My daughter is using a PC I built about 3 years ago to run after effect cs3.
PC specs.
Abit AV8 Motherboard
AMD 64 +4400 CPU
3 gigs OCZ DDR ram
256 MB video card
650w Power Supply
3 - 500gb hard drives

My daughter tells me that this box will run Photoshop cs3, InDesign cs3 or
dreamweaver cs3 flawlessly, but bogs down using after effects cs3 (dosn't
crash, just slows).
So, I'm thinking about building her a new machine... Looking for any success
stories. In particular MB, CPU, Ram combinations. And in a machine designed
to run After Effects is a powerful 3-D video card (gamer quality) important?

Please, both happy and sad stories will be appreciated.

Jeff

Regarding the GPU, you don't need a high-powered 3D-capable card for AE use. The OpenGL features that AE uses should be easily satisfied by much less than a top of the line gaming or 3D workstation card.

Here's a list of currently tested cards for AE CS4:

<http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/opengl.html>

I've never built, or purchased anything with AMD procs, but the Intel ones I've had have always worked out well. What OS were you thinking of running? If you're sticking with windows XP 32, max it out with 4 GB of RAM. If you're getting a 64 bit OS, get at least 2 GB of RAM/core (or processor). In reality, get as much as you can afford. AE will eat up all the RAM that can be thrown at it, which is somewhat OS dependent, and also dependent on the nature of the app itself. Currently, AE is only a 32-bit app, but you can use multiprocessing features built-in to the software to launch background instances (which will eat up some more RAM), or, you can invest in GridIron's Nucleo Pro, which will also launch background processes, with a few more bells and whistles (some very useful ones at that). A 650w PS should be more than enough. Get some fast HD's too. Ideally, you'd have one for the OS and your applications, another for your source footage, and a third for "render" drive.

Thank you for your prompt reply..
I will look at the link to approved video cards... I'm sure that will help
me...

My company has an XP pro 32 vlp I have a few unused licenses from my last
upgrade so I'll go with that for an OS.

The AMD processor?... at the time it was faster (and better priced) than
available Intel CPU's... Now the table has turned and I'll most likely go
with Intel.
I'm looking at a core2 duo E8600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115054 , would a
quad core be better?
for a MB I'm undecided, is it worthwhile to get a MB that supports DDR3 ram.
It seems that at this time most are enthusiast boards with unnecessary OC
features.

Jeff



<Steve_Patterson@adobeforums.com> wrote in message
news:59b69dcc.0@webcrossing.la2eafNXanI...
> Regarding the GPU, you don't need a high-powered 3D-capable card for AE
> use. The OpenGL features that AE uses should be easily satisfied by much
> less than a top of the line gaming or 3D workstation card.
>
> Here's a list of currently tested cards for AE CS4:
>
> <http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/opengl.html>
>
> I've never built, or purchased anything with AMD procs, but the Intel ones
> I've had have always worked out well. What OS were you thinking of
> running? If you're sticking with windows XP 32, max it out with 4 GB of
> RAM. If you're getting a 64 bit OS, get at least 2 GB of RAM/core (or
> processor). In reality, get as much as you can afford. AE will eat up all
> the RAM that can be thrown at it, which is somewhat OS dependent, and also
> dependent on the nature of the app itself. Currently, AE is only a 32-bit
> app, but you can use multiprocessing features built-in to the software to
> launch background instances (which will eat up some more RAM), or, you can
> invest in GridIron's Nucleo Pro, which will also launch background
> processes, with a few more bells and whistles (some very useful ones at
> that). A 650w PS should be more than enough. Get some fast HD's too.
> Ideally, you'd have one for the OS and your applications, another for your
> source footage, and a third for "render" drive.

I'm looking at a core2 duo E8600, would a quad core be better?




If you stick with XP32bit/ Vista 32bit, quadcores are overkill. you simply will never have enough RAM to use them fully with AE. Therefore a dualcore is more than enough. I'd only buy a quad, if you plan on getting Vista 64. Likewise, the added speed of DDR3 RAM would only pay off on such a monstrous system, so you can most likely go without it.

Mylenium

If you're doing anything outside of After Effects, I'd probably recommend quad core processor. After Effects isn't well threaded, so when doing multiprocessing, it requires multiple copies of After Effects to be run concurrently; each using large amounts of ram.

However, other programs make great use of multiple cores without the huge RAM allocation. Mental Ray causes all 4 cores to crank up to near 100% utilization when rendering. Softimage XSI's ICE particle system is very multithreaded, allowing near realtime control over LOTS particles.

I'll never buy anything less than quad core now (still waiting for quadcore laptops to debut, although Dell has one ).