Which Mac Pro configuration is best for After Effects?

[sjtidy]

I'm looking to get a new Mac Pro for work, primarily for graphic design and motion graphics. I've got the low end Pro at the moment, but it's not great when it comes to rendering video in After Effects.

My question is which upgrade would be more beneficial - more cores, or better graphics cards? I've tried rendering with and without multiprocessing, and it yields roughly the same results. My understanding is that more cores would speed up the multiprocessing, but is that worth the huge price difference? Does the slower clock speed also have any impact on AE?

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I'm looking to get a new Mac Pro for work, primarily for graphic design and motion graphics. I've got the low end Pro at the moment, but it's not great when it comes to rendering video in After Effects.

My question is which upgrade would be more beneficial - more cores, or better graphics cards? I've tried rendering with and without multiprocessing, and it yields roughly the same results. My understanding is that more cores would speed up the multiprocessing, but is that worth the huge price difference? Does the slower clock speed also have any impact on AE?

Whether you buy a Mac or PC, do yourself a favour and use Windows for video work. You will get faster response and rendering times.

 

[ActionableMango]

Almost all AE functions are CPU bound, so the GPU doesn't matter except for a few exceptions listed here. If you heavily use one or more of those exceptions, then yes, a faster GPU will help too.

Most AE CPU functions are single core, so the fastest 6-core at 3.5Ghz will be better than the fastest 12-core at only 2.7Ghz. Yes the nMP has a 4-core 3.7GHz available which is even faster than the hexacore, but I think the hexacore is a better balance, especially given Intel's turboboost feature. After all, some video functions are multicore and most video conversion tasks can make really good use of every core you can throw at it.

Make sure your content files and your disk cache are both on separate, fast SSDs. Check your memory utilization to ensure you have enough memory.

My information might be out of date as I have not done video work for a few years now, but these general rules have applied for a very long time, so it's probably still good advice today.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

You can find out more about GPU and CPU accelerated functios here

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/rendering-opengl.html

As OS X is much slower at OpenGL view ports and video acceleration than Windows it's not an ideal choice. Even CUDA and OpenCL based rendering score up to 25% higher in Windows.

 

[rawweb]

The HP Z series is getting more and more enticing

 

[artoff]

Get a mac with higher SINGLE CORE, because in after cc 2015 the multiprocessing is DISABLED. right now the Imac with 6700k is the best choice.

 

[jakdaniel1975]

More cores and more RAM you have, the better for After Effects !!

https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/mac-pro.1/

http://barefeats.com/tube19.html

http://barefeats.com/imac5k4.html