Skip to main content
A
Anonymous
October 7, 2012
Question

FASTEST 4K rendering system for CS6 - Dual XEON or GPU (NVIDIA Cuda Cores) ?

  • October 7, 2012
  • 4 replies
  • 47680 views

Hi, I need to build a new POWERFUL video editing machine for After Effects/Premiere and could need some input as I am low on time.

The machine must be really fast in video editing/rendering, and I will be working both 1920x1080, 3840x2160 (24p) and 4K x 4K resolution projects. I work with a lot of timelapse, meaning a lot of large frames, and also computer generated frames inbetween key frames, eg. to slow down footage (Using both Adobes own, and different 3rd party engines for this).

First, I work in Adobe Creative Suite CS6 (After Effect and Premiere).

1. Should I choose a dual XEON R5 system (2630/2640), or is a fast i7 3960/3930K sufficient?

Higher end XEON E5 cpu's are really expensive, and as I understand from some sources, current models are "old" and should be replaced anytime soon, but I don't think I have time to wait. I know EVGA/ASUS have dual i7 motherboards, but are there any software (Adobe CS6) able to utilize dual i7 cpus as of today? I am unsure if there is any point in buying such a motherboard for my purpose.

2. I know some processes can be done by GPU. And I am tempted to buy the new GTX690, (and mod/hack Adobe info files so it becomes compatible with AE/PR), even if I know only a single GPU is currently supported in Adobe CS6 (giving me 1536 cuda cores), due to the possible use of the new NVIDIA hardware encoding system on newer NVIDIA cards, that may be possible (hopefully) to utilize in Adobe CS6 in the future. Or at least stand-alone.

3. What would be the overall fastest in rendering with Adobe CS6 (primarily After Effects)? Dual XEON E5-2630/2640 or a GTX680/690 card with 1536 cuda cores? (The higher XEONS above 2630/2640 are way too expensive I think, as well as NVIDIA QUADRO 5000/6000 Cards)

4. When I search about hardware/GPU rendering I now get a lot of threads about the "new raytracing engine" for rendering 3D. But I am not looking to render 3D, but 2D (What happened to "good old" mercury engine? ), and I need to do 2D rendering as FAST as possible!! I will be producing a 24 minute 4K x 4K (circular) movie for a client, as well as several "regular" 4K projects (3840x2160). I am confused why 2D rendering is not mentioned in raytracing rendering enginge.

5. Would 64GB DDR3 ram be sufficient? I am worried if I decide to overclock a little I may run into problems if going for too much RAM. Then again I may not need to overclock if the system is fast as it is.

6. Regarding Storage I could go for eiter a RAID workstatoin (RADI 5 or 6? Or other?), or a fast rendering workstation, with a slower and larger server for backup. I suppose I could use some increased write speed on the workstation as I will be rendering 4K x 4K footage in high bitrates, but I don't think the hard-drives will be the bottleneck here, but the rendering capabilites!?. Although I know choice of harddisk/storage is important in a video editing system, the other issues as with choosing Dual XEONS or i7 3930K + GTX690 (or both XEON + GTX690) for rendering is more urgent do decide upon right now.

Any input will be greatly appreciated!!

Best,

Ola

      This topic has been closed for replies.

      4 replies

      mariojrmatos
      mariojrmatos
      Participant
      February 10, 2013

      I have a same problem. I need a laptop for 2.5K video editing on CS6 products, especially Premiere and After Effects, plus some 3ds Max and Maya medium-level modeling. Battery is not an issue but good CPU, GPU and RAM are crucial. My budget is about €2500.

      I know that a desktop workstation is way better and gives us more for our money but I have one, a pretty powerful one, so what I need now is a laptop for video editing when I’m on the road because I work all around the world hence the necessity of a mobile solution.

      Todd_Kopriva
      Todd_Kopriva
      Inspiring
      February 10, 2013

      See this page for information about hardware for Premiere Pro and After Effects: http://adobe.ly/pRYOuk

      Web Magi
      Web Magi
      Participating Frequently
      October 7, 2012

      Additional info: http://tv.adobe.com/search/?q=High+Performance+Workstation

      A
      Anonymous
      October 9, 2012

      Yes and they (Adobe) recommend dual XEON processors for those hard core workstations. I am not sure how Mylenium means an i7 with max 6 cores (12 with hyperthreading) will be better than eg. a dual XEON E5 2680 setup with 16 cores (32 with hyperthreading enabled).

