intel i7 920 processor RAM question

[mutleee]

Please forgive my ignorance....but....
if i get a new system that has an intel i7 920 processor and I have 16GB of RAM installed - will After Effects CS4 be able to use all 16 GB of RAM if I am using windows vista 64bit? (Surely it will fly using all that?!!!)
4 GB RAM per core is usable by AE as far as I know?

Also do you think it would be worth getting a motherboard that can take two processors so I could add another one when I have some spare cash???? If yes - anyone know a good motherboard (and why!!!) ???

Thanks very much

[Dorin]

2GB is the limit for the x86 [32 bit] Operating System on AE. Vista 32 bit Service Pack recognize 4GB but uses only 3.5GB and After Effects use onli 2GB. If you wanth tu use all your memory a x64 Operating System is an most have.

Intel Skultrail is the only motrherboard that suports 2 CPUs but is on socket 771 and your CPU is on LGA 1366. You can buy a server designed motherboard that suports 2 CPUs but you wil need new memory and new CPUs.
For Nehalem microarhitecture Intel Gainestown is the dual CPU motherboard but is on Soket B

[mutleee]

phew....i need to do more research - im sure one cpu will do me fine - thanks for your help

[luxurysedan3030]

Your new processor and RAM will be ownin up some AE. I do relatively fine with an AMD x2 6000 and 2 gigs of RAM on xp. Cant wait to get my system with a setup similar to yours.

[mutleee]

it's that eternal question - shall i buy now or wait just that little bit longer!!!!!

[evgamartin]

I have 64-bit Vista and AE CS4. Aftereffects, not truly 64-bit, uses 4 processes, which can use up to 4gbs each. So 16 gbs seems like the sweet spot.

[mutleee]

sounds like 16 gb will do me for AE CS4!!!!
Cheers

[PixMotionVideos]

16 GB of Ram is sounds really cool.
Try to use Nucleo Pro.
with that program you will REALLY take advantage of all that cpu power and ram

[mutleee]

nucleopro - what is that?????

[aNgeloG]

This is what I run on:
OS: Vista Ultimate 64
MB: Asus P6T Deluxe
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz - Overclocked @ 3.80GHz
RAM: Patriot extreme performance 6GB DD3-1600
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB
Main HDD: Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB 10,000 RPM
HDD for cache: Western Digital RaptorX 150GB 10,000 RPM

I use to have a quad core overclocked to 3Ghz with 8Gb of DDR2. What I can tell you is that my new comp runs 40% faster. If you don't overclock, you can't see any difference.

DDR3 Ram with i7 is a killer. The i7 has a new architecture. My OS sees 8 Cores, because of Hyper threating.
For i7, it is better to stay on 3Gb, 6Gb or 12Gb of Ram, because of the way the i7 runs.

On a 1080p composition, I can almost scroll the timeline in real time at 100% quality. It's great! Renders take 2 or 3 times less with the i7.

Now for your questions, here is what I can tell you:
- i7 tops at 12Gb of DDR3 and some mother boards support 24Gb
- Do not get 16Gb. You need 12Gb or 24Gb. You should use the 3 or all 6 available RAM slots, with same frequency and RAM speed. If you don't, you won't get a significant performance boost.
- Get DDR3-1600 or the highest your mobo can take
- Vista eats almost 2Gb of RAM, so the more you have, the better.
- AE CS4 can use all 8 core and all the RAM you have. Just properly configure your AE in the preferences.
- Use fast 10k Drives and cache one of them
- Motherboards that support 2 i7 CPUs don't exist. If you get a server motherboard that supports 2 or 4 physical CPUs, you must populate all of them. You can't just buy the motherboard with one CPU and then add another one after when you have money. It sucks I know.
- I recommend the Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard. Very stable and very overclockable. Get the deluxe version. Don't get the V2, it's cheaper, but has cheaper components. Don't get the deluxe version with the OC Palm. I bought it. you pay 60$ extra $$ for a stupid small USB screen that "helps you overclock". The OC Palm is useless and don't work half the time.

Hope it helps.

If you have more questions, let me know

[mutleee]

Hey aNgeloG,
Thanks very much for your reply. Extremely helpful. thanks again

[nubian]

Hi aNgeloG,

I'm new to cs4 and some of it's preferences.
I too have a similar machine such as yours.

