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Mediocre System Performance
Hey I just started to use AE and noticed that when i try to tackle tuts (since I’m still a newbie) with particles or ones that require a lot of power, my PC lags. I tried some heavy particle tutorials and when I try to RAM preview, it takes like 2mins to preview a 10-15s part of my project and it’s set at HALF too.
My configurations are as follows:
Core 2 Duo 1.86ghz
2GB DDR RAM
Nvidia 256MB Geforce 7600 GT
and some old and crappy HD with 80GB…i THINK it’s the SAMSUNG SP0802N. Not sure.So I was just wondering, if I want to do more After Effects and possibly 3D with other programs what is the most efficient and effective way to upgrade my PC without having to buy a new one. I am somewhat short on cash and so don’t want to shell out a lot on this upgrade.
My dad suggested to just add another 2GB of ram to make it 4 in total. Will that be the best solution and the most affordable/effective?
Hopefully someone knows haha. Thanks in advance.
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4 Replies
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Hi,
Unfortunately, the only thing that is going to increase how fast you can preview and render from AE is new processors. RAM will give you more time in RAM preview and a speed increase when going between apps, but not rendering or previewing. Graphics Card can add a little if you use Open GL, but there are a LOT of reasons NOT to.
Please keep in mind, Particle systems are one of the MOST processor intensive of any effects! For each frame, AE could need to do a million calculations. That’s why it takes so long to preview and render. Particular from Trapcode works very fast for a particle app, if you want more speed in these effects.
HDs don’t really matter in AE, SCSI drives would be a slight boast, but a new or different HD won’t effect the speed of AE.
Good Luck,
Todd at UCSB
Television Production -
I’m a complete novice with AE, but it occurs to me that with tutorials, it benefits the tutor and their bandwidth if they edit tutes so that sections with nothing much happening (such as a progress bar) are speeded up or cut out entirely, as they don’t specifically add to the learning process.
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[Todd at UCSB] “Unfortunately, the only thing that is going to increase how fast you can preview and render from AE is new processors. RAM will give you more time in RAM preview and a speed increase when going between apps, but not rendering or previewing.”
That’s not entirely true. If you have more RAM available to AE then it won’t have to use page files as often, which should result in increased performance. There is a definite ceiling here however, unless you’re working with AE CS3 and multiple cores then your system won’t be able to take advantage of more than 4GB of RAM (assuming 1GB is being used for the OS).
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
well if you say multiple and mean core 2 duo then ya i got multiple processors lol if that’s what you mean 😛 and I use XP so not sure if 1GB is for the system but shrug. I’m not a computer genius but I do know my share of stuff about them.
Thanks for the advise 🙂
And I don’t really wanna get a new graphic card cause i dunno what i’d do with my old one. And i just bought my current one like a yr ago.
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