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What, if anything, do I look for in a Graphics Card?
All information I’ve found on Graphics cards wasn’t relevant to me or was obsolete and dealt with Ray-Tracing.
My work is getting more and more complex, with recursives, adjustment layers, nested PreComps, etc. I’m taking advantage of as many helpful speed-ups as I can (lowering quality and skipping frames in RAM Preview, proxies, reducing precomps, soloing layers, not continuously rasterizing), but it’s still dragging. I’m a freelancer, so this is a bottleneck to finishing work faster/experimenting with and using better techniques/taking on more projects.
Note, I use the occasional Classic 3D render but that’s about it, so while I like to play around with Cinema 4D and smoother renders would be nice, I’m not trying to build my system around it.I have an i7, 64gb RAM, and m.2 hard drive. But my Graphics card is old (a 1gb GeForce GTX 670 Gaming card a friend gave me years ago) and wouldn’t be too expensive to do better than. Is this completely unrelated, or will it help my previewing more than a tiny bit? If so, what parameters are more important? The GB, the generation/processing power, something else? I’ve read not to go for a gaming card, instead to get a Quadro but beyond that instruction there was no information to see if it was relevant to me.
If this was asked recently somewhere else, please direct me. Thanks.
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3 Replies
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Hey Nick,
from a personal perspective – Quadro is a waste of money for AE – close to none benefits at all.
It think if you pick some newer Geforce with more rams, you will be fine, as your current is pretty old to say the least. While there will be some benefits for some effects, do not expect anything out of this work, flying ☺
Here is great guide, which will give you a general sense:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-After-Effects-CC-144/Hardware-RecommendationsFind out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview -
I agree with Tomas: stick with the Geforce. There will be no benefits to using a Quadro with Ae.
I think it’s smart to start looking to new GPUs for Ae, as the Ae team has been moving more and more processing and effects onto the GPU with each release — but improving Ae performance is still an ongoing process, and Tomas is right again that you should moderate your expectations for improvement.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Thanks, these were helpful. I picked a card leaps and bounds over my current one, and am coming to the conclusion that whatever bottleneck I’m experiencing isn’t too affected by this change. Managed expectations were a good call, so I think due to the price of the upgrade I’ll return what I have, after another week or so of playing with settings and deciding if the changes are real or in my head.
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