Hardware question
by Robert Wester
on
Apr 21, 2008 at 10:42:23 pm
I upgraded my computer in January, and now I have a Q6600 CPU with 2 gigs of ram. I expected a huge performance increase with rendering and ram previewing in After Effects since I upgraded from an Athlon 3500+, but I was kinda disappointed. Sure, it was faster, but not nearly as fast as I wanted it to be. I'm guessing the problem isn't in the CPU, but in my 2 gigs of ram. Is it too little? How much should I have?
Re: Hardware question by Brendan Coots on Apr 22, 2008 at 2:40:27 am
You didn't say which version of After Effects you have, and that really is the last piece of info needed to really answer your question. I'll assume you're using CS3 for now.
AE CS3 utilizes multicore processors by silently launching multiple instances of After Effects in the background, one for each core. Each of these processes will then render frames, working as a team. Each process needs as much RAM as you would normally throw at AE for rendering - a minimum of 1GB, ideally 2GB RAM. This means you should really have around 4-8GB RAM to really bring out the speed of your multiple cores. I highly recommend 8GB, especially with the cost of RAM being at historic lows.
Also, make sure multiprocessing is turned on. When you go into After Effects preferences>Multiprocessing there is a check box that must be on for multicore processing to work. In this same tab, it will tell you how many cores it will use based on the amount of RAM available (per my above comments).
One "trick" people often suggest for forcing AE to use more cores without adding RAM is to tweak the preferences>memory settings, lowering the "% used" values while checking the multiprocessing tab - when % used is set low enough, AE will use more cores. The simple truth is that this won't get you anywhere, since each rendering process will be totally RAM starved. Sure AE will be rendering with more cores, but each will be going so slow that it's a wash in terms of performance. I would avoid this tactic, and just buy some shiny new RAM.
Re: Hardware question by Darby Edelen on Apr 22, 2008 at 4:29:31 am
[Brendan Coots]"Each process needs as much RAM as you would normally throw at AE for rendering - a minimum of 1GB, ideally 2GB RAM. This means you should really have around 4-8GB RAM to really bring out the speed of your multiple cores. I highly recommend 8GB, especially with the cost of RAM being at historic lows. "
One additional note to that is that you will need a 64-bit OS such as XP 64, Vista 64 or OS X to take advantage of more than 3GB of RAM in any way.
Darby Edelen Lead Designer Left Coast Digital Santa Cruz, CA
Re: Hardware question by Darby Edelen on Apr 23, 2008 at 1:53:21 am
Before you take the dive into a 64-bit Windows OS, make sure that any drivers you need for your hardware/devices are compatible! It pays to do your homework on this, because if some part of the whole puzzle doesn't work then you could end up not being able to use any of your new toys!
Darby Edelen Lead Designer Left Coast Digital Santa Cruz, CA
