Is the power of my computer enough?

[alessandro68117513]

Good afternoon.

The power of my pc is not enough, so I decided to change it. I am thinking about a mac book pro 13" - 2018

The specs are the following:

• 2.3GHz quad‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i5 processor, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
• Touch Bar and Touch ID
• Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655
• 8GB 2133MHz LPDDR3 memory (RAM)
• 512GB SSD storage
• 128MB of eDRAM (I think is the integrated VRAM)

In your opinion is this mac enough powerful to run after effects without any problems?(I mean without using 3d objects and without  the 3d rendering).

And using using 3d objects and  3d rendering can it work in a decent way?

Thank you!!

[Rick Gerard]

You might get away with the 13" screen but you'll probably want to invest in an external monitor that has a little bigger display because the screen may have to be set to More Room to work with AE efficiently. It's not going to be a powerhouse but AE should work just fine especially if most of your projects are HD.

If you are planning a lot of 4K projects then you need a lot more horsepower and Ram.

[alessandro68117513]

Good afternoon, Mr Gerard. Thank you so much!!

[Byron Cortez]

The only thing I would suggest is that you try to add at least twice the RAM, as Rick says, it will work for you but this factor is very important and believe me it will make the difference with After Effects at least because it is a RAM devourer.

[alessandro68117513]

Good morning byroncortezh​, thank you very much!

[Byron Cortez]

You’re welcome!

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

I have a 2018 13" MacBook Pro with very similar specifications. I primarily run Photoshop and Lightroom, but I wanted it to be able to run After Effects competently when I need to. It does, and it works much better than my old Mac, but I agree with the comments the others have made. The default UI resolution of the 13" is 1440 x 900 pixels, which is a little cramped for the After Effects UI, so I chose to do exactly what Rick said and set the UI resolution to “More Space” which is a UI resolution of 1680 x 1050 pixels. That works fine for me, even though everything is a little smaller.

alessandro68117513  wrote

• 128MB of eDRAM (I think is the integrated VRAM)

And using using 3d objects and  3d rendering can it work in a decent way?

eDRAM is not integrated VRAM. I didn't know what eDRAM was so I had to look it up, but it is apparently very fast RAM integrated with the CPU.

On macOS (I think this is more of an Intel thing), the amount of integrated VRAM you get is up to 1.5GB taken from system RAM. And it is adjusted dynamically, so you only get the full 1.5GB VRAM if the Mac has maximum RAM and other programs aren't demanding it. Therefore, I specified 16GB RAM so that maximum VRAM would be available as much as possible to graphics and video applications. (If you don't, then you start with 8GB RAM, subtract the VRAM, and you're left with…not a lot for Adobe applications.) Another reason to max it out at 16GB RAM is that even if there is enough RAM for the After Effects project being edited, having more RAM is always useful to extend the RAM preview time.

If all of these limitations seem like too much, you should consider the 15" MacBook Pro, which had a discrete GPU with 4GB of dedicated VRAM, and up to 32GB RAM, but it is expensive…that's part of the reason I settled for the 13".

I have tried some basic 3D layers, mostly 2D planes, with the Classic renderer. It works fine but I have only tried 1080p compositions.  Beyond that, I don't know. At least it's much smoother and more immediately responsive than on my 2011 i7 MacBook Pro.

Even though the 13" has only integrated graphics, Project Settings does let me choose Mercury GPU Acceleration with either OpenCL or Apple Metal. I am hoping that After Effects will support an eGPU in the future for even more acceleration, but I'm not sure how much difference it currently makes in After Effects; I've heard not much.

[alessandro68117513]

Good morning Conrad C, extremely helpful answer. Thank you bery much!

[Mo Moolla]

You should be fine on a 2018 13" MBP but I would recommend a 15" instead. More screen real estate, 16gig RAM, 512 SSD and of course an i7 processor instead of an i5. While you will be good with the 13" the more plugins and effects you use, the more you will slow down especially with just 8 gigs RAM

Mo