Inspiring

Question

iMac Pro slow performance

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
February 23, 2018
22 replies
43189 views

I just bought a new 2017 iMac Pro, 3ghz 10core processor, 64 gb ram, 16 gb GPU. I set the new iMac Pro up next to my 2014 5K iMac 4 ghz quad processor, 32 gb RAM, 2 gb GPU and they literally had the same exactly playback with RAM preview. The iMac pro could not even play full resolution playback. Both set to 1/3 and they both stuttered in the same places. So I'm just wondering did I waste $7,000. My projects are mostly animations with characters from high res photoshop files. Please help! Thank you!!!

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jordaneisman

Participating Frequently

Yes same things here..

got my iMac pro January 23- in early February after moving from 2017 to 12.0.1 under the advisement of Adobe DVA's own Reg Santo Tomas-was told the imac pro was tested and ready

Adobe didnt get a iMac Pros for testing until February.

every version of 2018 makes my base model iMac pro run worse. Its a true software nightmare and disaster.

While this all went one- I have mastered FCP and Resolve and now this fundamentally flawed program Adobe Premiere (not pro for me) is now on the back burner and all projects that come in Premiere get XMLd and brought into FCP or resolve

If you are using a new mac and not using FCP X to edit, you are wasting your money on the new mac.

After 15 years using Premiere I have dropped it from my main tool set >>>

donbarrum

Inspiring

It should be announced with BIG letters on Adobe.com that Adobe software doesn't follow common modern hardware optimization. Too many people have wasted thousands of dollars thinking they are getting the best machine for the job, without knowing that their main software package will suffer more than it gains from the investment. I don't know how many advertisement companies I have visited over the years where the graphic designers and motion graphic artists works on Mac Pros, when they would have been better off using a Low core gaming PC or a regular iMac with high clockspeed.

Everyone that are buying a new machine for Adobe usage, and specifically After Effects (which is the worst of the suite) should read up on www.pugetsystems.com - those benchmarks don't lie.

And THE main culprit from my findings, is the software UI. Because lower GHz CPU and higher resolution screen just makes the After Effects UI feel completely sluggish - which the iMac Pro suffers from severely.

When I overclock my pc from 3.8 to 4.0 ghz I actually notice the difference in After Effects when scrubbing an empty timeline. and turning off High res UI also speeds up the program.

And also preview suffers the the same, so a better and more expensive machine makes you less effective in the world of Adobe. ...

amriphoto

Inspiring

Does anybody have experience with an online petition? Maybe that´s something we should start. Even regular iMacs have quad or at least dual cores, so the number of people unhappy with Adobes CC software should be pretty big.

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estelle_barbaras

Participant

Ok so what's the solution here ? Not buy an iMac Pro in the first place ? if you want to be on Mac, there is not really any other choice.

donbarrum

Inspiring

depends what you are going to use the machine for apart from After Effects. If after Effects is the sole purpose then you will have a better experience getting the regular iMac with the highest clockspeeds. If you are going to use the machine for many things that require quite a bit of machine power the 10 core iMac pro is ok. It has high clockspeeds while also getting a powerful multi core machine. Anything above that, you really need to know what you will use it for, because the more cores in many cases means a slower machine.

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cyrill8897902

Known Participant

Hey everyone!

If you haven't already, go upvote the submission about Full program multi-threaded support – Adobe video & audio apps on the uservoice feedback page.

The CC April release shows first improvements to multi-core processing (at least on paper and only for those grain effects). Maybe Adobe finally realized its importance. Go and vote.

J

jsyboy75

Inspiring

Have you tested this? Which release?

I’m in the middle of a big project and prefer not to mess with my system in case of issues but faster exporting would be helpful!

M

markusw90010395

Participating Frequently

I have run this test After Effects Performance Test File on Vimeo on my

iMac Pro, 8-Core 3.2 GHz, 64 GB RAM, Radeon Pro Vega 64

Conclusion: the previous version of AE renders quite a bit faster than the new one from April - at least as far as this test ist concerned.

After Effects (CC 2018) 15.0.1 - 4 min 51 secs
After Effects (CC 2018 - April) 15.1 - 6 min 6 secs (!!!)

I was also monitoring how AE is using the cores of my processor while going through this test render. Even though all cores are being used, overall CPU usage is only 62%. Exporting with Media Encoder on the other hand uses all cores almost at full capacity.

V

visionf47452569

Participating Frequently

Anyone got any experience with the 8 core iMac Pro for AE animation? Does it fair better than the 10?

Also, is the Vega 56 adequate for AE animation? Seeing as AE doesn't use the GPU much, is the Vega 64 not going to make much difference?

donbarrum

Inspiring

I have done significant testing with AE and performance. Its pretty much all about your GPU and CPU clockspeed, since AE hardly use any CPU cores at all (sadly). So single core clockspeed is all that matters, for responsiveness. If I overclock my PC from 3.8 to 4 ghz I actually notice a big difference in AE previewing and scrubbing and UI latency. And if you can get a GhZ up to 5 it would have meant a GREAT deal to AE responsiveness.
When I work in AE on my 16 core CPU beast, the machine pretty much idles when I work or render. optimally AE manages to use around 10% of my CPU performance, but usually it idles around 5%. But the clockspeed matters for UI responsiveness and live preview which improves the experience when working. Sadly this is just how badly optimized AE is, so an iMac Pro in general is a bad match with AE.

Its as simple as this: the more cores/lower clock speed = the worse experience you will have in AE. So if you are going to buy an iMac Pro for AE alone, or AE and premiere, pay for clockspeed and save money on cores.

