what I’m running it will use all 8 (16 via Hyperthreading) processors rendering with only one instance of After effects so 2x Quadcore processors won’t go unused. It was announced recently that CS5 will be 64bit also which will benefit from the extra memory significantly.
As for your hard drives you’ll want a raid for editing but I’m not sure you’ll need sas drives. You could save yourself some money by using fast sata drives instead. I use Velociraptor drives myself but even a couple of the 1TB HDD’s available on the market now (Western Digital Black e.t.c.) in a raid5 are fast enough for uncompressed playback. Have a good backup system to cover yourself and you’ll be set.

[Joel Mielle]

Thanks for your info!
How much ram is recommended? I’m looking at 12 megs, should I get more?

The Nvidia QuadroFX is a current card as far as I know. High numbers must indicate other models. I would also like to use boris continuum which I believe can only work with open GL on for the 3D Text in AE. Currently I’m running a five year old Xeon twin CPUs and it runs like a slug! Used to be fast with earlier versions of AE but now I need to update.