[Joachim Barrum]

Yeah you need to consider what you spend most time in before buying the computer. If your primary work is 3D then sacrifice Adobe speeds for better render speeds. If you primary is AE, then lower the core count and up the CPU frequency. Currently I have two builds. My threadripper works ok in AE and photoshop now that I have overclocked it and tweaked things, but an i7 -8700K still would beat it by a longshot. I was very close to change my threadripper to an i9 processor, hoping it would improve AE, but after reading through the Pudget tests they seem to have an even worse preview performance. I think Pudget is a great resource for content creators and should be considered when buying a machine. For AE particularly the RAM preview speeds are important to consider: https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=43661&width=655. The 30% percent difference between the i7 8700K and the 14 core 7940X is really noticeable, everything such ans scrubbing and responsiveness is all being affected by the speed drop.

So build 2 machines if you have the finance and space for it, or one inbetweener (6 or 8 core overclocked as much as possible), or accept low AE performance for a machine that is great for everything but Adobe. (photoshop, Premiere is ok on the threadripper though – the speed drop isn’t as much as in AE).

I agree with you, I hope Adobe does something soon, but I don’t have my hopes up very high – since the AE team started optimizing about 3 years ago, not much has happened…so expect a decade long timeline from Adobe – as always. And they seem fairly satisfied of the speed improvements they have made all ready. Working with DOF , vector layers and 3d layers in AE is still painfully slow IMO.

[Joachim Barrum]

My point was only that the more advanced CPU I acquired, the slower AE behaved, and noticeable so compared to any other programs I use. And since the UI slows down according with the rendering/preview speed, AE feels extremely laggy with the threadripper CPU. Something I don’t find ok, considering Threadripper has been markedet as an excellent option for creatives. If you look at my two videos you see how bad it is.

Honestly the speed in which AE renders stuff in has never bugged me, but the UI responsiveness has. And it really doesn’t make a great deal of difference when they change one filter/effect at a time to support the GPU when the entire underlying UI/implementation in the program does not support GPU and Multiple cores.
To me, a lot of the stuff they have optimized after they removed multi threading wasn’t that slow to begin with. Like the Blur and curves effects etc…
They have improved motion blur, thats a nice one, because it was really slow. (still is though) – but you could turn it on/off. Other things, such as vector shapes, DOF, (which is more hassle to turn on/off all the time) the UI in general is still very slow – and AE is one of the very few programs that has a noticeably better performance on low core high clockspeed CPUs, which is a shame since this is not where other programs are headed. Especially for those of us that uses more than AE on a daily basis.

I have sent bug reports to Adobe AE team. You never know if they read it, if anyone will ever change anything, you get no response. If you are lucky maybe you will see them change what you sent as a bug a few years later….who knows, its like sending a bug report into a black chasm (that’s how it feels)….If you think this is a fine way of running a viable business, then I’m glad on your behalf, that you settle so easy…I’m not.

[Joachim Barrum]

Oh I meant Dave, the other guy…David McGavran. He signed his post with Dave as well ☺ Probably he won’t read it, but I have no idea were to get some actual proper response from Adobe – and he seemed genuinely interested in discussing the matter. Adobe constantly say they take their customers extremely serious and that they make sure to squeeze every drop of computer power from your machine (from what I read in a recent adobe blog post)…which to me seems like a silly joke in the current state of AE.

AE has no bug report forum the way Photoshop does, even though Adobe Photoshop team isn’t good at listening to their customers seriously unless 1000 people screams at once, at least there’s a place where you can try to get in touch with some of those developing the software.

[Joachim Barrum]

Yes, you are right, everyone just post raw benchmark result. Since pretty much none of the youtubers are actual content creators they only rely on benchmark numbers. But, the overall experience working with the program is a totally different matter.
Like Pugetsystems points out (even though they as well only provide benchmarks numbers, at least its focused on the actual programs, not Cinebench etc..)…I’m glad I had a chance to actually test it, it gives me a good indication for my future investments…and hopefully it will alert a few that are looking to upgrade their CPU.
I would say, anyone buying a 1950X, i9 or a xeon processor solely for the purpose of using After Effects and Premiere are spending a lot of money to get a low performing system.

Photoshop is also affected by this. Brush strokes and such are less responsive with a Wacom (I’ve tested this as well). Only multicore filters such as radial blur improves. Which in the end isn’t what matters.

You made a good choice not following the hype of the Threadripper. i7-8700K is probably the best CPU you can buy for adobe software currently. And, based on how long it is since Adobe said they would start optimizing AE for modern machines, I think its safe to say we won’t see much improvement on the CPU utilization of Adobe software for years to come.

[Joachim Barrum]

Just noticed this thread and the discussion of AE’s optimizations, and I would like to share some impressions. Hopefully someone in Adobe still reads this or is still interested in discussing this…
I remember when Adobe announced they would start working on making After Effects faster, the post Dave LaRonde refers to, which was written a few years back (2013 ?). At the same time Adobe removed the ability for us to render with multiple threads. After this, the only noticeable optimizations I can think of is a few of the effects converted to GPU effects, many of which wasn’t very slow to begin with (fast blur vs box blur, etc…) and the preview options have become better. Apart from that, After effects today is generally slower than it was years ago. And multi threaded systems still has only negative impacts on the responsiveness of the program, still!!

I want to share some experiences I have had since then.

4 years back I owned a retina iMac, the i7 4 core top of the line first generation released. After Effects did “ok” on this machine. But I neeed more power for other programs, so I upgraded to a PC with 6 cores, overclocked to 4,4 GhZ and 128GB of 2400MhZ Ram and a blazingly fast SSD (960 Pro 2tb) and GTX 1080 GPU.

