After Effects CS6 and the 15" MacBook Pro Retina (Late 2013)

[ProfVagrant]

Hello All

I am considering buying a MBP to use for school. I am also returning to Adobe Photoshop and InDesign after a few years out of it.

I am also keep to learn After Effects CS6. I have never used the program. Is the MBP configuration well-suited for AE? I know it fits the requirements, but I am worried about rendering time and overheating.

2.3GHz/2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
16GB 1600MHz memory
512GB PCIe-based flash storage
Intel Iris Pro Graphics
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
with 2GB GDDR5 memory

My concern is that I will pay a premium for mediocre performance. Otherwise, I may go for the top-of-the-line 13" and give up After Effects (as it's only a dual core, and no discrete graphics).

Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

 

[Bensalama21]

Hello All

I am considering buying a MBP to use for school. I am also returning to Adobe Photoshop and InDesign after a few years out of it.

I am also keep to learn After Effects CS6. I have never used the program. Is the MBP configuration well-suited for AE? I know it fits the requirements, but I am worried about rendering time and overheating.

2.3GHz/2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
16GB 1600MHz memory
512GB PCIe-based flash storage
Intel Iris Pro Graphics
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
with 2GB GDDR5 memory

My concern is that I will pay a premium for mediocre performance. Otherwise, I may go for the top-of-the-line 13" and give up After Effects (as it's only a dual core, and no discrete graphics).

Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

I use After Effects CS6, lightroom 5, Final Cut Pro X, and Photoshop CS6 and all work fine (fast and reliable) on my Maxed out 13" ! I got the terabyte drive and I am loving every second of the "950mb" read/write speeds!

- I was debating a maxed out 13" or maxed out 15" and I wanted the better portability so I chose the 13" and I am not regretting it even while running these programs.

 

[ProfVagrant]

Thanks for your reply -- Again, I am new to After Effects, so my knowledge is based solely on forums...

It seems like the basic advice people have on AE is "the more you have, the happier you will be."

The 13" is really attractive (price+mobility). I'm not a gamer, but I'm still worried about the lack of a discrete graphics card and the limitations of only having a dual core. I worry that I have been led to think After Effects requires more muscle than really necessary.

Do you think that the 13" will be adequately "future proof?" I'm hoping to get a solid 4-5 years out of my next laptop (my current laptop is awful. I've been waiting for Haswell).

 

[MacSumo]

If you do render videos, please record your temperatures. I want to see how badly the CPU heats up after prolonged rendering (even...say 5 minutes of use).

 

[chetzar]

Has anyone done an After Effects render comparison between the Iris Pro 5200 and nVidia 750? I'm curious to see if there is a performance difference between the two. I'm looking at picking up a rMBP for next semester (my major is Video Production), so I can work on video projects at work and take my projects into school or the lab (I'm currently working on my Win7 desktop: EVGA 780i, Q6600 O.C.'d at 3.0, 8gb DDR2 and a XFX GTS250).

Basically I don't want to drop $2500 and have a machine that can't handle compositing in AE.

 

[librarian]

the 750m gonna be at least a 35% faster when using GPU powered functions, raytrace renderer is not even supported by iris pro.
If you plan to use Elements 3D, trapcode and other GPU accelerated stuff avoid Iris PRO. Other than that, performance should be good thanks to the SSD - make sure you keep the footage you work with on it. 16 GB mandatory.

 

[chetzar]

So I'm doing Ram Preview comparisons between my Desktop: Q6600 (OC'd to 3.0), 8gb DDR2, XFX GTS250 and my rMBP: i7 (2.3), 16bg DDR3, 750m.
The MacBook Pro should be rendering faster, but my desktop is rendering circles around it, its very disappointing. Any idea's as to why this could be?

Render Multiple Frames is enabled on both workstations, Desktop has 3 cores for AE and 6gb of Ram, MacBook gets 6 cores (according to AE) and 13gb of Ram

Desktop is Win 7 MacBook is Mavericks