Building a Rig for After Effects (PC or MAC)

[cgbeige]

After Effects is terrible at multithreading for most things so think higher clock rate and fewer cores. An i7 Windows box should be good (4 hyperthreaded cores) but this highlights a big hole in the Mac product line-up. There is no i7 Mac Pro so you're going to have to get a dual quad Xeon and get a lower clock speed for a lot of money or get an iMac with an i5 and a higher clock. The Mac Pro is a great machine though - see my review here:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/04/266ghz-8-core-mac-pro-review.ars/

Otherwise, tell your boss to switch to Nuke. It will use all those cores. This page is probably of the most interest to you:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/04/266ghz-8-core-mac-pro-review.ars/7

[meleseDESIGN]

What makes an Apple any better as other Workstations? :thumbsup:

Anyways, why should you switch to a none-Apple product when you can run Windows OS on a MAC via Bootcamp? Performance-related switching to Nuke makes much more sense, as he said above.
Unless you guys doesn´t use Sockel 1366 architecture allready.
How many machines are needed or do we talk here just about one rig for compositing?

[Srek]

An iMac 27" core i7 will be up par with basicaly any other PC Core i7.
The single Xeon MacPro as well, just for a higher price with more flexibility in extension. The dual Xeons will give you twice the renderspeed in any well multithreaded application.
If you have a real budget and simply rely on the system to be working i would check with Boxx for a PC configuration, if you want to build yourself a single Core i7 is easy to build and should be quite a bit cheaper as the iMac (depending on monitor) or the single Xeon MacPro.
As already pointed out, AE isn't well multithreaded so dual CPU setups are not realy cost effective, a second simple box as a render slave alongside would be more effective.

Cheers
Björn

[RobertoOrtiz]

Thanks guys for the replies. My tech guys are reading your replies.
How about any blade based systems?

and here is a question from them:

Is there an advantage to using an xsan storage vs regular raid array other than cost?


-R

[eaclou]

I would think that, provided you (or your tech people) are comfortable putting together your own machine, that building an i7 machine would be the best option.

I'd like to think that I'm pretty unbiased with regards to the Windows/Apple competition, but I'd lean away from the Mac Pro (for your purposes, re: multithreading would be wasted - it's an excellent desktop computer). The new 27" iMac is an excellent purchase also. The downside to that is upgradeability, and storage capacity (you can't fit 4 1-2TB HDDs in it, you would need an external solution which would be slower). However, the screen of the NEW 27" iMac is very nice if you need accurate color representation, and it has a greater than 1080p resolution, probably very useful for HD After Effects work. A custom-built i7 PC would also give you the ability to apply a minor overclock, which would provide you with THE best cost-performance, as clock-speed increases will see more benefit in After Effects than more cores, as has been said.

SO, to summarize:

I would recommend building a PC from scratch and setting up a dual-monitor display so you have plenty of screen real-estate for editing (I think this increases productivity just as much as a faster CPU, personally. I have trouble working nearly as fast on single-monitor set-ups after trying out dual.). You can also choose a motherboard that supports a very large amount of RAM this way, unlike the iMac.

However, second place recommendation goes to the 27" i7 iMac. It has an excellent IPS (panel technology - best for color reproduction and viewing angles. a google search for "IPS lcd" should bring up a bunch of information about it.) Screen with a high resolution (I believe it's 2560x1440). and very respectable performance and ease of setup will trump building your own. Downsides are that you can't really upgrade it, you will have to buy a completely new rig once it is obsolete, and also that the screen doesn't support as many calibration options as a professional quality stand-alone monitor from NEC, Dell, or HP. Also, it supports 16GB ram maximum (and really at this time only 8GB, as far as i know there aren't 4GB modules available in its form-factor; could easily be wrong on this one, but even if i am, those 4GB sticks will be hugely expensive, or slow, or both) a basic i7 1366 board will have 6 RAM slots.

(Somewhat related: i7 LGA1156 vs i7 LGA1366):
There are two separate lines of i7 CPUs, that use different motherboard sockets, and are incompatible with tho other's socket type, which is an important thing to be aware of when purchasing CPU+MoBo.

i7 LGA1366 (i7 920, i7 950, i7 965):
-These i7 processors are different from the 1156 series in that they support triple-channel RAM (they run fastest with multiples of 3 ram sticks, not 2), and can support many more lanes of PCIE. (really only makes a difference in multi-GPU configurations, or GPU + high-end RAID card). They also consume more power (130W TDP vs 95W TDP) and therefore run hotter. The new 6-core i7 980 Gulftown CPUs will use this socket, but they will be very expensive and won't be as useful for AE due to only adding more cores (clock speed will likely be lower).

i7 LGA 1156 (i7 860, i7 870)
-These processors use pretty much the same architecture except they do not support triple channel memory (slightly smaller memory bandwidth, but it barely affects real-world performance), and they lack the pci-e lanes of the 1366 family. In the case of both families, it is a MUCH better deal to purchase the entry-level CPU (860 or 920) and overclock to the desired speed.

[dmeyer]

How about any blade based systems?


I am not sure what you are asking here. You are looking for workstation recommendations, no? A blade based system is what you'd use in a renderfarm context, not for an artist to work on. If you DO mean renderfarm, what is your budget?


Is there an advantage to using an xsan storage vs regular raid array other than cost?


XSAN = fast, simultaneous data access for multiple artists. Centralized storage can make some pipeline issues much easier. Expensive though.

local RAID = cheaper, faster data access if done right but you need one per workstation.

[RobertoOrtiz]

Thanks guys!
I am compiling your comments for my boss right now!

If you have any more ideas, feel free to post them.

-R

[olson]

Is there an advantage to using an xsan storage vs regular raid array other than cost?


How much data do you need to store and how many clients (and render nodes) will be accessing the data? Without knowing that its hard to recommend one thing over another. Cheers!

[earwax69]

Im a AE guy... the more mhz the best. no need of 22 cores. Ram ram ram and fast drives especially working with HD or 2k footage. 64bits system of course... what else?

Best option for me would be an overclocked i7, but I guess its not an option for a company workstation.

I would not take the Imac mostly for the glossy monitor. Also my experience with Imacs are that if you use it a lot (rendering...), it will die on you quite fast. Better get a real case with good ventilation.

[meleseDESIGN]

If you´re familiar with the screens in front of you it wouldn´t matter what display it is - to make the right color adjustments depends on the Artist - for presentation it´s allways nice to do it on glossy prints.

Blades will only be usefull for network rendering and for larger projects.
For a compositing workstation use not less then Dual Socket Xeons X5570 processors, 8 cores with HT and 2-4GB RAM each core and your compositors should be happy.

[Kai01W]

If you´re familiar with the screens in front of you it wouldn´t matter what display it is - to make the right color adjustments depends on the Artist
Huh? That does not make sense....

-k

[meleseDESIGN]

Means, someone with a low budget display or an iMac is still able to create perfect Artwork. ;)

[cgbeige]

ya but glossy displays are still awful.

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