After Effects and 1800€

Question

What do I need the PC for?I’m using After Effects, Premiere Pro and Photoshop very intensively. I started alone 2 years ago while studying and by now I put like 10-20 effects on one layer affecting color/distortion/shapes/compositing and my computer can’t afford enough performance to show anything fluently.  My current system is this one:CPU: Intel Core i5-4570 4x 3.20 GHzRAM: 16 GBGPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 760  2GBHard Drive: 3TB Seagate 7200rpmI want to buy a new one with a budget of 1800€. My total budget is 2000€ but I would like to buy some Plug-ins from RedGiant or VideoCopilot with the rest of 200€ and take some first steps into them although my mainly used programs will be AE, PP and PS. It‘s the following computer system:CPU: Intel Core i7 7800x 6x3,5GHz (Boost 4GHz)Mainboard: ASUS Prime X299-ARAM: 2x16GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-2133GPU: MSI Geforce GTX1060 GamingX 6GHDD: 2 TB (Project files)SSD 1: 256 GB (OS/Programs)SSD 2: 256 GB (Cache)+ some other stuff____1500-1700€Do you have any suggestions? GPU: I do not know exactly if AE uses much of the GPU because I’ve read on the Adobe site that only 15 effects are supported with GPU rendering. Maybe I could swap it with a worse one and concentrate on more RAM? SSD: How to split for most efficient workflow? Many people say you need 3 SSDs:1. OS and Adobe programs2. Files3. CacheA cheaper solution may be to install OS+Programs  in SSD1, Cache on SSD 2 and Files+Stuff on a HDD?CPU: And another question concerning AMD and Intel: Is Intel (like i8xxx) the better choice for video editing? Many professional cutters and Vfx artists recommend Intel instead of AMD because it seems like they have better performance.Best regards!

Mylenium · Answer

There's no better performance in a coreXi vs. e.g. a current Ryzen processor. The real issue is simply potential compatibility problems, which however always come down to "bad" drivers. That works both ways, though - you could just as well buy a crooked intel system. So in effect you won't know until you actually have the machine. More RAM doesn't fix much. Yes, AE's dumb preview system may gobble it up, but it won't improve performance otherwise. That is unless you work with huge 4k/ 8k footage or VR panoramas all the time. Other than that any slowdowns, and ultimately also AE's limited GPU usage come down to how the render pipeline works. It's always bound to budge at some point and revert back to CPU rendering. Still, why should that be any reason to not get a decent card? Premiere Pro at least does use it reasonably well within the limitations of editing vs. compositing. And that's the whole point: You will never see perfectly fluid performance in AE due to how it works and what it is supposed to do. It's a completely different thing than Premiere. The rest can be seen either way. I still maintain that using SSDs for caches etc. doesn't necessarily make sense for certain workflows unless you really spend big and get robust, optimized highspeed SSDs. For AE it doesn't make much sense, anyway. Based on your description, rendering teh effects will always take longer than the file I/O, so what would be the point? Those previews won't render faster even with a spanky M2 PCI SSD...

Mylenium

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