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1. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Fabuxo Jun 20, 2012 10:25 PM (in response to chuckdries)So, you bought a mac and thought everything would be ok?
Man, every machine has it´s own usage.
You have to use your reason next time when buying a computer.
I bet that with the price of this mac you´d be able to afford a good PC...
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2. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
chuckdries Jun 20, 2012 10:29 PM (in response to Fabuxo)The reason I got a mac is because I use a host of other mac specific applications. Yes, I realize that I could get more bang for my buck with a pc, but the point is that all the entry level macs at the time had similar specs, which would not support CS6, so they've basically forsaken all but the richest mac users
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3. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Mylenium Jun 20, 2012 10:50 PM (in response to chuckdries)As a non-Mac person I obviously can't say much specific on the topic, but of course there is a lot of general dissatisfaction with CS6 out there. Not sure, though, if I ever would base any buying decision based on raytracing not working... Long before that, AE would have to have a decent 3D space and all that, so I never would even consider it. dealing with the "old" 2.5D stuff is pain enough. Well anyway, no need to repeat my blog posts from the last 2 months here... Things are just as they are.
Mylenium
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4. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Rick Gerard Jun 21, 2012 12:07 AM (in response to Mylenium)Here's one thing to consider. CS6 is represents a major change in the fundamental way one of the rendering engines works. NVIDIA was either spending more time supporting Adobe or had a better mousetrap for rendering with the CPU in a consistent enough way for the programming staff at Adobe to concentrate on their system first. Development is expensive, new features, especially ones that rely on new hardware, are going to leave some people behind until they have the resources to upgrade the hardware. That's just a fact of life.
Would I be a happier guy if CS6 would run on my older MacBook Pro or my iMac with the same speed and performance you get with a NVIDIA Quadro 6000 at nearly twice the cost of a decked out iMac, or even a Quadro 2000? Sure I would, but come on, somebody's got to pay for that graphics horsepower.
I'm more disappointed in Apple for not being able to work closely enough with NVIDIA soon enough to put CUDA capable graphics cards in their desktop and laptops sooner. I still think Apple makes the best built, most reliable, longest service life, boxes in the computer business with the easiest to use and most trouble free OS out there (I use windows machines too, all the time). Nobody's perfect, but leveling the entire blame for the lack of support for Mac products cannot be fairly laid entirely at Adobe's feet. Collaboration on hardware and software between manufacturers requires relationships and contracts that are not always easy to establish and maintain.
CS6 may have it's problems, but for most of my work, or rather for all of my work since I've had CS6 running on my systems it's been my most used tool. I've even done some entirely rendered on the CPU Ray Traced renders on a humble 4 year old mac laptop. The renders took a very long time, but I only needed a few seconds to prove the concept and land the job.
I don't want to start a war here, but CS6, in spite of it's limitations, is a much better tool in my toolbox than CS5.5 was. I'm not 100% thrilled, but I'm not 100% disappointed either.
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5. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
chuckdries Jun 21, 2012 12:09 AM (in response to Rick Gerard)Interesting point, I never thought about how apple is involved, and I have found that CS6 is still faster in most cases. The changes to the interface and the overall usability improvement makes it still a worthy and useful tool. I'm just bitter because I won't be able to use this program to its full potential for another 3 years.
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6. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Fabuxo Jun 21, 2012 6:58 AM (in response to Rick Gerard)I tottaly agree with you Rick. But hey, good new for you guys that uses mac
Apple is using Nvidia Card again
They were just using ATI on they´re computers
now Nvidia is back
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7. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
chuckdries Jun 21, 2012 8:57 AM (in response to Fabuxo)Unfortunately, they are still using ATI's on iMacs.
What I want to know, is why can't CUDA be like opengl or opencl that will work on both brands of cards?
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8. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Mylenium Jun 21, 2012 9:13 AM (in response to chuckdries)CUDA was "invented" by NVidia and until v3 they didn't license it to anyone. It kinda was always seen (and used) to help them sell their more expensive cards. And it wasn't really that exciting in its infancy due to massive technical limitations and problems. It's only now that this is beginning to be used reasonably widespread. These things take a while. It's not that OpenGL or DirectX fell out of the sky, either. OpenGL is 20 years old or so and while everybody now takes it for granted, it took a long time to catch on as well.
