Used or Newer 8 Core for After Effects

[CJVideo]

Greeting all,
I have been editing FCP for several years and I'm about to make the leap to After Effects. My current machine is a G5. So I know both will be a big leap. It is my understanding that After Effects can take advantage of all 8 cores as long as you got the RAM. Here are my 2 choices. The used one has a faster speed but I'm sure there are added benefits to the newer one. FYI Both machines will at lest have 24 gigs of RAM. I'm more concerned with the processors then the extras (HDs & SDs). Any advice would be helpful.

USED
"Clovertown" Mac Pro Eight Core/3.0 GHz

8 GB of RAM
750 GB internal drive plus 750 GB add'l internal drive
Internal 2 Ea. SuperDrives
No keyboard
Airport Extreme and Bluetooth installed
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT Video
$2800

NEW
Eight-Core Apple Mac Pro

Two 2.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Westmere" processors
6GB (six 1GB) memory
1TB 7200-RPM Serial ATA hard drive
18x double-layer SuperDrive
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB Video
Apple Magic Mouse
Apple Wired Keyboard
$3199.00

 

[alust2013]

The new one will actually be faster. It has hyperthreading, as well as turbo boost, and it scores 3000 points higher on geekbench, so it's actually a faster computer.

 

[CJVideo]

Thanks for the info. It's interesting on that site that the 2009 models are faster. or am I not reading something right?

 

[CaptainChunk]

Thanks for the info. It's interesting on that site that the 2009 models are faster. or am I not reading something right?

That depends on which 2009 models you're looking at. The 2010 8-core (2.4GHz) will outperform 2009's base 8-core (2.28GHz) by a small margin. Same architecture with a die shrink, slightly faster clock speed.

Also, there were two faster versions of the 8-core available in 2009 as well: 2.66GHz and 2.93GHz. These are both faster machines than the current 8-core model, again because of the clock speed differences. These upgraded 8-core configurations were replaced by two 12-core options for 2010.

 

[mBox]

OS and CS version

Then add which OS X and CS version your running.
Ive found major diff running AE CS 5.5 (my bread and butter at work) between 2009 and 2010 configs.
Too many variations to list.

 

[CJVideo]

Thanks for all your replies. I ended up finding a 2009 8 core 2.93. So hopefully it will do me good. I'm going to add 24 gigs RAM. My one question is it has 10 gigs now (2 gig x5) I was going to add 4 gig x 6 so that would still have 2 slots open can I mismatch the RAM. So I would have 4 gig x 6 and 2 x 2?

Also I am using Snow Lep. and CS5.