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Mac to PC - best hardware to choose

New Here ,
Nov 30, 2016 Nov 30, 2016

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My 2008 Mac Pro has come to the end of it's service life, and I'm not buying Mac again- various reasons. I have 2 questions - forgive me for asking numpty questions... I haven't bought a PC for 15+ years and I'm a bit out of practice. I have also been given conflicting advice about what specs AE/Pr use effectively. A big SSD (or two) are a given in any configuration - my main questions are:

1.

Does anyone have any solid advice about an ideal PC workstation for AE/Pr workflow?

I.e., is a 6700K i7 sufficient, or should I go for a single/dual Xeon E5v4? Should I prioritise more cores, or more clock speed?

(I know it's more complicated than that, but any help getting to the bottom of this would be appreciated).

2.

I've always just used consumer GPUs as coprocessors, which has worked fine until now. Should I buy a Quadro card? What is the benefit, over the drivers? Would the 1080 I was going to buy be enough, or would a Titan X be better? Do I need to just stop being cheap and get an M4000/5000?

Any and all help greatly appreciated. Feels weird moving to Windows, but it's not like there aren't good quality workstations to choose from. I was thinking Lenovo P910.

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LEGEND ,
Nov 30, 2016 Nov 30, 2016

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AE doesn't have any decent mutltithreading, not even in the new versions, so single-core speed and peak performance is always favorable over extra multiple cores doing nothing. A coreXi processor is way to go. Graphics hardware doesn't matter. AE itself supports very few cards natively to begin with, the 3D Raytracer is declared dead and even Media Encoder doesn't work reliably with many cards. And I'm not even talking about Quadros here. You can buy a 80 dolalr card from the budget tray and it makes no difference whatsoever with regards to AE. In so many words: AE + GPU acceleration = epic fail (yes, even in CC 2017). If at all, any such decision should be based on specific third-party plug-ins you may be using like Magic Bullet Looks ofr GenArts Sapphire that would really benefit from a better GPU. Still, even for them a Quadro or a Titan makes no sense at all.

Mylenium

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Community Expert ,
Nov 30, 2016 Nov 30, 2016

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Trying to match hardware to AE at this point in time is not a very good idea. If it were me I would first look for the highest quality build and the best customer service. Nobody beats Apple in that regard, but Apple is not always at the top of the technology game for performance. If you are moving to a PC I would not consider building your own if you are making your living with your machine. You can't afford the down time and the research to keep drivers and components up to date. Simple as that.

Check out the system requirements for Premiere Pro and match your budget to the work you plan to do. You'll just have to wait for AE to get their rendering act together.

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New Here ,
Nov 30, 2016 Nov 30, 2016

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Absolutely Rick - I'm not messing about with my own build!

I'm leaving Apple because I'm not happy about Tim Cook's vision of Pro computing... I want internal upgradeability, and more than 3+ year old technology. Shame really, as I've been a Mac user for more than 15 years. I'm thinking of Lenovo or Dell - both have solid warranties and decent workstation options.

I hear you about waiting for Adobe to get their rendering house in order.

I know a fancy-pants i7 would get the job done for AE (& probably Pr) - but I also do a bit of Rhino 3D too so I'm tempted by a (relatively) quick Xeon.

Thanks for your answer.

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Community Expert ,
Nov 30, 2016 Nov 30, 2016

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You may want to ask in the Hardware Forum also:

Hardware Forum

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New Here ,
Nov 30, 2016 Nov 30, 2016

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Good shout. Thanks!

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New Here ,
Nov 30, 2016 Nov 30, 2016

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Thanks Mylenium - that's a good summary of my gut feeling. It seems to me that a 1080 GPU would be good for Premier, but makes little difference for AE... and that while a greater clock speed would work well for the 2017 release of AE & Pr, I gather Adobe's plan is to improve the render engine so this probably won't be the case in the future.

Good shout about plugins. I'll dig a bit deeper on that one.

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Explorer ,
Nov 30, 2016 Nov 30, 2016

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New Here ,
Dec 01, 2016 Dec 01, 2016

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Thanks loads for the links - that was really useful, especially with regard to choosing a GPU... seems a Pascal 1080 should be perfectly adequate!

I'd really appreciate your thoughts about switching too. Most of the YouTube videos and posts focus on the big things (yeah yeah I know Adobe & Office will both work), but I'm interested in the little things. I suppose I'm more interested in how the two OS feel to use.

If that sounds a bit wishy-washy, I suppose I'm interested in the different UX paradigms and how they play out using the machine for work / personal life. Thanks again K.

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