Huge Question

[Kevin Camp]

if you’re talking rendering from ae (not ram preview rendering), unless you have the ‘use opengl renderer’ turned on it the render settings, ae will only use the cpu by default.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Adam Taylor]

does it really matter?

and looking at the specs it looks like the pc has higher spec for each component so i’d be surprised if it wasn’t faster.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

[Darby Edelen]

[Carlos Bringas] “I say that because of the Processor and the RAM, and my friend says is for the Graphic card.

Can someone tell us what is the reason ?? “

It’s because the program runs more efficiently under Windows. Personally I think this is because Adobe hasn’t taken the time to fully update their code base for OS X, but it could be for any number of reasons. If your mac is a Mac Pro try booting into windows on it through boot camp and running AE. It should run faster.

That said, OS X is a 64-bit OS and can take advantage of far more RAM than the common 32-bit flavors of Windows. This only really helps when multi-processing is enabled however.

FYI if you don’t have a 64-bit OS on your PC machine then at least 5GB of your 8GB are being entirely wasted.

So the short answer is: you’re both wrong 😉

Darby Edelen
Lead Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Carlos Bringas]

I do have 64 bit on PC
Both machines run AE CS3.
We want to know specicaly if the performance of the PC is better cuz of the video card.
I say Graphic card doesnt really matter on AE. It work great if you card supports Opgl 2.0. no matter the price.
My friend says the Video Card is very important working on project, and thats why PC runs better on AE

[Kevin Camp]

if you have opengl disabled for previews (which i recommend) and are not using it for rendering (which would be a little unusual), then the only part of ae that will be utilizing the graphics card will be the interface….

darby is pointing out that ae’s code is also better optimized for windows… tests have been done using intel macs running ae for mac and ae for windows (via bootcamp) and the renders have been faster on the exact same mac running the windows version…. similar test have been done for various games and most of the time the windows versions beat the mac versions hands down (this is partly due to many games being developed under directx (pc only), and later getting ported to opengl).

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Carlos Bringas]

OK, thank you for yor answers.

But a simple answer in a simple question… Having a good graphic card make the difference to work on a project on After effects better ?
Or having a good procesor and Ram make the difference on After Effect ?
I mean, you obviously need a Video Card, but how important is on AE ?
If u could make a important list on hardware (1-2-3), where the processor, the ram and the video card were be ?

[Dan Harrison]

It’s simple.

1- Processor
2- Ram
3- Hard Drive

You indeed need a video card but the real performance is on those hardwares.

If you think the video card is making prev/rend fast you are wrong.

I hope this can help you.

Sr. Promotion Producer
NY