Confused as to what graphics card to purchase for After Effects??

[ron84388871]

Just wondering if I could get some advice.. I need to replace a graphics card in my computer and I'm getting confused as to which to get. I don't really want to spend over $150 (less would be better). I was told by a graphics card rep that a Geforce GTX 1050 Ti would be my best bet. I mainly want something right now that will allow me to learn After Effects as well as using c4d lite, Illustrator and Photoshop. Do you all feel that the GTX 1050 Ti would be a good pick or is there some other choices I should be considering? Thanks for your help everyone!!

[xxxxx54321]

Hi ron84388871 Aug 17, 2017 2:51 PM,

In my practical experience, CUDA is useless with Adobe CC 2017 After Effects.

I have NVIDIA GeForce 980M 4GB and was looking forrward to improve my render times with Ae.

To my severe disappointment, it has ZERO render time improvement.

I have added it manually to the list of supported cards for CUDA in the Preferences -> Preview tab, but this "Preview" tab all by itself hints that it could be only useful for the previews. Possibly it does improve the preview timing, but the bottom line is the rendering time, which is the same - I have tried in native Win10 and Win10 Creators Update mode with CUDA enabled, AND compared to the virtualized mode from the Debian 9.1 Stretch host with Win7 guest [without GPU/PCI passthrough, o no CUDA]. Same project has been rendered the same period of time to the minute. NO DIFFERNCE whatsoever.

SInce Ae does not also fully support multi-threading, I would suggest to rather invest in as higher CPU Mhz as you can. Multi-threading with multi cores does NOT improve rendering time either.

Resume: Adobe is overpriced and intended for amateurs. The real hardcore rendering is better done on native Linux [commercial] applications, in which I can leverage rendering time by multiple machines/servers, but not even having physical access to any [network].

[David Arbor · Accepted solution]

In order to understand what GPU to get, you have to understand how After Effects uses (or doesn't use) GPU-acceleration.

For most of After Effects' history it has processed most tasks via the CPU (there are OpenGL features Rendering with OpenGL in After Effects CC ), but with the last couple releases effects are slowly being re-written with GPU-acceleration. There aren't many, but more are being added with each release. After Effects is not like Premiere where you can enable CUDA or Open-CL acceleration and most things will be processed by the GPU, that's just not how it works.

Here is an article about the GPU-accelerated effects in CC 2015.3: After Effects CC 2015.3 In-Depth: GPU-Accelerated Effects | Creative Cloud blog by Adobe

Better yet, check the "What's New" page here (http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/features.html) and search "GPU" for a quick reference of what effects are accelerated and then read the release notes about each of those updates—there aren't many GPU-accelerated effects yet.

Going forward, it's clear that the After Effects team is adding more GPU-acceleration, but right now you won't get much benefit, so a GTX 1050 would probably be just fine. Also note, that you must enable GPU-acceleration from the Project settings.

The one main feature that will greatly benefit from CUDA (this does not work with AMD cards) is the old Ray-traced 3D engine, but that hasn't seen improvements in a long time. The new Cinema 4D renderer that was just introduced seems like the backbone of the future.

As for your Cinema 4D Lite mention, that also doesn't use GPU-acceleration to render like Premiere does. The viewport is OpenGL accelerated, but rendering with the Standard or Physical renderer is done on the CPU. GPU-accelerated 3D rendering with third-party renderers (which also means a full version of C4D) is a whole different ballgame.

And as for Illustrator and Photoshop, those benefit more and more each release from GPU-acceleration, as well. Zooming is very smooth, and many processor intensive, pixel-pushing effects, such as Photoshop's Liquify, are now GPU-accelerated. Again, a GTX 1050 will be fine here.

ALXHK​​, to your comment about the Preferences>Preview tab, that mostly matter for the Ray-Traced 3D engine, so if you're not using that feature then checking the box for unsupported GPUs and switching the dropdown from "CPU" to "GPU" won't matter.

[scottw37633385]

Bad advice GTX 1050 TI is unsupported on even the latest After Effects. Check here for the list of cards that will most likely work...  After Effects System Requirements

[David Arbor]

@scottw37633385 the list of GPUs in the System Requirements docs only applies to the Ray-traced 3D engine, which is nearly obsolete. It has nothing to do with GPU-accelerated effects, which simply require a GPU with a minimum of 1 GB of VRAM.

[Szalam]

David is right; that list has NOTHING to do with any of the GPU-accelerated effects in AE. It only relates to ray-traced rendering which is considered obsolete.