Would after effects take advantage of quad core chip and FireGL 256Mb

[tfortier]

Hi Marc

AE will take advantage of a quad, no doubt! I would not spend money on the graphic card cause unlike 3d applications, After Effects is more CPU and RAM hungry. Graphic card will come in play if you use openGL previewing but you will probably not use it that much if you are in compositing. Actually AE openGL is pretty poor, maybe better in cs3 but I doubt...

Ram, Cpu and Raid if you can afford will speed AE especially when working with uncompressed HD footage.

The new qx6850 look like the way to go for a fast After Effects workstation right now... if you are on a budget you can get the quad q6600 for a quarter of the price! that one will probably be my next baby!

good luck!

[Mylenium]

Hi guys,

Just a quick question. I am buying a machine purely for comping and was wondering if:

- Getting a quad core over a dual core would show much improvement in After Effects 7/CS3 (is CS 3 any different in this respect?)

- Would After Effects take advantage of a fireGL 356Mb or would a standard Geforce 8800 give pretty much that same result. If the difference will be negligeable, then ill just go with the geforce since its a lot cheaper

Thanks for the replies.

Marc

Obviously with CS3 you will be allowed to use more background render processes on a quad core, so if you have the money, go for it. For the graphics card it's pretty irrelevant whether you get a stinkin' normal GeForce or a dedicated workstation card. Unless you are working in OpenGL all the time (which isn't possible in AE), there are barely any benefits. A single non-accelerated effect could break the pipelien and then it's bvack to adaptive resolution anyways... Even if it made a difference, I'd advice against any ATI card. AE isn't too good with them and there could be problems.

Mylenium

[thethule]

Great, thanks for the replies guys. Quad core it is!



Marc

[aglick]

yeah, CS3 multithreading is roughly 2X to 3X more efficient than CS2 was...

I'd go for the quadcore myself...

Adam
BOXXlabs

[Theodocious]

even if you use maya you probably dont need the firegl unless you are planning for huge million-vertice models or zbrush stuff... my macbook pro runs maya like a champ in xp. the cpus and RAM are still much more important. and a bonus with the 8800 is that (for 3d) you could use nvidia gelato, a great, free (though buggy) hardware render engine.

HOWEVER For AE under version CS3 (ie. 8) you would need the plugin Gridiron Nucleo to take advantage of multi cores when you render. AE hasnt supported multicore rendering until this newest version, and even then in seven it cant use multicores for more than rendering, you are still stuck with one cpu for gui and preview (although there is a multicore preview to RAM in nucleo).

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