This is what I run on:
OS: Windows 7 64bit
MB: DFI UTX58 T3eH8
CPU: Intel Core i7 975 Exteme @ 3.33GHz - (Overclocked to at one point @ 4.00GHz) I know I could go more but not at this time.
RAM: OCZ 12GB DD3-1600
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 285 GTX 1GB



I've made a thread about my issues but I'm not getting the support I need.
This thread is the closes thing I could find a solution to my problems.
The main problem is on the reason why in the "Memory & Multiprocessing" settings that:

installed CPU's = 4 (shouldn't it be 8...hyperthreading)?
installed ram = 8 (shouldn't it be 12)?

And how would you optimize these settings so that I'm getting most out of my rendering?

Mind you that the latest updates have been applied to CS4.

Thanks, your help will greatly be appreciated.

[Burritoclock]

It is only going to show your actual cores (4) it is not going to see the 4 hyperthread cores.

Have you noticed any problems with Windows 7 and AE? Or does it run pretty well?

[aNgeloG]

Yep ,regarding the cores, it can only see the 4 actual cores and not the HT ones.

Now for the RAM, I am not 100% sure. I believe it has something to do with the fact that AE is not 64 bit. Adobe will make it, one day...
If you look into your Windows 7 preferences, do you see the 12GBs?

In AE, I use 1GB per CPU for the Minimum allocation. This way, I am halfway from Longer RAM Preview and Halfway from Faster Rendering. For me, it brings perfect balance. I do have to say that sometimes the preview is not long enough, but that is because I only have 6Gb. Change this is you want optimal rendering time.

Add Disk Cache on separate HDD, it will help you when you render. 10k or 15k drives help a lot!

Hope this helps. PM if anything.

[nubian]

It is only going to show your actual cores (4) it is not going to see the 4 hyperthread cores.

Have you noticed any problems with Windows 7 and AE? Or does it run pretty well?

0 problems running AE on Windows 7.

I came from a 32bit system running CS3:
OS: Windows XP PRO 32bit
MB: DFI Nf4 SLI-DR
CPU: AMD FX-60 Dual-Core @ 2.6GHz - (Overclocked @ 3.5GHz)
RAM: OCZ 4GB DDR2 PC3200
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB

I do recall rendering this one piece of footage that took approximately 30+/- minutes to render out.
Now with my new system, that footage only takes approximately 15+/- minutes to render out that footage and this is not even overclocked.
It's only for big rendering projects is when I'll enable the overclocked settings.
So yea, this AE on Windows 7 64bit hauls a$$!

Also I'm noticing some insane improvements in render times with Maya 64Bit (3D application).
Well, maybe that's because it see's 8 CPU's and all of my ram.
Rendering out this one still shot in Maya went as follows:

My old AMD FX-60 Dual-Core @ 4gigs PC3200:
NON OC @ 2.6Ghz: 13 minutes
OC'd @ 3.5Ghz: 9 minutes

My I7 975 Quad Core @ 12gigs DDR3 1600:
NON OC @ 3.33GHz: 2:20
OC'd @ 4.00GHz: 1:48

[nubian]

Yep ,regarding the cores, it can only see the 4 actual cores and not the HT ones.

Now for the RAM, I am not 100% sure. I believe it has something to do with the fact that AE is not 64 bit. Adobe will make it, one day...
If you look into your Windows 7 preferences, do you see the 12GBs?

In AE, I use 1GB per CPU for the Minimum allocation. This way, I am halfway from Longer RAM Preview and Halfway from Faster Rendering. For me, it brings perfect balance. I do have to say that sometimes the preview is not long enough, but that is because I only have 6Gb. Change this is you want optimal rendering time.

Add Disk Cache on separate HDD, it will help you when you render. 10k or 15k drives help a lot!

Hope this helps. PM if anything.

thanks for your reply!

As far as Windows 7 goes, it does see all 12 gigs install.
Other applications including CPU-Z see all 12 gigs.



Even while rendering, the information at the bottom would display that it's only using approximately 53%+/- of 4 gigs.

I feel like I'm only using half the potential of what I could really be doing for faster render times.
But it boggles me that AE will only see 8 gigs installed and not 12gigs.

[Relic]

Why does that CPU-Z say you have Dual channel on the memory? I thought the i7 motherboards took triple channel. I am not a computer guru by any stretch, but mine says triple when I run it.

