re cs4 and 8 gb ram

[Paul Conigliaro]

I believe CS4 is still 32-bit. So the only direct benefit you will get from the extra RAM is that AE will almost assuredly get it’s max of 3GB even with other apps running.

You can take advantage of the extra RAM by enabling the “Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously” setting under Multiprocessing, but to be honest, I haven’t had much luck with that in CS3 at least.

[Paul Bertham]

forget about it.
this Multi-Process thingie is pure BS.
You have to wait till Snow Leopard for 64Bit and then expect just a maximum of 8-12% push of that “vrooooom”.

Otherwise switch to Windows Vista 64Bit before you get old.

[Anita Sancha]

Hi thanks

if I did switch back to windows….. how much faster would this then be?

[Paul Bertham]

depends.

i´ve sneek-peeked after effects on a intel quadcore PC, ATI graphics, with windows vista 64Bit and RAID.
it really impressed me.
i just can tell you that after effects was somehow always running more smoother on a windows machine.

don´t run ino the next computer store and by the next gen windows mahine, try it out for yourself first. if you have some friends around your biz, ask them to give you a short introduction.

besides that, imagine what a FAST PC you could buy with all the money for a Intel MacPro.
Personally i don´t give a damn about “chic” and design as far i can fill my fridge with food at the end of the day.

[Kevin Camp]

i haven’t read of any significant performance gains between cs3 and cs4… they are both 32-bit (on either mac or windows) and will only take advantage of more than 3gb of ram with the use of multiprocessing, or nucleo pro, which uses a very similar approach to using multiple cores.

you’ll also need a 64-bit os, so osx, xp64 or vista64, otherwise the system will not see more than 4gb of ram.

also, for ae’s multiprocessing to work effectively, adobe does recommend 2gb of ram per core. so if you have 8 cores, you should try to get 16gb of ram.

in addition, with ae making better use of processors, i’ve started to notice that drive and drive bus can be a major bottleneck for performance. i’d recommend an external drive for media & rendering, leaving the internal drive and bus for disk caching. i would recommend that the external drive be at least a firewire800 drive, but if you work in hd, preferably a sata2 drive array and host adapter (pci-e board)…

i’ve had great success with cs3’s multiprocessing, my render times are around 3-4 times faster with multiprocessing enabled than without. i have occasionally run into issues with multiprocessing and some complex compositions… about 3 times were with older projects from ae7, and once with a cs3 project. i had several ae crashes and found that disabling multiprocessing with those projects helped.

unless you were already looking to upgrade your machine, i don’t think you’d see a big enough speed difference between platforms to warrant a switch. both platforms have the similar processors, similar ram bus speeds and 64-bit operating systems… switching would also mean replacing any pci-e cards, like capture cards or sata2 cards, etc, so you need to take those costs into account.

but if you are looking to upgrade your system and software, adobe does offer crossgrading for its products so you should be able to go from a mac cs3 to windows cs4 for the same prices as upgrading to a mac cs4… i don’t know if it’s an option when ordering online, but you could talk to someone in customer service about it…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Jason Milligan]

OSX has been 64 bit for quite some time now.
The issue isn’t with the OS.

Adobe hasn’t been able to integrate a 64 bit architecture into AE yet, although they assure us they are working diligently on it. It looks probable in CS5. So, you’ll be waiting another 2 years on either platform.

[Anita Sancha]

hi geee thanks guys…

I will chat to an IT techie.. friend about this and may be we might just tweek what I have!!! tilll cs5??? or cs6??? or cs7??? anyway thanks a bunch. makes for interesting reading. But it seems cs4 is not such a “rush to buy”!!! think I will wait again zzzzzzzz

[Jimmy Brunger]

Why Snow Leopard? Isn’t Leopard 64bit OS already? (even though CS4 still is only 32bit anyway!) You’ve been able to take advantage of extra RAM on Mac since the year dot if you’ve got Nucleo…I hear multiprocessing in CS4 is alot better than CS3..and possibly Nucleo now.

Not had chance to test that out myself yet, but a friend confirms CS4 is a tonne better at dealing with RAM than CS3.

Is CS4 64-bit app now if you’re on a PC? I heard it was supposed to be, but not on Mac cos of Cocoa or something?..

AE7 Pro – Nucleo – Mocha v1.2.3 – PS CS3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
———————————
Production Studio CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Intel Core2Quad Q6600 / 2GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0

[Kevin Camp]

[Jimmy Brunger] “Is CS4 64-bit app now if you’re on a PC? I heard it was supposed to be, but not on Mac cos of Cocoa or something?”

i’ve only heard that the windows version of photoshop is 64-bit, the mac version is still 32-bit… the reason that adobe gave was that was that osx did a good enough job of ram wrangling that there wasn’t enough to gain from making the mac version 64-bit… i’m betting that the mac market size may also have figured into the equation for the amount of extra time/money it would have cost to develop a 64-bit mac version of ps… some apple/adobe competition may have figured in there too…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Paul Bertham]

what questionary about 64bit in here!?

read the sysreqs https://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/systemreqs/

at the time apple is just bitchin’ around with cutomers and it will still when the don´t turn they minds. As for Snow Leopard, he will hibernate for a longer while because there are not that much idiots who will install it.

if you have some bucks to throw out for AE CS4 on a mac, go for it, but be sure that your apple isn´t a PPC one. Adobe dropped support on that.

if Adobe would had made huge changes with AE as they did with Photoshop, i would pay double for AE.
AE CS4 “new features” are – by all respect to the programmers – a joke.