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Early 2008 Mac Pro After Effects Benchmarking

E

echoout

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 15, 2007
600
16
Austin, Texas
Hey all,
I'll be the first to say I'm a 10 year Mac user but not a cultist. I don't care what the machines look like inside or out, just how they perform. I was lucky enough to work on DVD interface elements for the Young Indiana Jones DVDs for LucasFilm on behalf of Terra Incognita Interactive last summer. Anyway, I did a sequence of 2.5D page-turns of Indy's journal using After Effects CS3. Lots of 3D, lots of precompositions, lots of Smart Objects, etc. (ie majorly processor intensive). So here's how thing have improved over 6 months:

July 2007: Apple G5 Quad 2.5Ghz, 4.5GB RAM, After Effects CS3, 150GB Raptor eSATA (Sonnet Fusion 4) via Sonnet Tempo E4P card
Render time: 10Hrs 11mins (fans blowing up, making room hot)

January 2008: Apple Mac Pro Octo 3.0Ghz, 16Ghz OWC RAM, After Effects CS3 (default settings), 150GB Raptor (internal)
Render time: 2Hrs 0min (quieter than my MBP, cool as a cucumber)

The render took 18% as long. You can have your case redesigns and BluRay drives. This is what matters to me. I hope everyone benefits as much as I have! :) Good luck everyone!
 
The Glory

echoout said:
Hey all,
I'll be the first to say I'm a 10 year Mac user but not a cultist. I don't care what the machines look like inside or out, just how they perform. I was lucky enough to work on DVD interface elements for the Young Indiana Jones DVDs for LucasFilm on behalf of Terra Incognita Interactive last summer. Anyway, I did a sequence of 2.5D page-turns of Indy's journal using After Effects CS3. Lots of 3D, lots of precompositions, lots of Smart Objects, etc. (ie majorly processor intensive). So here's how thing have improved over 6 months:

July 2007: Apple G5 Quad 2.5Ghz, 4.5GB RAM, After Effects CS3, 150GB Raptor eSATA (Sonnet Fusion 4) via Sonnet Tempo E4P card
Render time: 10Hrs 11mins (fans blowing up, making room hot)

January 2008: Apple Mac Pro Octo 3.0Ghz, 16Ghz OWC RAM, After Effects CS3 (default settings), 150GB Raptor (internal)
Render time: 2Hrs 0min (quieter than my MBP, cool as a cucumber)

The render took 18% as long. You can have your case redesigns and BluRay drives. This is what matters to me. I hope everyone benefits as much as I have! :) Good luck everyone!
Click to expand...

I'm pretty much buying my MAC PRO for AE, I do alot of complicated 3D comps, I ordered an almost identical setup, I am psyyyyyched.
 
echoout said:
July 2007: Apple G5 Quad 2.5Ghz, 4.5GB RAM, After Effects CS3, 150GB Raptor eSATA (Sonnet Fusion 4) via Sonnet Tempo E4P card
Render time: 10Hrs 11mins (fans blowing up, making room hot)

January 2008: Apple Mac Pro Octo 3.0Ghz, 16Ghz OWC RAM, After Effects CS3 (default settings), 150GB Raptor (internal)
Render time: 2Hrs 0min (quieter than my MBP, cool as a cucumber)
Click to expand...

Did you transplant the Raptor from the old system to the new one? Are you running the Raptor as the boot drive? I think there has been a lot of discussion regarding Raid vs the plain vanilla Raptor approach. I've always been a fan of the Raptor but have always feared the decibel factor. Still don't know which one I want to go with; RAID Samsung F1s or a single Raptor.

Insights would be much appreciated.
 
echoout,
I had a question regarding the Quicktime error with AE on Leopard. Is that an issue for you? http://www.macworld.com/article/131809/2008/01/quicktime.html?t=230
Obviously a fix will be coming soon I would assume. Are there any other issues that you've seen that I should be concerned about? I've been trying to render projects on my MacBookPro with 2GB of RAM. It's working but I can only imagine the difference it will make with my 3.2 Octo with 16GB of RAM!
 
Yes, no matter how much OSX tries to make you, just turn off Automatic Updates and don't let it update you to 7.4. Most of the 7.4 functionality is related to DRM/iTunes crap. It's not necessary for video apps.

MrPDaddyHimself said:
echoout,
I had a question regarding the Quicktime error with AE on Leopard. Is that an issue for you? http://www.macworld.com/article/131809/2008/01/quicktime.html?t=230
Obviously a fix will be coming soon I would assume. Are there any other issues that you've seen that I should be concerned about? I've been trying to render projects on my MacBookPro with 2GB of RAM. It's working but I can only imagine the difference it will make with my 3.2 Octo with 16GB of RAM!
Click to expand...
 
Yes, I'm running the 320Gb stock drive as my system drive, a 75Gb Raptor as my scratch drive, a 150Gb Raptor as my "current projects" drive, and a 250Gb drive as my TimeMachine drive.

I then have my eSATA enclosure crammed with mostly 500Gb Seagates and several other random ones, all on swappable trays. Something like 3124Gb total.

I have no need for RAIDs in what I do.

supercooled said:
Did you transplant the Raptor from the old system to the new one? Are you running the Raptor as the boot drive? I think there has been a lot of discussion regarding Raid vs the plain vanilla Raptor approach. I've always been a fan of the Raptor but have always feared the decibel factor. Still don't know which one I want to go with; RAID Samsung F1s or a single Raptor.

Insights would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...
 
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