What’s best: a MacBook Pro with a slightly better processor or one with discrete GPU

[Joe Clay]

As far as I’ve always heard, AE doesn’t use the GPU too much, it’s mostly reliant upon CPU. They’ve been slowly adding in things that use it, and the next version is supposed to use it more from what I’ve heard. That said, they also tend to mostly support nvidia cards with cuda. My secondary machine is pretty much the other machine you listed (MBP mid-2015 with those same specs) and I haven’t had any issues. It’s not as fast as the hackintosh I built a few years ago, but I wouldn’t expect it to be since that monster is running at 4.3GHz on all cores. I can’t run AE without the discreet card so I can’t offer any more information, but it seems quick enough on this machine. If you have a project that would be easily transferable to me through dropbox or something I can render it and tell you how long it takes if that helps.

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Walter Soyka]

[Joe Clay] “As far as I’ve always heard, AE doesn’t use the GPU too much, it’s mostly reliant upon CPU… the next version is supposed to use it more from what I’ve heard.”

All true.

It’s also worth mentioning that many popular third-party effects use the GPU for processing.

[Joe Clay] “That said, they also tend to mostly support nvidia cards with cuda.”

That’s specific to the ray-tracing renderer, which was built on NVIDIA’s OptiX library.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Joe Clay]

Yeah, third parties have taken off with it, thankfully.

Ah, that makes sense as far as ray-tracing. I never use that so that explains why I’ve never noticed a boost, haha.

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Michael Szalapski]

The ray-traced renderer wasn’t used much by anybody! It’s considered obsolete anyway.

Back to the topic at hand, is there a reason we’re discussing going with a MacBook instead of a desktop workstation of some kind? And is there a reason we’re talking about Apple instead of Windows?
I have some opinions on both of these, but I don’t want to say something out of line if you have a good reason for this.

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Joe Clay]

The reason we’re discussing MacBook Pros and Apple is because the OP asked about a comparison between two MBP models. Obviously a built computer would be fastest. 🙂

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Michael Szalapski]

No, I get that, I meant the OP should return the MacBook and get either a Mac Pro or a PC workstation. And I would highly recommend the PC workstation.

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Joe Clay]

Ah, I see what you mean. Like “why are we even having this discussion?” I can’t answer that one. Maybe they need a portable computer?

If it were me, I’d do what I did. Build a hackintosh (I can’t do Windows anymore, we don’t jive), watercool it, overclock it, and max it out. And then get a MacBook Pro for my on the go needs.

Joe Clay
Workbench.tv

[Xavier Bonet]

Hello, everyone! Thanks a lot for all of your input!

Let me be a little more specific on why I’m gravitating toward a Mac now. I’ve only worked on PCs and have had more or less success. The thing is that a couple of years ago I moved to Paris and have been out-of-video-work ever since. Until now, that I’m getting back on the horse and, to top it off, I’m working a daily vlog of sorts. So, as one of you guessed it, the portability is a must. I’m moving around rather a lot and I need to edit on the go. Plus, maybe you guys know how SMALL everything is in Paris. I’m afraid that in order to make room for a desktop computer such as I would need I would have to evict the refrigerator or the washing machine from my apartment!

Plus, there’s the budget issue. Having a primary and secondary computer is out of the question. I had the opportunity of getting a Mac and I went for it. As I said, it was rather a recommendation from a couple of vlogger friends that are editing pretty good vlogs. But being the AE junky that I am, I need a little more juice, and that’s why I’m thinking if maybe I should get the other MBPro with the Intel Iris Pro Graphics + AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB GDDR5 memory.

My doubt is whether it’s worth it or if I’m better of or just as well with the slightly better processor of this one, although it doesn’t have the AMD Radeon.

(I might have to exchange the MBPro anyway, at least for the same model, as I feel it’s not as fast as it should… It’s just slightly faster than my PC laptop with 12 Gb Ram that’s about 2-3 years old. Final video export is about the same or just shaves off a minute or two. So rather disappointing in that sense.)

Again, thanks a million for all your input!

[Xavier Bonet]

Hi, Joe Clay,

[Joe Clay] “If you have a project that would be easily transferable to me through dropbox or something I can render it and tell you how long it takes if that helps.”
You’re very kind to offer rendering a sample to tell me how long it takes! I take it you have the same model MBPro I have now? The one with the 2.8GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz Processor and no AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB GDDR5 memory? Anyway, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, so what I’ll do is send you a 4 second clip I worked on in AE and imported into PP, sped-up and set to frame blend. Let’s see how long it takes you to render it right on the timeline. Because it’s taking me 8+ minutes… which is, to me, the absolute opposite of impressive from a 2569 euro one-day-old computer that should be up to the task! Anyway, I’ll get the clip up and post a link (I guess to my Dropbox) for easy downloading tomorrow morning. Again, thanks a million for your kindness and help!

[Xavier Bonet]

Hello again, Joe Clay (and everyone else looking into this discussion),
So I’ve prepared the test project. And I went ahead and tested it fully myself, and for the sake of thoroughness I also tested out the project in my old, rickety 3-year-old HP ENVY dv4 with 12Gb RAM, which is the PC I’ve been editing on up to know, and is definitely on its last legs: program crashes at least twice during every edit session, slow, slow, slow while editing… but… sadly, I guess, because I’ve just spent 2569 euro, it did better than the new MBP at rendering and exporting. Is it an understatement to say I’m underwhelmed? Don’t get me wrong, it does out-perform my old, rickety PC in many, many things… but for 3-times the price I would expect faster rendering and exporting.

Anyway, these are the facts:

Small clip worked on AE of 2560 x 1440 footage off a GoPro-ish camera. Added a black solid and CC Rainfall. Then imported into PP, changed the speed to 2000% and applied Frame Blending. That’s all. So in the end, it’s a 154-frame comp, 5:04 seconds. I tried the exact same project on both computer and both media exports where at my normal settings, that is: 1080p, 29,97 fps, VBR 2 Pass, Target and Max bitrates 25 Mbps. The results:

Brand-new MBPro with 16Gb RAM:

• Timeline render: 7:45 minutes
• Media export: (100% and completely ready) 16:47

Old, rickety PC:

• Timeline render: 6:50 minutes
• Media export: (100% and completely ready) 13:23

Is it fair to say I feel ripped off? Or did I get a lemon? I’m sort of stuck with a Mac now, so should I return this one and get the one with the AMD Radeon graphics included? Will it make a real difference or are these the rendering/exporting times I’m to expect?

Well, here’s the link to the trial project: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/frbpuzo0noshve5/AAD-OqKw5DZXpas6WmJK2_Rta?dl=0

Thanks again for all your help!