Box to run AE just tolerably well?

Box to run AE just tolerably well?

by John Joyce

on Jun 22, 2012 at 4:16:02 am

I know there are a couple of forums on hardware, but they don't attract a lot of activity. So please bear with me.

I think I am going to have become a refugee from the Mac.

We are a boutique management consultancy, and the point of graphics and video is to make us look good and professional, especially by comparison with the home-spun efforts of competitors.

FCP and Motion and Illustrator have served us very well indeed. Unfortunately I know of no Windows counterpart of Motion. A real pity. So I can see we are going to have to embrace AE, but not at the advanced level of most people here.

I have been given a very good price on couple of HP Z420s with an E3 4-core processor, 8GB Ram and a Quattro 2000. I expect I would have at least to double the RAM. The volume of work is small compared to what a professional video shop would do of course.

Do you think these would run AE tolerably well? You see what I mean? I don't want to go through a pack of cigarettes every time the things try to render.

Re: Box to run AE just tolerably well?

by John Cuevas

on Jun 22, 2012 at 12:03:29 pm

16GB, minus 4 for the operating system(probably too much, but lets be conservative) leaves you 12GB for AE spread across 4-cores. You might should also look into some Solid State Drives also to speed up performance if you are going to run CS6.

It's hard to determine the what "volume of work is small" exactly means. If it's creating backgrounds, animated lower thirds and projects of that nature, that machine should take care of your needs. It's not going to win any races, but at best you will only get to have one cigarette while it's rendering.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

"I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work."
---THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

Re: Box to run AE just tolerably well?

by Jon Bagge

on Jun 22, 2012 at 8:23:01 pm

If you're not going for a dual socket machine, I'm not sure there is that much advantage in having a Xeon over an i7. You may be better off with a 6-core i7 (might even be cheaper?) 24GB RAM would be nice to aim for on a 6-core machine.

You can probably also save money by going for a supported Geforce card rather than Quadro.

--------------
http://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge - Editor - London, UK
Avid - FCP - After Effects

Re: Box to run AE just tolerably well?

by John Joyce

on Jun 23, 2012 at 12:00:56 am

They are very useful replies. Thanks guys.