Re: Does anyone understand CPU speed?

basically you can take the core speed and multiply it by the number of cores and that will give you an approximation of the processing power that ae can use with 'render multiple frames simultaneously' enabled.

however to get the most from that processing power, you will need around 2gb of ram per core, and up to 4gb per core to work efficiently in hd. to address more than 4gb of total ram, you will also need a 64-bit os. so keep that in mind when budgeting for your system.

also know that not all effects will work with ae's multiprocessing technique/technology, so comps that use those effects will not benefit from multiple cores. so the machine with the highest clock speed will be fastest. however the vast majority of effects will work with mp enabled... off the top of my head, particle playground, wide time, and time blend effects are not compatible with ae's mp, ae's help file may list others.

as far as the graphics card, ae doesn't benefit much from a good graphics card. opengl acceleration is generally limited to preview acceleration and isn't usually used for rendering. opengl also doesn't render the same as ae's software render engine, so it can create differences from the preivew vs. the final render. when enabled, previews will not use multiprocessing (they are incompatible) and not that many standard ae effects are opengl accelerated, so opengl performance gains can vary a lot. there are also some stability issues with opengl, and it is frequently one of the first things to disable when troubleshooting ae crashes...

in short, so the amount of money you spend on a graphics card doesn't have great return value in ae, and many users would tell you to buy a cheap card and spend the extra money on ram.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW