[Overclocking CPU] OC 1 Core or All-Cores?

[kevinh23223536]

Hi,

I just purchased a new computer for gaming and video editing and decided to purchase the overpriced i9-9900k as it seems to fit my objectiveand money wasn't an issue at the time.

My question is: Should I bother overclocking ALL 8 cores or just overclock 1 core? The benefits to overclocking 1 core is that I can push it maybe 0.1-0.3 GHz higher than if I were to OC all the cores. Also, I'll probably be able to maintain better CPU temps, and whatnot.

I know that After Effects does not make use of all the cores as effectively as other video editing softwares, and so I would like to hear your expertise on this matter.

Thank you.

[Dave_LaRonde]

     I hope you didn't blow all your money on that card!  I recommend getting software called Render Garden, which lets AE use as many cores as you can spare.

[Dave Merchant]

Stability is more important. Professionals in the video industry do not overclock a workstation in the same way gamers do. It's just not worth it.

[kevinh23223536]

Which CPU do professionals (that focus on AE SPECIFICALLY) use?

Also, I'm stuck with what I have and need to make the best out of my current set up... unfortunately 😕

Could you recommend anything in my specific case? I mean, I could run at 3.6 GHz STOCK on all 8 cores but I think I can push those numbers and find stability in what I wish to accomplish with AE.

[Dave Merchant]

Buying new in 2018, a reasonably fast Intel CPU is probably still the best compromise of cost and performance. AMD Ryzen/Threadrippers are pointless as we're not multi-core for normal operations. If you do lots of very heavy C4D integration then there's an advantage in cores over speed, but AMD still doesn't stand up.

Many professionals use Xeon workstations, simply because After Effects used to be multi-core and a twin-2683 system would batter the competition. No point in throwing those machines away, especially if you're using non-Adobe software that can still take advantage.

The big thing for After Effects is RAM. Tons of it. AE will kick sand in the face of a mere 128GB if you're rendering complex timelines and high color depth. Xeon boards still hold their own in that respect.

Suggest you visit our hardware forum - it's under the PrPro group but it's not specific to just that application.

https://forums.adobe.com/community/premiere/hardware_forum

[kevinh23223536]

Thank you for the insight.

i just really need my question answered at this point still ... ^^ is there a point to overclocking more than the first Core for performance? Or can I increase AE performance more by OCing more than 1 Core (Say 2 Cores or All 8 Cores)?

That’s all I want to know despite professionals not Overclocking their Rigs lol..

thank you..

[nicholasr97860755 · Accepted solution]

Overclocking will theoretically give you more speed when using CPU rendering, yes, just keep in mind a lot of AE's effects are now GPU accelerated, so you may not see as much benefit as you'd think.

As for overclocking your GPU, if you're familiar with how that works, go for it. You can push it up a bit (especially if it's an Nvidia card) without affecting your system's stability, and the same with CPU overclocking - just don't push it to the edge and you won't affect your system's stability. I'd suggest OCing all cores to keep things simple.

But I'm just one of those professionals who overclocks .

[Dave Merchant]

That doesn't answer the original question at all. It's blindingly obvious that increasing the speed of a CPU will make it do things faster, and we have already explained that it's an extremely bad idea to overclock a workstation to the extent that gamers do. GPU acceleration is irrelevant. Try rendering something and watch the GPU load graph.

The only way to know if asymmetrical core speeds are faster is to render your composition with both settings. After Effects is not designed to use 100% of the system resources, but neither is it fully single-threaded. Every composition will have different results. What else the system happens to be doing at the time will be far more significant - the OP is talking about a minuscule clock speed increment.

[nicholasr97860755]

Dave, buddy, the original question wasn't asking for technicalities - it was asking if AE might benefit from some extra juice going through the CPU to gain some extra speed. Which it will, same as with any other CPU-intensive software, and OCing all the cores is likely to keep things a bit more stable (which has been my experience for the past couple decades or so). As for GPU acceleration, much like CPU, a bit of extra power isn't going to hurt anything so long as it's not pushed to the edge, as made clear in the accepted answer, for tools which take advantage of GPU acceleration. Going off about Xeon CPUs when the OP made it clear he's already purchased the PC isn't going to help anyone.

[Dave Merchant]

The original question is "Should I bother overclocking ALL 8 cores or just overclock 1 core?". The subsequent question to me was "Which CPU do professionals (that focus on AE SPECIFICALLY) use?" Nobody mentioned GPUs until you. It certainly doesn't pertain to the topic at hand.

Don't presume that I'm anyone's "buddy".

[kevinh23223536]

I didn’t know one question was gonna stir such controversy lol.

Maybe I should have restated my question, which should have been: Are there greater performance benefits from Overclocking 8 Cores as opposed to Overclocking just 1 Core? (Or is the difference negligable?)

[Dave Merchant]

kevinh23223536  wrote

Are there greater performance benefits from Overclocking 8 Cores as opposed to OCing 1 Core? (Or is the difference negligable?)

As I said earlier today it's impossible to give an answer. AE doesn't lock itself to a single core - if you watch a system performance graph you'll see thre workload being shared across every (virtual) core; it's annoying that AE doesn't try to use 100% of the CPU like it did in the past, but Adobe decided to remove that feature in the quest for.. something...

Whether the asymmetrical clock setup is a "benefit" is unknowable - it depends what's in the timeline, what else your OS is doing in the background, how fast the storage drives react, etc. etc. - you can compare render times yourself by queuing the same comp twice with different OC settings but it would only be pertinent to that project at that moment in time. It's not like gaming where a generic 'benchmark' CPU score will guarantee you perform 0.01% better than the next guy - the general principle that a faster processor will render faster is true, but once you get into 0.1GHz unicore stepping differences it's all meaningless.

[Kyle Hamrick]

I'm no overclocking expert, but when I was recently looking at processors, I saw a decent amount of info indicating that the 9900k already runs pretty hot. I'd make sure your cooling is up to snuff before you OC.