Mylenium
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9. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
TheFosterHouse Jun 22, 2012 9:33 AM (in response to Rick Gerard)Hey Rick, it's true that Cuda is great, but here's the problem: with out an nVidia card, CS6 Production Premium runs horribly slow on a Mac. I've got a 12 core Mac Pro with 64 Gb of Ram connected to a dual channel SAS Raid 10 and I can't get PP to play hardly anything, let alone AE to render 3D text in any semblance of a reasonable time. The Mercury Playback engine is fantastic, but why not implement something so users without an nVidia card can actually use the application. "Not as fast" shouldn't mean "Good luck playing anything."
Graphics card options have always been horrible for Mac users. Hopefully with the drivers released from nVidia and the fact that Dev previews of Mountain Lion doesn't cut off access to these cards (yet), Mac users may finally see their options open up.
Now if someone can get the CUDA acceleration to work for a graphics card in a thunderbolt external PCI-E expansion box, that would solve a LOT of problems.
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10. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
chuckdries Jun 22, 2012 9:13 PM (in response to TheFosterHouse)At least your mac meets the minimum requirements of 512MB VRAM... My mac only came with 256mb VRAM card that I can't change
Which brings up the point: can mac pros accept any standard PCI graphics card off the shelf, or do you have to buy a mac specific card? Because if you can get any off the shelf card, why not just run to best buy and grab a CUDA compatible card?
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11. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Rick Gerard Jun 22, 2012 10:03 PM (in response to chuckdries)Apple supplies all the drivers for graphics cards, so they must be approved Apple graphics cards. Therefore your choices are limited.
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12. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Mylenium Jun 23, 2012 2:28 AM (in response to chuckdries)Unfortunately not. As Rick said, no drivers, no card. And that is complicated further by those cards requiring a specific BIOS/ EFI extension so they actually boot on Macs.
Mylenium
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13. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
chuckdries Jun 23, 2012 2:33 AM (in response to Mylenium)Are there any CUDA cards out that have Mac drivers?
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14. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Mylenium Jun 23, 2012 2:46 AM (in response to chuckdries)See the system specs. What's not listed there, doesn't support GPU raytracing. Presumably there will be some more added now that Apple have released new hardware, but the list will still be pretty short...
Mylenium
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15. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Bigredfirecracker2 Jun 24, 2012 10:36 PM (in response to Mylenium)If you have a look around the net you will find many people are running PC nVidia cards in Macs with great sucess in AE CS6. There is a thread on creative cow with benchmarks from ppl running PC nVidia cards. The GXT580 looks like the best performance for money so far but the 690 with 3072 cores of CUDA would no doubt be pretty fast. My prediction is apple will ether support generic PC cards with mountian lion or dump desktops altogether.
Jon
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16. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
ShiftHorizon Jun 26, 2012 2:43 AM (in response to chuckdries)I am pretty sure that with Lion 10.7.4 it is possible to put in a GTX 580 (pc version also) with a little hacking. (google it). You can then install the CUDA drivers and edit the cuda supported graphics cards .TXT in the AE application folder. It should then work. The 580 is a pretty decent card for raytracing.
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17. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Bigredfirecracker2 Jun 26, 2012 2:51 AM (in response to ShiftHorizon)Yep the support is there, it's just not officially stated so adobe doesn't really have to support the cards ether.
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18. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
McFrisco Aug 2, 2012 3:54 PM (in response to Bigredfirecracker2)Its not just a MAC problem. I have a Quad Core PC, 64 bit, 8g ram, with a Geforce GTX 580, and I can't get AE to do ANYTHING. When I ran the same files in CS5.5 using a punky little Geforce 8500GT, it was slow, but at least I could work. Now, I can't scrub through files and it takes minutes to update a screen. I'm about ready to chunk CS6.
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19. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Navarro Parker Aug 2, 2012 7:14 PM (in response to chuckdries)I think you are seeing it upside down. It's not that your Mac isn't good enough, it's that CS6's Raytracer isn't ready for prime time. Honestly, Adobe should have saved it for CS7 or 8... or whenever the hardware has caught up. It's just too early for public consumption and leaves plenty of new users, like yourself, a bad attitude toward Adobe. Ray Tracer has been WAAAAY over-promoted by Adobe.
(What IS it with Adobe and the overmarketing of their apps 3D functions?)
If you are a gamer, think of Ray Tracer as Crysis 5. It's just too bleeding edge for the nearly all of the consumer computers available. (Keep in mind that iMac is targeted toward consumers and is essentially a laptop hardware-wise.)
Does it mean your computer sucks, or maybe the game is just a little too early to market?
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20. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Rick Gerard Aug 2, 2012 10:25 PM (in response to McFrisco)For most users but I know that are CS 6 it is working quite well if, and this is a big IF, the graphics drivers are up-to-date, properly installed, and the machine has plenty of memory and it is properly configured.
