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Real world Mac Pro result - After Effects

N

needles27

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 2, 2007
21
0
I just upgraded from a Dual 2.7 G5 with 6GB RAM to the Mac Pro 8-core 2.93GHz with 16GB RAM, ATI Radeon 4870.

I had a render that took 1 Hour, 1 Min on the G5.
The same render on the Mac Pro took 3 Min, 58 seconds.

All the benchmarking and arguing over specs between machines are irrelevant to me when I see a result like this. Granted, this is a comparison between two very different machines, but it is pretty stunning to me.
 
needles27 said:
I just upgraded from a Dual 2.7 G5 with 6GB RAM to the Mac Pro 8-core 2.93GHz with 16GB RAM, ATI Radeon 4870.

I had a render that took 1 Hour, 1 Min on the G5.
The same render on the Mac Pro took 3 Min, 58 seconds.

All the benchmarking and arguing over specs between machines are irrelevant to me when I see a result like this. Granted, this is a comparison between two very different machines, but it is pretty stunning to me.
Click to expand...

Good GOD thats a HUGE difference. I would be jumping up on a desk and doing a little dance if I were you. Congrats!

Wow 1 hours compared to 3 minutes... in 1 hour I can go downtown and have a great lunch and come back and the render will still not be done!! 3 Minutes.. I guess I have to hurry it up in the can.
 
wow!

wow! just wow! ive been waiting for someone to do real tests on AE, and thats exactly what i wanted to hear! =)

im actually looking for the 2.26 oct so wonder how much longer the render will take...hmm...
 
yongy said:
wow! just wow! ive been waiting for someone to do real tests on AE, and thats exactly what i wanted to hear! =)

im actually looking for the 2.26 oct so wonder how much longer the render will take...hmm...
Click to expand...

I did the little calculations. Barefeats reports that the 2.66GHz model is 10% slower than the 2.93GHz model so that adds about 23.8 more seconds 3 minutes and 58 seconds = 238 seconds multiply by .10= 23.8 just round it off to 24 seconds in difference in the rendering time compared to the OP's 2.93GHZ.

If you take that into consideration and add another 10% slower difference to the 2.66GHz for the 2.26GHz Nehalem model, it would take roughly 5 minutes and 17 seconds as to the OP's 3 minutes and 58 seconds rendering time with his 2.93GHz.
 
I was absolutely blown away and jumping around in happiness. I think even the lower level Mac Pros will show incredible gains, depending on what you are upgrading from of course. The key is the ability for AE to utilize all cores during renders.. In fact, when I am in the preferences panel, AE says it is utilizing 15 of the 16 cores. So, it is seeing the virtual cores.

Also, it is critical that you have enough RAM for each of the cores. I bought 16GB from OWC and it didn't set me back too much.

Also, in full disclosure, I was running AE 6.5 on the G5 with Tiger vs. CS4 on the Mac Pro.

Finally, I am breathlessly waiting for Nucleo Pro 2 to be upgraded this summer to run on CS4 so you can do background rendering - then the workflow will be perfect!
 
needles27 said:
I was absolutely blown away and jumping around in happiness. I think even the lower level Mac Pros will show incredible gains, depending on what you are upgrading from of course. The key is the ability for AE to utilize all cores during renders.. In fact, when I am in the preferences panel, AE says it is utilizing 15 of the 16 cores. So, it is seeing the virtual cores.

Also, it is critical that you have enough RAM for each of the cores. I bought 16GB from OWC and it didn't set me back too much.

Also, in full disclosure, I was running AE 6.5 on the G5 with Tiger vs. CS4 on the Mac Pro.

Finally, I am breathlessly waiting for Nucleo Pro 2 to be upgraded this summer to run on CS4 so you can do background rendering - then the workflow will be perfect!
Click to expand...

Just imagine when snow leopard will be released. :D
 
jjahshik32 said:
I did the little calculations. Barefeats reports that the 2.66GHz model is 10% slower than the 2.93GHz model so that adds about 23.8 more seconds 3 minutes and 58 seconds = 238 seconds multiply by .10= 23.8 just round it off to 24 seconds in difference in the rendering time compared to the OP's 2.93GHZ.