      But obviously this is more complex than I thought..

      MarkWeiss
      MarkWeiss
      Inspiring
      August 25, 2015

      After having built a dual Xeon workstation, and discovering that Premiere CS6 runs worse on it than it does on the Core2Quad that it replaced, I'm not sure that Adobe is all that compatible with multiple core / CPU machines. I get erratic playback, dropped frames, playback speed going to 8X by itself after five minutes of playing at normal speed, then stopping. Sometimes playback starts by itself with no user input. I've tried seven different nVidia Titan X drivers, but none give me the performance I enjoyed on my 8 year old workstation that this replaces. Sometimes too many cores spells havoc with otherwise reliable programs.

      Mylenium
      Mylenium
      Legend
      October 7, 2012

      4. When I search about hardware/GPU rendering I now get a lot of threads about the "new raytracing engine" for rendering 3D. But I am not looking to render 3D, but 2D (What happened to "good old" mercury engine? ), and I need to do 2D rendering as FAST as possible!!

      The Mercury engine only exists in Premiere Pro at this point, but even there it is dependent on feeding it with formats it actualyl supports (which are a lot, but not all). Any acceleration in AE is dependent on third-party plug-ins using OpenGL/ CUDA, mostly, which will do zero if you don't use any of them. The rest is not really of any consequence. With AE as it is now, it is always an "either....,or..." situation. You cannot use GPU acceleration with MP rendering, so if you were to buy a dual Xeon setup to use MP, any  of those super-expensive Quadros wouldn't do much. And in reverse, plug-ins/ features that use GPU don't give a flyin' frakkk about MP. It's simply inherent in how most of that works. That aside, even if you limit yourself to CPU-only rendering, there are enough scenarios where MP rendering will just not work, including time-remapping or other temporal effects. So to cut a long story short: If interactive performance is crucial, a single core7i is better and it will also much better handle all that time mangling stuff. Everything else would be a waste.

      Mylenium

      A
      Anonymous
      October 7, 2012

      Hi Mylenium and thank you for your reply.

      Maybe I was a bit unclear, and most likely my knowledge on the area is outdated/limited, but I do not entirely understand your answer (at least not all of it).

      I do not really care what the technologies for fast hardware accelereated rendering is/was called, I just seem to recall from a few years back, that hardware video (2D) rendering had something to do with "mercury engine" with Adobe/NVIDIA, hence I get confused with this new "raytraced" 3D rendering engine beinge mentioned everywhere, but no 2D hardware rendering being mentioned anymore. I am not necessarily looking to use "Mercure engine", I am simply looking for the fastest and best hardware way to go for working/editing/rendering high resolution high quality 2D video, dual Xeon E5, or a GTX680/690 with it's 1536 available CUDA cores for Adobe CS6.

      I will try to rephrase my main challenge down to one question:

      What CPU(s) would I need to beat video (1080/4K) rendering performance from a 1536 CUDA cores GTX680/690.

      Or do I misunderstand? Are you saying that a CUDA based GPU simply can only do hardware encoding in/with specialized filters where CUDA is enabled, and cannot do the same core video number crunching rendering tasks as eg. a dual Xeon setup?

      My After Effects CS6 task will consist of a lot of trial-and-error with rendering preview, using frame blending, different time-streching, warping, remapping, twixtoring, noise reduction filer (NEAT), and finally rendering it all to disk as fast as possible. So I will need a lot of fast RAM, but what else is best for achieving best performance here.. The xeons or the Cudas?

      I was hoping to be able get away with a cheaper solution using an i7 3930K ir 3960K + GTX680/690, but if I really have a huge advantage of going dual Xeon E5, then maybe I will have to take the cost. And then the question is, would a dual E5 2630 6 core be good enough, or do I have to sell my left kidney and go for a dual E5 2660 with 8 cores.

      Thanks for any help,

      O.

      F
      fredsky2003
      Participant
      October 12, 2012

      From the After Effects Help section: http://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/memory-storage.html

      After Effects can start additional processes of the After Effects application to run in the background to assist the main foreground application with the rendering of frames for RAM previews or final output. These background processes have the name AfterFX.exe (Windows) or aeselflink (Mac OS).

