Humble Monster, MacPro Upgrade

[Walter Soyka]

More RAM. This will allow you to exploit multiprocessing, a feature which basically launches multiple copies of the After Effects renderer in order to render multiple frames at the same time on separate CPU cores.

I generally recommend 4 GB per core, so your 8-core machine should have 32 GB.

For more specific suggestions, please describe what sort of work you’re doing and where you’re running into bottlenecks.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Ervin Tia]

Thank you Walter.

We mainly work with SD,HD videos, nothing fancy just DSLR and Camcorder footages. We’ve just started incorporating simple motion graphics and titles on it.

The challenges I’m encountering is I guess really basic muscle power, as you mentioned. Rendering speed and preview are the main ones right now.

More power!

Here’s our recent work: https://vimeo.com/apnazarene

———-
Ervz | Video Productions | WMC-AP, Philippines
https://vimeo.com/ervzman/videos

[Ridley Walker]

In addition to more RAM, if you’re using CS6 you could add an SSD to serve as a Disk Cache. From my perspective, the Global Performance Cache and Persistent Disk Cache were the killer features in the CS6 release.

https://www.video2brain.com/en/lessons/global-performance-cache-and-persistent-disk-cache

[Ervin Tia]

Great!

What about the graphics card? I noticed that my current card is not listed in Adobe. Is this a big deal?

Also, please educate me on shopping/specs. Should I always go with a NVIDIA brand? What about others that carries the same GeForce (example) model name?

Thanks!

———-
Ervz | Video Productions | WMC-AP, Philippines
https://vimeo.com/ervzman/videos

[Ridley Walker]

If you’re asking about After Effects, the graphics card only comes into play when it comes to the new Ray Traced Renderer.

If you intend to use those features then an nVidia card with CUDA will benefit your workflow, otherwise you won’t see any difference.

[Stefan Hinze]

Hey,

More RAM, a SSD, and CUDA.

My Mac is a 3,1 from 2008.
8 core
24 GB
SSD for the System
GTX 285 – CUDA (in Premiere Mercury-Engine)

I render out a 10min clip from 1080 to 720 in about 6min…
PP hase some CUDA/Mercury supportet FX, so in most cases, even CC dosn´t slows it down!

Hope this helps!
😉

[Ervin Tia]

Awesome! Thanks for the ideas.

Currently, our workflow goes like: AfterEffects for graphics – AvidMC for final edit, music mix, and finish.

For the Avid part, we’re pretty good with the system and performance. But then of course any upgrade will be beneficial.

———-
Ervz | Video Productions | WMC-AP, Philippines
https://vimeo.com/ervzman/videos