From my experience, this new machine had NO! impact on After Effects performance. Nothing rendered any faster, and the UI in general just felt slightly more laggy.

Then, this year, I invested in another machine, with the exact same internals, except a GTX 1080ti and a Threadripper 1950x CPU (16 cores) markedet as a super CPU for visual creators alike.
And to my disappointment, After Effects is now slower than EVER! Not only in rendering, but the general user experience and responsiveness is worse than I had before. So the more powerful machine I buy for multiple purposes, the slower adobe programs becomes – to an extremely noticeable degree.

Additionally, the slower AE manages to update the preview frames, the more laggy the timeline scrubbing and UI behaves in general, which makes it feel even slower than it actually is. (this same goes for Premiere Pro)

These are the same findings that pugetsystems.com shows. They build custom cheaper computers for adobe programs (gamer riggs) compared to other art programs which actually are able to to utilize the modern day machines power.

I have made two videos, with the same scene opened on my to machines, which hopefully illustrate my point quite clearly.
This is a good comparison since the two machines are basically exactly the same, except for the CPU.
Specs: Ram: 128 gb at 2400MhZ, HDD: 2TB 960 Pro 3500/2100 MB/s Read/write, GPU: GTX 1080Ti/1080. Both CPUs are overclocked and runs in safe temperatures with no throttling.
I urge you to take a look and see the difference. The scene is fairly simple, mostly using a lot of circle shapes. and moving them with motion blur on. Both videos are recorded with the very latest CC 2018 which has GPU accellerated Motion Blur.

Here is the 4.4ghz Intel CPU video:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mqqcm9ff9blfmck/AfterEffects_6core4.4Ghz.mp4?dl=0

Here is the Threadripper CPU VIdeo:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lalh1gm0z0emxwe/AfterEffects_threadripper.mp4?dl=0

-As you see, the 1950X does a horrible job in AE.

I would love to hear more about when and what plans Adobe has for this. I remember quite a few years back, when Todd Koppriva was Adobes spokesman, he actually went as far as to say that currently AE was not optimized for future systems. But the plans were to make huge optimizations and therefore a Mac Pro with many cores wasn’t optimal then, but if you want to plan for the future, then get a powerful system he said (hinting of great optimizations to come). This is so many years ago, that the machine you would buy then would probably all ready be out of date, so a really bad investment advice I would say. And AE still won’t benefit from any modern machines such as iMac Pro coming out now, or the new multi core CPU era that is upon us. But, will this ever change?? Or maybe Adobe should actively advice people to strafe away from these powerful machines?
Since AE started their optimization plans, which is a long time ago, we haven’t seen much improvements at all. And currently I’m considering getting a cheap game PC with high clock speeds only for AE, because it barely is usable on my new powerful machine…

I have to stress that this impression only directs toward Adobe programs (AE, Premiere and Photoshop in my case). I use 3DS max, Unity 3D, and many other heavy duty programs on my Threadripper 1950x which doesn’t slow down at all and the UI reacts just as smooth as on low core machines, and which has amazing rendering results (both GPU and CPU). So this impression of degradation only relates to Adobe programs. And its important for me to emphasize that most benchmarks focus on rendering time, but the overall user interface responsiveness which is more difficult to measure with a number, is as badly optimized and part of the frustration.

I hope you Dave or any of the AE team reads this and has some recommendations or can enlighten us on what steps you are taking to improve any of this..This has been an ongoing discussion on the Adobe Hardware Discussion forums as well.

Sincerely
Joachim Barrum

[Joachim Barrum]

I built a machine recently with 1950X Thredripper…with content creation in mind.
After my own experience with this I would recommend everyone working with motion and motion graphics, particularly in Adobe After Effects and Premiere to star FAR away from Threadripper. Not because Threadripper isn’t a nice CPU, but Adobe is so far behind on optimizing their programs for modern multithreaded systems that your overall experience will be MUCH worse. The more cores and lower clockspeed, the worse After Effects will get. A simple gaming rig with as high Clockspeed as possible will get you much farther in AE, in particular. Just look at Pugetsystems.com and their speedtests (which only includes renderspeed data)

I have two identical systems, only difference is the CPU and motherboard.
Both have:
Ram: 128 gb at 2400MhZ
HDD: 2TB 960 Pro 3500/2100 MB/s Read/write
GPU: GTX 1080Ti

The scene is a a simple scene, mostly just a few layers with a lot of vector shapes. Just look at these videos and compare, you will see how much slower the UI responsiveness and preview rendering is on the 1950X compared to the 6850K Intel CPU. This is not only happening in this scene, it is my overall experience in After Effects and even with nothing except a Solid Color, scrubbing the timeline on the Threadripper is a depressing experience. So an expensive computer with tons of cores won’t give you a better working experience. And After Effects doesn’t render the final shot any faster than the full quality preview is rendering, so cores won’t get you anywhere….sadly.

Computer #1 has a 4,4GhZ Overclocked 6 core intel CPU:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mqqcm9ff9blfmck/AfterEffects_6core4.4Ghz.mp4?dl=0

Computer #2 has a Overclocked 1950X Threadripper 3.8GhZ CPU:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lalh1gm0z0emxwe/AfterEffects_threadripper.mp4?dl=0

This was a lot of text, sorry..But it’s important to get this info out there. People think buying an expensive computer, a Mac Pro or now iMac Pro would make their experience in Adobe programs better, when it will in fact do the exact opposite. . Hopefully Adobe reads this and see how horribly bad their optimizations are.