After Effects can take real advantages of GPU architeture processing?
Which is the effective gain to use After Effects in a system with Tesla C1060?
Would it be be a crucial increase of performance to visualize contents or even rendering time?
In a few words,
must i think seriously about Tesla to work with AE (in conjuntion with Quadro fx1800)
or should i discard this solution and replace this conjunct for a Quadro fx4800?
Thanks for your attention in advanced.
> Would it be be a crucial increase of performance to visualize contents or even rendering time?
No.
The GPU is used to accelerate the rendering of some effects, and OpenGL can be used for rough rendering and to speed up interactions. But you don’t need a fancy card to get all of the benefits. I use a stock card and mostly just use OpenGL - Interactive preview mode.
If you have money to spend, use it on RAM and fast local disk drives.
Also - the Tesla’s (while containing a graphics chip as the processor) are not actually a graphics card - they don’t even have video output. They are a dedicated processor that runs on special programming code, mostly geared toward the scientific community.
tks for reply. 
<<use it on RAM >>
ToddKopriva:
You encoraged me to consider between
(a) to double graphic card GPU,
jumping from Quadro FX 4800 to FX 5800, respectively 1,5 and 4 Gb graphic memory)
(b) to double system RAM memory, jumping from 12 Gb to 24 Gb.
First option is about 20% more expansive here.
Which one would assure
more interativity during creation process and animation tests using After Effects
(mainly, longer OpenGL previews and more perfomance scrubbing timeline) ?
…
What is exactly the importance of faster disks
to work at After Effects with content creation?
(i have to choice between 7200, 10k and 15k rpm disks)
As long as you have at least any supported graphics card that supports OpenGL, do not put any consideration into getting an even better one for After Effects CS4. Just forget it. Buy RAM instead.
Regarding disks: When you’re reading footage from a disk, writing rendered and exported frames out to disk, caching frames to disk, and running an application from disk… disk speed matters. It’s the bottleneck far more often than most people realize.
For more information see “Improve performance” and the pages that it points to.
Regarding the OpenGL stuff you already have the answers already and for RAM usage - well, even if you extensively use multiprocessing, chances are you will never break a certain ceiling. RAM allocation is dynamic, after all and any app on the planet only takes what it needs. With a 64bit AE around the corner, though, there will be additional payoffs like longer RAM previews etc., so it may still be worth.
Forget the RPM, get a 4 disk RAID. How fast the disks spin really doesn’t matter much, when the bus and load balance is not right. If you have a single disk and write large files to it, its bandwidth is still already exhausted and you cannot simultanously read and write other files with similar speed. In fact your system might then not even be able to access the swap file fast enough and be bogged down completely. Just by rendering out a movie. It really comes down to balancing out things, not absolute values.
Mylenium
thanks for the replies.
<<Forget the RPM, get a 4 disk RAID.>>
So doesnt it matter if disks are SATA or SAS?
Can reseller configure the four disks by using RAID 5?
I have another crucial doubt.
It would be very important if i can preview After Effects timeline in a external monitor.
I’ve already use in the past some Matrox solutions (Digisuite),
but the drivers support is discontinued at each new card they announce,
so i wouldnt like to use this kind of solution again.
(a) since i just need to get a preview in external monitor
(not capture even effects dedicated hardware acceleration)
which would be a reasonable solution to this?
(b) is it possible to use external monitor just by using
Edit|Preferences|Video Preview|Output Device: IEEE 1394 (CHCI compliant)?
In this case, AE will show just the Composition window on external monitor?
Must i have to connect IEEE cable in a VT and, from it, connect another cable to TV?
Thank you very much for the attention.
The RAID level should not matter that much, but of course RAID 5 is advisable if you store everything on them to minimize the risk of losing crucial files. SATA vs. SAS is pretty much a matter of preference, but given the price point it wouldn’t really matter much. The difference per disk makes probably only 10 or 20 Euros, so whatever your RAID controller supports would be good enough. Just make sure the disks are really all the same model to avoid issues with asymmetrical sector allocation and potential speed issues that may cause (beyond the RAID 5 checksum writing).
Yes, that is how it would work. Note that this would only work for DV/ HDV and not other resolutions. If you want a better alternative that allows you full HD, one of the HDMI cards by AJA or Blackmagic is probably the best solution and avoids having unnecessary extra cables.
Mylenium
Excuse me the delay to post a reply.
I thank you very much for all the orientations: very precious info to help me configure a system to run AE.
I have now the following doubts:
After Effects can take real advantage from a dual-CPU system, ie, SMP (multiprocessing)
or should i forget this and get just a single processor?
thanks for all.
edit:
Sorry, but i edited the original post title to be more adequated to all we are treating here.
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