After Effects CC and new Mac Pro with FirePro D700

[Carlos Kleber]

Hello

I'm about to purchase a new Mac Pro, 64GB RAM, SSD 512, Two AMD FirePro D700. Working with post-production software basically use Adobe After Effects CC, my doubt is whether the normal After Effects continue working on this new machine. If it is fully compatible with this video card and if all resources will have a better income. And what can you tell me about the Ray-Traced with these video cards.

Thank you.

[Mylenium]

Raytracing won't work with any AMD card. That's the long and short of it. Otherwise AE will work just fine.

Mylenium

[Andrew Yoole · Accepted solution]

• Adobe does not support AMD cards with their ray-trace renderer, and are unlikely to do so in the future.

• Cinema 4D Lite, included with AE CC, uses the CPU, not the GPU, for rendering.

• The third party plugin Video Copilot Element 3D is GPU dependent, and they have pledged support for the Mac Pro display cards.

• Adobe has hinted at substantial improvements to AE multi-threading efficiencies in a coming release.  The implication is that more CPU cores will be better utilised in the future. 

I will be buying a new Mac Pro soon too.  What the above tells me is that After Effects will continue to be best served by faster and more multi-cored CPUs, rather than better GPUs.  For my money, I will stick with the cheaper D500 GPUs, and get a better CPU option.

[porkbus]

i really hope this improvement to multi-threading comes soon.  I recently purchased the new mac pro maxed out with 12 cores and i have noticed very little improvement in AE CC from my old 2008 mac pro. i rarely use AE to track, but things that should be basic like tracking a 50x50 pixel area moves very slowly.  not any faster than my old machine really.  ram previewing still seems to be about the same speed too. working around in AE in general, I am not noticing much improvement.

[Nicolas.o]

@porkbus: do you advice to go for the 8 cores then?

[porkbus]

it depends on what else your work in. if you use any 3D package, maya, max, c4d, etc. then 12 core is great if you have the funds.  from what i'm hearing, adobe runs much faster on PC's than it does on Macs. I don't know since I don't use a PC. i just wish adobe was equally optimized for a mac.

this is just my opinion, but as of right now, if you are using adobe products only, it seems there is very little improvement in performance. I would hold off from buying any new machine until adobe changes they way they handle mutli-threading.  i am just a user/artist, not a programmer, and maybe i am missing something. but the lack of performance enhancements with the new mac pro with adobe products has me considering switching to a PC.

[Guest]

It's been a few months since the last post on the AMD Pro subject- But I was curious if anyone has had recent success using Element 3D on a FirePro Mac?

[Fluid5Design]

I have been using Element 3D on the 2013 fire pro mac just fine. Element 3D is must with after fx

[Bornagainjonesy]

I debated for a long time about whether or not to take the plunge for the 12 Core & 12 GB D700 option, and after debating with myself I just went ahead.

My reasoning is that at some point Adobe will release an update for the Mac Pro's dual GPU. I've only had the machine a week and yes, its rendering in AE using 0% GPU and isn't really any faster than my June 2012 MacBook Pro which has 384MB's of Video RAM.

Bummer!

Final output though is much much faster but working within the projects and simply seeing if everything is right before final output is a joke.

Am I glad I bought the top of the range? Yes! Adobe et al must and will catch up ... i hope!

[rlmilton]

Yeah, I'm losing faith that Adobe is able or willing to make AE as good as apps like Fusion on the New Mac Pro.  They just keep stringing us along now Todd Kopriva is leaving/gone so who knows what will happen.  He was as helpful as anyone can be but the software FAILS to leverage the hardware.  They shouldn't even support Mac if they can't make it work as well as an equally specced Windows machine!