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Hardware Question to Improve Slow Performance of Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects CC
I’m working on a video project and am getting playback lag, dropped frames, slow preview renders, and slow exports. I’m tying to figure out what I need to upgrade, but don’t know too much about building a video editing machine and feel in way over my head. Could anyone help me with some advice on what aspects of my machine are primarily to blame for my slow performance?
Here are my specs:
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5410 @ 2.33 GHz 2.33GHz (2 Processors)
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Memory: 32 GB RAM
Hard Drive: 1.99 TB Hard Drive (with 1.71 TB available) SATA 6.0Gb/s @ 3Gb/s, 5900 RPM
Graphics Card: AMD XFX Radeon HD 6450 w/ 2Gb video memoryNow, from what I’ve read it seems like the two things I most need are to update my graphics card and add more drives. Would folks on here agree with that? Are those things necessary, and if I do them will my performance be pretty good? Or will i still be bogged down by another component that I’m missing? Appreciate any feedback and I can try to provide more specs if I missed anything important. Thanks!
– sam p
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12 Replies
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anybody able to give me any feedback on this?
– sam p
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Hi Sam,
Am not a Windows guy. But here’s my 2c worth.
You need a RAID. Preferably 4 HDs striped in RAID 5. This would give you speed and redundancy.
Memory is good enough.
You can definitely see better results with a better GPU. Like a NVIDIA GTX 980 or 780.
Am not sure about your processors. But i7s are really good for video editing.Kannan Raghavan
The Big Toad Films Pte. Ltd. -
hey kannan, thanks for the input. i’m wondering, my motherboard only has slots for 3 hard drives. are you recommending 4 hard drives in addition to my main hard drive with my OS and programs on it? or just 4 total? either way, if I have to go external with my hard drives, won’t that slow me down since files will be transferring via USB?
– sam p
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so, i’ve upgraded to a Nvidia Quadro FX 4800 with 1.5GB GDDR3 GPU memory but my playback and rendering is still pretty slow. could this be a problem with my CPU? any help would be much appreciated! :X
– sam p
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[Sam Petschulat] “Nvidia Quadro FX 4800”
Although it’s a Quadro card it’s also a really old and slow by modern standards Quadro card
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A great deal also depends on WHAT you are rendering.
Some effects, video noise reduction for an example, are very processor-intensive and just plain slow. That’s just how they are.
If you only have a single drive on the system, that is certainly a performance bottleneck. All drives should be at least 7200 RPM as well. I personally prefer a solid state drive (SSD) for the OS and applications. Nothing else on that SSD but those items.
System:
Dell Precision T7600 (x2)
Win 7 64-bit
32GB RAM
Adobe CC 2014 (as of 7/2015)
256GB SSD system drive
4 internal media drives RAID 5
Typically cutting short form from HD MP4 and P2 MXF. -
Remember that the speed of your system is as fast as the slowest component.
In your case that is the video card and the hdd.Build a RAID at least four drives, and preferable using a raid card, something that can get more than 250mb/s
The Quadro Card youre using is too slow for today standards, an Nvidia GTX 960 will give you much better performance than that card.
Other reasons to consider is the Xeon you’re using is 2008, it lacks a lot of instructions that the newer Core i7 have, maybe a 3RD or 4th gen intel processor will give you much better performance than 2 Xeons.
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thanks so much for the input! unfortunately my PC only has slots for 3 internal hard drives. what’s the best way to add more? I know i could use external drives but it seems like the USB connection would be a major bottleneck.
– sam p
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also, since writing the post I’ve added 2 additional 1 TB 7200 RPM internal sata drives. that seems to definitely have helped performance, although i’d like to add more. would it be worth it to configure these in RAID since I have only 3 hard drives (maybe keep the boot drive as is and configure my 2 storage drives in RAID)? i read online that you really should only start thinking about RAID when you get into 5+ drives, is this the prevailing opinion?
– sam p
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You could try an external enclosure, with a raid card.
This is a great drive for editing
https://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-es-proFor less money you could build your own.
Enclosure
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115185https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115186
drives
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W01HP4645
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