While not perfect, AE's ray-tracing is a fabulous addition and shows great promise for more 3-D integration come in the future. My biggest fear is that they may have started down a dead-end path. I use Blender all the time. Even on a very old MacBook with no OpenGL, blender will render very serviceable ray traced images in a reasonable amount of time. GPU ray traced rendering in AE is absolutely miserable. Blenders OpenGL acceleration also works extremely well. I just hope Adobe is headed down the most efficient path for future development.
I applaud Adobe's efforts, and wish them only the best. Their software has made it possible for me to make a living with an overhead that is about 1/10 the size that it was in the 1970s when I first started freelancing. The first loan that I took out for gear to simply shoot and edit standard definition video was eight times the size of my mortgage.
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21. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
davidp158 Aug 7, 2012 10:36 PM (in response to TheFosterHouse)I echo TheFosterHouse comments regarding CS6. Sure, the Mercury Playback engine brings power and features that require a specific card, and that's part of technology marching forward. I just wonder why Adobe couldn't have retained the speed of CS5.5 for users without a CUDA card, as an option. After all, do the majority of AE users already have CUDA compliant cards? If so, great, and the rest of us have to shut up, buy in and catch up. Otherwise, it seems that the Mercury Playback should be an option, not a requirement (or detrement for those that don't have the card for it). CS6 AE is much slower than CS5 and 5.5 AE on my 6-core MacPro with ATI 5870 card and 16GB or RAM.
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22. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
ironhorse11a Oct 7, 2012 11:29 AM (in response to davidp158)I think apple put all their apples into the iPhone/iPad basket. I've had macs for the last 8 years and couldn't be happier with them. For me it's time for a major upgrade for a new machine. We are using PP and AEcs6. I don't want to spend $14,000.00 on a Mac Pro then have to modify it. I've called apple many times over the past several months hoping they might have some nvidia cards to run cs6 better. I just get the feeling it won't happen any time soon, if at all. Spending that same amount of money on a new dell seems to buy a rocketship. My plan is to stay off of the intent as much as I can with the dell so I don't give windows the clap.
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23. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
Rick Gerard Oct 7, 2012 11:42 AM (in response to ironhorse11a)There are a bunch of NVIDIA cards that will run on the Mac just fine. The new MBP Retina works jsut fine. Mountian Lion makes it easier to run different cards. Last time I checked you could puck up a Mac Pro for a lot less than $14K
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24. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
chuckdries Oct 7, 2012 1:51 PM (in response to Rick Gerard)yes, there are. THe thing is, my mac came with 156mb of vram. I'm not even worried about CUDA, when my factory card in my less than 2 year old computer doesn't meet the minimum requirements of 512mb vram. It still runs, and renders pretty quickly, but on paper it shouldn't.
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25. Re: I am disappointed by AE CS6's hardware requirements
TheFosterHouse Oct 7, 2012 5:00 PM (in response to chuckdries)If you have an older Macbook Pro or iMac, then there's nothing you can do. with the new Macbook Pro 15" retina & non-retina models, things are looking up for Mac support. Hopefully there's something coming for iMacs soon. I know a lot of production people that would immediately drop money on an iMac with an nVidia card the moment that they're available. For the Mac Pro, the addition of the Quadro K5000 for the Mac is a really good sign of things to come. About a month before it was announced, I bought a GeForce GTX 570 from MacVidCards and put it in my 12core Mac Pro. After a couple steps to make sure that the applications recognized it and the driver used more than 2 Gb of RAM, the card works great. It's really easy to tell AE & PP to accept the card, but the RAM limitation thing is COMPLETELY an Apple thing. it requires editing the drivers in a hex editor to force the system to accept more RAM. It's really stupid that Apple set this limit at 2 Gb, but since the Quadro K5000 has 4Gb of RAM, that should officially change really soon. Any system or Adobe update requires me to go through all that again to ensure that it works, but it's a small price to pay to get a card that actually works. It may not be offically supported, but it's what production people have to do in order to use the tools properly. The options are finally getting there, but if you've got a Mac that you can't change the Graphics Card, then it requires a newer machine. Frustrating as it is, this seems the only option. Adobe is going to keep pressing forward, so don't get your hopes up that there's going to be something to fix this "nVidia or nothing" path they're on.
Hopefully this means that nVidia will release a card for the Mac that will allow Speedgrade actual monitoring. The fact that the application was released without any possibility to monitor color grading with a calibrated broadcast monitor on the Mac is borderline unforgivable.