If you take that into consideration and add another 10% slower difference to the 2.66GHz for the 2.26GHz Nehalem model, it would take roughly 5 minutes and 17 seconds as to the OP's 3 minutes and 58 seconds rendering time with his 2.93GHz.
Click to expand...

er....haha! i guess that answers my questions! but seriously, thats still fast! am happy to see that AE cs4 utilises so many cores! i cant wait for FCP to use multi-cores aswel!
 
jjahshik32 said:
I did the little calculations. Barefeats reports that the 2.66GHz model is 10% slower than the 2.93GHz model so that adds about 23.8 more seconds 3 minutes and 58 seconds = 238 seconds multiply by .10= 23.8 just round it off to 24 seconds in difference in the rendering time compared to the OP's 2.93GHZ.

If you take that into consideration and add another 10% slower difference to the 2.66GHz for the 2.26GHz Nehalem model, it would take roughly 5 minutes and 17 seconds as to the OP's 3 minutes and 58 seconds rendering time with his 2.93GHz.
Click to expand...

Now that minute I can wait...:)
 
I think a lot of the performance improvement is probably down to the way After Effects now uses multiple cores rather than outright horsepower.

From version 6.5 you could get Gridiron Nucleo to enable all your cores to be used effectively. Adobe then built this functionality into the CS3 and CS4 versions. NB - each core must have access to 2GB of RAM, so if you want to use it fully, you will need a 16GB machine.

It then basically renders each frame independently on separate cores. There are some limitations on how you can use it, but if your work meets the criteria, it smokes! :cool:
 
Arrrrrg!

Well, for sure there is not much software optimized for Power any more. When I bought my G5 a long time ago the FP performance was par with the xeons at the time but it is definitely sucking wind now. Depending on the compilers used, results could sway quite a bit either way for both chips. One of my older workstations is a Xeon 3.2 single core but is would get completely smoked by new i7 xeon.

Perhaps the time is right to upgrade to a 16-core quad socket Hackintosh.
;)
 
I was off by a little bit with my first results, since I had accidentally rendered with a different file output. Here are the results that compare apples to apples - still stunning results. 1 hour vs. 6 minutes.
 

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Can't resist one more example

Same After Effects comp:
Dual 2.7 G5 - 2Hrs 26 Min
Mac Pro 8-core 2.93GHz - 9 Min 27 Seconds

This is an awesome machine, and like other posters said, it will get even better when SL is released and the new FCP with (hopefully) multi-processor support.
 

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Congrats on the new machine! Curious what you think of the noise level with the Mac and ATI fans going... Thanks much...
 
You have to consider how much of that was attributed to a better GPU, or if AF settings on both machines were the same. If you don't have OpenGL settings turned on or a crappy GPU the renders will take longer. On my current MacPro renders take much longer when OpenGL is off. Just playing devil's advocate, the news is awesome. :D
 
If you like I could run the same render on my Mac Pro to see how much faster the new 2009 models are. (Mine's the 2008 3.2GHz with 16GB Ram and the Nvidia 8800GT).

If it's not too big, upload it somewhere and I'll give it a go.
 
Virtuoso said:
If you like I could run the same render on my Mac Pro to see how much faster the new 2009 models are. (Mine's the 2008 3.2GHz with 16GB Ram and the Nvidia 8800GT).

If it's not too big, upload it somewhere and I'll give it a go.
Click to expand...

It's good idea, but there are some pretty big QT files involved. Not sure how to share the assets.
 
keep me posted...

Youngy...

I would love to hear some impressions from you or anyone else who got the 2.26 (8-core)machine, that is the one I am eying, and I am getting it for the most part to run After Effects, I am curious if the speculation on render times for that model are correct, I have been mulling the idea of throwing down the extra money for the 2.66, but seriously if it is only 10% faster I cannot justify the price fro what would amount to very little difference in render times. PLease keep us posted with you impressions of the new machine

Thanks
 
needles27 said:
It's good idea, but there are some pretty big QT files involved. Not sure how to share the assets.
Click to expand...
Select the comp then choose File/Collect Files...
Choose 'Collect Source Files For Selected Comps' and tick 'Reduce Project'. Save it to a folder and then compress that folder.
If it's under 10GB we could give it a go. I can give you an ftp to upload it to.
 
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