Quad Core support using After effects CS3

[Kevin Camp]

yes, ae cs3 will use all cores if you enable multiprcessing in the preferences and you have enough ram to feed those cores data. adobe recommends 1gb per core (the ram used per core can be set in the memory pref, by setting the max ram cache size).

i believe this 1gb recommendation is in addition to the ram you will want to allocate to ae (usually you’d like 2-3gb) and the operating sysytem or any other applications you’d like to have open.

so getting around 8gb of ram wouldn’t be a bad idea. that being said, i have a 4-core macpro with 4gb ram and it runs well. when i enable multiprocessing with default ram settings i can only use an additional 2 cores (so 3 total), and i get a notable performance boost. oddly enough, when i decrease the ram cachce to use all four cores, i don;t see any change in render speed (i hope that adding more ram would change that, but i can’t say for sure)…

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Brendan Coots]

The recommendation I have been seeing based on real-world tests is 2GB RAM per cpu core.

The problem with buying this much RAM is the lack of programs that can even take advantage of it. The list is fairly limited to 3D and other data-intense content creation apps. The upside (if you’re on a mac) is that companies like Other World Computing have Apple-certified RAM for almost 1/3 of the cost than Apple charges in their store. You could get 8GB RAM for around $650.

Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com

[Accountclosed]

If you’re not running a 64-bit OS, then the amount of RAM available to AE will be 2GB on Windows XP and Vista 32-bit. If running a 64-bit version, then this won’t be an issue.

For Windows XP, you can add a switch to boot.ini to reallocate an addition GB of RAM to applications. It is the /3GB switch and you can Google to find the Microsoft KB article on how to do it. The default is 2GB to apps, 2GB to OS kernal. Windows XP addresses up to 4GB. Part of that address space is your graphics card memory and virtual memory swap file. If you have 4GB RAM, you don’t want a virtual page file, as it will prevent Windows XP from utilizing all your RAM. The /3GB switch will increase RAM available to AE. You can see how much RAM is available on startup of AE.

Additional RAM on a 32-bit OS goes unused because of the 4GB address space that 32 bits can address.

Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

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