[nubian]

Thank you Relic for bringing this to my attention, I didn't even catch that.
What's weird is that windows 7 read 12gigs, CPU-Z read 12gigs, but something was up with the channels only reading dual.
Maybe that's the reason why AE was only seeing 8 gigs installed instead of 12.
I looked at my POST and in the bios, sure enough it was reading only 8 gigs, strange.
Even ran Memtest and it too read it was in dual channel mode.

So what I did was was shifted my dimm placements, so the dimms that were placed in slot 1,3,5 are now in 2,4,6 and the dimms that were in 2,4,6 are now in 1,3,5.
I don't know why I thought that would work but it did.

Now the POST and BIOS sees 12 gigs, Memtest see triple channeling and CPU-Z sees triple channeling.



AE now sees all 12gigs and my renders are even more faster now after tweaking the Mem and Multi settings.
My Maya renders are a bit faster now too!

Thanks again Relic for catching this!

[meso]

wow amazing computers...just curious: so how much does it cost to get a comp with intel i7 12gb ram and great video card?

[Kamikazebomber]

hey guys,
I have a brand new computer that I just built, and its got an intel i7 920 quad core processor, 6GB of tri-channel ram, a nvidia geforce 79000gt/gto(ok that's an old one) and vista 64bit sp2, but rendering is damn slow.
The main problem i have, is that ram previews are freezing the program very often. When it works, AE renders 2-3 frames then freeze for 5 seconds before resuming ram previews.

It also says after adding footage to the render queue that i'm only using about 20% of 4gb ram for render.

Maybe someone could help me out

[Wakeandbbakefilms]

hi just interested to know how you guys get on using the gefrce graphics cards with maya. I looked on the autodesk website and it pretty much said not to use the geforce cards but to stick to the quadro cards. I was going to get the quadro fx 1800 but if maya runs smoothly on a geforce I may save some money. Do you guys get smooth playback in maya, what kind of poly count slows things down? is it still quick with textures and lighting in the viewport? are things like deforming geometry animations fast to scrub through? Thanks for any advice

[Todd Harland]

@mutleee - I would agree with aNgeloG that 12GB 1600MHz DDR3 would be the way to go and that dual socket 1366 motherboards do not exist yet.
BUT
1. It is possible to use a single processor in a dual socket motherboard until you have the money to purchase a second one.
2. 10K+ hard drives are really unnecessary unless you're running servers or data centers.
I'd suggest Western Digital Caviar Black hard drives for their excellent read/write speeds, large cache, low latency and long life.
3. The Asus P6T Deluxe V2 is an excellent board.

hi just interested to know how you guys get on using the gefrce graphics cards with maya. I looked on the autodesk website and it pretty much said not to use the geforce cards but to stick to the quadro cards.

Tom's Hardware did a fairly decent job of trying to compare the two.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that you're just paying extra for different drivers or a higher level of customer support, but that is just not the case.
Nvidia and companies such as Adobe and Autodesk worked closely together to make these cards work better specifically with their software.
It's not just optimized drivers, Quadro cards have different architecture.
Gaming cards are engineered to load and unload data as fast as possible, so gamers get higher frame rates.
Workstations cards are engineered to load and hold data for extended periods of time, so we can load our objects once and manipulate them close to or in real time.
Even with the top of the line Quadro cards you may notice poor frame rate in gaming.
"Soft mods" do exist that will make your OS "see" a Geforce card as a Quadro card, but do NOT be fooled by this.
Different drivers can't compensate for the fact that the two cards are structurally different.
Yes, the GPU chips may be the same between some models, but those are not the only pieces of the puzzle.

If you're serious about graphics, spend the money if you have it.
If you're serious about gaming, get a gaming card.
If you have the money, buy both and try them out.
You should be able to return the one that you don't want.

I'm a Max user with a Quadro FX 1800.
Before I made the purchase I found a chart somewhere online that showed performance gains with different 3D apps across the different Quadro models.
You might want to try and find it as I can't seem to locate it now, but if you can take my word for it, you'd be wise to go for the 1800 because performance gain with the higher models isn't relative to the price difference unless you're working with some insane polygon counts.

[Wakeandbbakefilms]

thanks for that, its pretty much what I figured. The fx 1800 was the card I was looking at getting to run with maya. I just hope it will be fast enough as I really cant afford to buy the next one up. Cheers