Best affordable Nvidia graphics card for AE CS6 and above

[Scott Green]

I’m working with a mid 2012 Mac Pro 12 Core with 64GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, LCS Cinema Display, and the standard graphics card that came with the machine.

I use After Effects CC a lot but seem to be experiencing long waiting times when previewing my animations, it’s really good at rendering though.

I’m wondering if I need a GPU upgrade and which card I should look into. Nvidia recommended the K5000 when I spoke to them on their live chat, I’m just wondering if this card is going to give me a better/faster previewing experience or what other cards I should look at or other solutions that might help?

Thanks.

Music Videos, Motion Graphics, Creative Multimedia, Video Production, VFX and Graphic Design by Splurj Creative Multimedia

[Michael Szalapski]

What do you mean when you talk about previewing?

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[Scott Green]

Hi sorry, I didn’t reply sooner, when I said previewing I meant when doing a RAM preview.

I still haven’t upgraded my GPU yet but have been experiencing problems as I’ve been doing lots of work using Trapcode Particular and it’s starting to struggle. In this one comp it’s hopeless at previewing frames. When I do finally get a preview and attempt to move along the timeline it can take up to 3 minutes to preview that frame.

I’m desperate for a GPU upgrade now.

Any suggestions which one I should go for in my 2012 12 Core Mac Pro with Mini Display ports?
What’s the most powerful for under £1,000?
As I mentioned, Nvidia did recommend the Quadro K5000 which I’m not sure is the best one to spend my money on. Some suggestions would be really appreciated.

Splurj Creative, Video Production, Motion Graphics & Animation in Manchester UK.

[Michael Szalapski]

A GPU won’t help at all with the issues you’re describing. If you’ll look at a link I posted earlier in this thread, you will see that AE actually uses the GPU for very little. Now, some third-party effects do, but Particular isn’t one of them.

What processor do you have in there?
What OS are you using?

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Scott Green]

OSX Yosemite Version 10.10.1

12-core (standard configuration)
– Two 2.4GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5645 processors
– 12MB of fully shared L3 cache per processor
– Turbo Boost dynamic performance up to 2.67GHz
– Hyper-Threading technology for up to 24 virtual cores

Full spec:
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP652

Splurj Creative, Video Production, Motion Graphics & Animation in Manchester UK.

[Michael Szalapski]

Your low clock speed might be your issue. Some things in AE are still single-threaded, so you’re limited to the clock speed of one of your cores. Rendering, however, can often use all of your cores. This would explain your slow interactivity, but fast renders.

Thankfully, a majority of the AE team at Adobe is working on rewriting AE’s core to make this kind of stuff better.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Scott Green]

Anything I can do in the meantime to check and solve any low clock speed issues?

Splurj Creative, Video Production, Motion Graphics & Animation in Manchester UK.

[Michael Szalapski]

There are a number of things you can do to try to get AE to perform better. Here are some: https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2011/02/optimizing-for-performance-adobe-premiere-pro-and-after-effects.html

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.