Pudget Systems have really good benchmark testings for AE and a good place to read about what is good for the program. And in general the cheaper gamer rigs are the best option.

To your question about the iMac pro, since the 10 core has higher turboboost and slightly lower clockspeed I assume there will not be much difference. The current standard (not pro) 27" imac with the 4.2ghz and 4.5 turboboost would actually give you better performance in AE.

V

visionf47452569

Participating Frequently

Thanks. You mention that the GPU clock speed is important? I thought GPU was not very important with AE?

Would be good to get info on how the 8 and 10 core Xeons compare to each other for AE work.

mikem87557378Author

Inspiring

Oh that is strange, maybe AE hasn't fully been optimized for iMac pro yet, but still lol.

Dave_LaRonde

Inspiring

Hell, AE hasn't been optimized for ANYTHING yet. Except generating some income for Adobe.

B

bradleyc6122788

Known Participant

Also just bought the 2017 iMac Pro, 3ghz 10core processor, 64 gb ram, 16 gb GPU and wow After Effects is not benefitting from the power of this machine.

Having all the same problems as above but the most laughable was when I went to adjust the tracking of some plain old text. Laggy and highly time-consuming. Adjusting just small amounts I'd have to wait at least 2-3 secs before seeing the adjustment happen - WTF? My late 2012 MBP is instant...

Could someone else test this out please to make sure I'm not going crazy...

Here's a quick test video I uploaded, this is actually the fastest I could get the changes to react: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lllIQ-4r6FnTFlg7k195PHNxmh7vu4CP

So far the only benefit to this machine is editing but primarily being a motion designer / 3D artist I'm very disappointed so far. After Effects has no major speed increases apart from render times. Ram preview does NOT fill up any faster than my late 2012 MBP that I can see. C4D experiences lag in the interface. Some improvements are evident like viewport speedup with some instances and render times but I've not been on a 3D heavy project enough so far to really 100% comment on C4D as yet.

mikem87557378Author

Inspiring

Hey Bradley,

I just tried with some text and it is instant for me, not sure if the other layers in your comp are affecting it? Maybe the size of your comp is larger than what I tested in, mine was 1920x1080? But I agree with everything else you said. The reason I bought mine was for faster playback RAM preview performance, and its the same as my 2014 iMac. Only advantage I've had so far is also with rendering, but its not a $7000 difference. sucks

B

bradleyc6122788

Known Participant

All other layers had been eyeballed off.

Found one difference and that the FAUX BOLD option. For some reason on the iMac Pro that creates the major lag on whereas my MBP is silky smooth...?

mikem87557378Author

Inspiring

From what I’ve researched, most effects, including warp stabilizer only use one-two cores, so warp stabilizer does not benefit from additional cores. But there are other effects that do, and some that are even GPU accelerated. Still wish overall performance, including playback was faster with added cores. I usually do have a cont monitor connected, I turn it off and on constantly while working and AE seems the same. Playback Performance on my two iMacs is the same also, wit or without the added cintiq.

Jose Panadero

Community Expert

I've got the same problem. I've been using a secondary monitor connected to one of the new USBC port using an adapter. As soon as I changed the connection to another port, AE and Cinema 4D started to work as expected. I don't know if this is the same environment as the one you are using, but for those of you using 2 monitors, try to change the connection.

J

jsyboy75

Inspiring

I’ve been finding the same performance issues on my new 10 core iMac pro, really don’t know what to do. Warp stabiliser is really slow and exporting is not as fast as I’d hoped. I have an old mid-2011 machine too and some tasks work just as fast on that. This is a massive issue, and not the only one I’ve found with Adobe, I’ve just invested £6k on a new machine to speed up my workflow - can’t believe it...

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austinl44961167

Participating Frequently

i agree, warp stabiilizer is frustratingly slow. ive been pretty happy with render times. make sure if you are working on projects from your old system, youre importing them into new project files. ive decided to stick with the imac pro as i think this is an adobe issue, not a system issue. i think the solution is just to bug the hell out of adobe about the lack of multi core processing ability

J

jsyboy75

Inspiring

I have done so today, they assure me it will be improved with the next update later this month or early April

Andrew Yoole

Inspiring

This is a long standing annoyance for many Adobe users who've gone out and bought expensive multi-core systems, only to be unimpressed with the results. For the time being, and for the past few years, in After Effects at least, Adobe have not been pursuing multicore enhancements with much fervour.

There are numerous threads about this matter:

AE 2018 multi processing

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2230330

There's a third party render tool that will make good use of all cores during renders:

RenderGarden | by Mekajiki

But this won't enhance your general user experience.

Your iMac Pro will make great use of the multicore engine on tools that are designed for it: Cinema 4D, for example. It also means you'll get better results running multiple tools simultaneously - using After Effects while rendering in Media Encoder, for example.

But there is no evidence that Adobe plan to add better multicore support in the near future.

Depending on where you purchased, some sellers (including Apple) offer a 30 day return policy.

mikem87557378Author

Inspiring

Thank you Andrew! I will look over those resources. I'm either going to return the iMac pro. Or hold onto hope that Adobe will support Multicore performance eventually. Such a bummer! So in other words, my user experience is as good as its going to get regardless of machine. Bummer. Thanks man.

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austinl44961167

Participating Frequently

hey mike, what did you end up doing? i just got my 10 core imac pro (64gb ram, 16gb gpu as well). premiere playback is ridiculously faster for me but still having a ton of trouble with AE. I'm considering returning my imac pro and getting an imac with a 4.2 ghz quad core instead

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