      In this form of multiprocessing, each background process renders its own frame and runs on a separate processor core (CPU). The number of processes used to render multiple frames simultaneously is never more than the number of processors.

      More info here as well: http://helpx.adobe.com/content/help/en/after-effects/using/improve-performance.html

      Even though it is 2 years old, Adobe has some great input on this issue as well: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/634192

      Intel lists i7 is a desktop/gaming class CPU, and Xeon as a server/workstation class CPU. Dell, HP, and Apple (Mac Pro) all use Xeon processors for their high-end workstations. There is also the question of ECC memory, which helps to keep systems stable, and comes standard with most workstations.

      I guess the question is, do you need a workstation, or a super-powered desktop?


      hi guys!

      i've building machine for after effects since years, for a creative artist.

      he know loves the new 3D renderer

      there are different tehcniques in CS6 to "hide" the render process (background render), but this in not what you want. you want a VERY responsive system for testing / trying a effect and idea. this is what Millenium has tried to explain.

      in  this case, XEON (like quadro) are only overpriced marketing fluf from intel/nvidia/HP/DEll/Apple (name it).... they just want to sell you hardware that you will not use...

      so what you need is :

      - the most high clocked processor with max cores... this mean desktop CPU, single socket. take a i7 with 6 cores, and "K" suffix so you can overclock about 4Ghz.

      - max RAM, you need about 2GB per core (counting hyperthread). so 24GB + some for the OS. the bare minimum is 32GB.

      - you want a responsive system. so you need a SSD for the OS + SSDs for cache, which is a killer time saver in CS6

      - you need also a fast and secure storage for your footage. use a RAID hardware card. LSI or Areca, RAID5 + spare.

      - as Millenium explain, the current "wow" effect in CS6 is when you use something that CUDA and Optix technologies can handle, using a Geforce card.

      -> best performance for the price is GTX570

      -> best performance single GPU is GTX680 (since CUDA 5 apparently... otherwise GTX580)

      -> best performance at all should be with GTX690 dual GPU... but for what a read this far away from doubling the speed vs 680. you'll have to ask Tod from AE what it means by "support of GTX 690" in 11.0.2 update...

      - in premiere, even when you export a file, you will use the nvida card for acceleration... but this accel is ONLY used for resizing at best quality and rendering GPU effects you used on your timeline. that mean that a very basic timeline with no effects is NOT accelrated; it use the CPU. so in any worklow, it will use CPU + GPU

      - contrary to you title name, you will use CPU AND GPU (not Xeon or nvidia, but both)

      - i read a article about high end xeons with lot of cores (32) and after effects CS5.5/CS6

           * CS5.5 doesn't hanle all those cores correctly at all

           * CS6 does much better, but too muche cores simply... slow down the rendering.

      (see the link from ola_1974 as example). as Millenium said, a LOT of render in AE are still linear, and OoO, so you can not fead 32 cores correctly.

      this emphasys the point that, like a lot of computer stuff, the hardware is far ahead software implementation.

      to summup, go for a high clocked i7 + lots of RAM + GTX680...

      you will have the most efficient system for the money, that make Apple Mac fans crying for the money they waste in their unused and not upgradable hardware.

      fred

      Web Magi
      Web Magi
      Participating Frequently
      October 7, 2012

      In my experience, Precision workstations are some of the most robust and reliable production machines made. I've been using a tower since 2008, and it's a beast, plus I still have a working 2005 Precision laptop.

      I'm currently looking at this for upgrade purposes: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-t7600/pd?refid=precision-t7600

      I built my own computers too, right up until 2005 when I got too busy to fix my main PC after it failed. If you go for the Precision, I would call to order. When I purchased the tower in 2008, I went through the motions of ordering online while I was ordering over the phone. I wanted to see if they were giving me the best deal possible. The machine I built online was over $5,000. The total cost of that same computer over the phone was less than $3,000. Not sure how they did that, but I didn't complain.

      I honestly can't remember how many days it was between the order, and delivery, I just remember it being very few. I'm sure I paid a little extra for fast delivery.

      Good luck!

      A
      Anonymous
      October 7, 2012

      Yes I am also considering Dell. But I think they charge a little too much. They charge 3 x the price of a hard-drive than what it cost elsewhere..

      Will see what I decide, maybe I will call them as well.

      Thanks.

      Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
      Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices