Why RAM Preview 2x faster on Macbook Pro vs Desktop PC?

[Alex Gerulaitis]

Could you check your per-core CPU usage, memory usage on each system during RAM preview?

— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[Walter Soyka]

The cache system in Ae CS6 and higher can play a major role in apparent RAM preview times. You should be sure to clear the disk and image caches before benchmarking.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Todd Kopriva]

Relevant to Walter’s comment, the SSD in the laptop can make a huge difference.

Also, we don’t know anything about your project, so it’s unclear whether your multiprocessing settings are better suited for the composition being rendered on one computer or the other.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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[David Hue]

Thank you all for your comments!

Alex: Would I check this through the Activity Monitor on Mac, and Task Manager on PC?

Walter: I made sure to clear the Disk caches on both systems right before RAM previewing.

Todd: My Macbook Pro has an HDD, not an SSD. My PC has both.

Here are a couple screenshots of the project, I hope it helps:

Text objects with Turbulent Noise effect, floating in space, with a .eps image as the ground, with a 3D one-node camera using depth of field, and 3D lights.

Thanks again,

David

[Walter Soyka]

[David Huettner] “AE Configuration for PC:
11/16 gb RAM reserved for other apps
4/8 CPUs reserved for other apps
2GB RAM allocation per background CPU”

These settings leave only 5 GB of RAM available to Ae. Since you are asking for 2 GB of RAM per background CPU, you are only starting two instances of the renderer on your PC.

[David Huettner] “AE Configuration for MBP:
4/8 gb RAM reserved for other apps
4/8 CPUs reserved for other apps
1GB RAM allocation per background CPU”

These settings leave 4 GB of RAM available to Ae. Since you are asking for 1 GB or RAM per background CPU, you can start four rendering instances — twice as many as on the PC.

In my opinion, your reserved RAM on the PC is too high. You should reserve 4-6 GB of RAM for other processes. You may also lower your minimum RAM allocation per background CPU, as it doesn’t seem like your comp is extremely RAM-intensive. If you see the comp failing over to the foreground renderer, then try bumping up the minimum RAM allocation per background CPU again.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[David Hue]

Thank you, Walter!! I gave 12GB RAM to AE, 6 CPUs, with 2GB per CPU, and now it runs a LOT faster. I am very pleased 🙂 Thank you everyone for your help!