After Effects & Premiere on the 13" MBP's HD3000?

[MOKHAN]

Well, I have the early 2011 base 13" MBP. I have installed a 128GB Crucial M4 and am still running the stock 4GB of RAM. I use my MBP with a 1920x1020 display.

I've been doing a lot of video work on Premiere & AE CS5.5 (as a hobby), and, well, it hasn't exactly been efficient. Now, I've been reading around a little, and people have been saying an improved graphics card would yield little improvement as AE is more CPU dependant.

My question is, which of the following options would be more cost and performance efficient:
- Building a video editing machine sub $500 (minus OS, display, HD, and case)
- Purchasing 16GB of RAM for my MBP (~$100)

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

Well, I have the early 2011 base 13" MBP. I have installed a 128GB Crucial M4 and am still running the stock 4GB of RAM. I use my MBP with a 1920x1020 display.

I've been doing a lot of video work on Premiere & AE CS5.5 (as a hobby), and, well, it hasn't exactly been efficient. Now, I've been reading around a little, and people have been saying an improved graphics card would yield little improvement as AE is more CPU dependant.

My question is, which of the following options would be more cost and performance efficient:
- Building a video editing machine sub $500 (minus OS, display, HD, and case)
- Purchasing 16GB of RAM for my MBP (~$100)

Actually, After Effects and Premiere do take some advantage of the GPU to speed things up considerably, but currently only with NVidia cards until CS6, and then only the latest AMD cards will be added.

Going above 4GB of RAM will definitely improve performance, in that it will allow you to multitask a little easier while working within the programs, and will also potentially give the programs more RAM to work with while you're editing. (You can check Activity Monitor to see how much RAM you are consuming while using those programs and see if you're paging out at that time. If you are, more RAM will speed things up).

8GB of RAM+ will also increase the amount of RAM allocated to the HD3000 from 384MB to 512MB, which might also help, but probably not at all in Premiere or After Effects since it isn't using the GPU for the Mercury Playback Engine.

Hope this helps.

 

[MOKHAN]

Actually, After Effects and Premiere do take some advantage of the GPU to speed things up considerably, but currently only with NVidia cards until CS6, and then only the latest AMD cards will be added.

Going above 4GB of RAM will definitely improve performance, in that it will allow you to multitask a little easier while working within the programs, and will also potentially give the programs more RAM to work with while you're editing. (You can check Activity Monitor to see how much RAM you are consuming while using those programs and see if you're paging out at that time. If you are, more RAM will speed things up).

8GB of RAM+ will also increase the amount of RAM allocated to the HD3000 from 384MB to 512MB, which might also help, but probably not at all in Premiere or After Effects since it isn't using the GPU for the Mercury Playback Engine.

Hope this helps.

Thank you Mr. Wonderful. I will stick with my MBP.

I did a quick test. I edited some footage using Premiere and AE, and snapped this while exporting (rendering) the footage. Based on the information, would you recommend I go the 16GB route, or will 8GB suffice?
(2.5GB is currently allocated for Adobe application use under preferences in Premiere Pro and AE)