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Although I wasn't seriously suggesting the comparison - and Bob is correct that the new versions of AE limit the installs of AE render so you'd need to buy more licenses - I will repeat that the current Mac Minis have a current and very capable processor in them. The Core 2 Duo that I mentioned was in relation to my 3+ year old iMac. A new mac mini has a mobile i5 in it (or an i7 if you pay a premium) and it could easily run 2 instances of AE render. No, you wouldn't run it in multi-processor mode, you'd run two separate instances of AE render in single processor mode and they'd render different parts of your composition. That's what Deadline does - it automatically splits your render into sections (eg 1 second) and distributes them amongst the machines on the render farm. The processors aren't exactly the Xeon class but they're not obsolete and they offer great value for money. That's why the idea is interesting - one monster machine or an iMac with 4 mac minis for the same price...
The idea of a render farm - even if it's only 4 mac minis - is that they're just render machines. They wouldn't even need a keyboard or mouse, let alone a monitor. The only software they'd run would be deadline, which would be executing the AE render engine in the same way that Lloyd's BG render script does. They don't need full installs of After Effects.
But there's all sorts of other things to take into account, such as having to adapt your entire workflow to image sequences. I didn't exactly do the sums or the prices accurately. But they are indicative.
As I said - it's just a thought experiment. It highlights the difference in price between a consumer desktop and a professional desktop, and that I've grown to like render farms :-)
-Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Balint [mailto:greg@delrazor.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 01:46 PM
To: 'After Effects Mail List'
Subject: Re: [AE] The Future of the Mac Pro in Video Post
Can a dual core Mac mini run on both cores? Doesn't that bog the system down to a stand-still? Considering a while ago when I had a dual core pc and could only run one core in AE Mp settings, does deadline just run a streamlined OS completely just for rendering?
Also, today's 12 core systems are 12 faster cores, with smaller architecture and faster busses and better memory controllers. 12 cores in one box vs 8 cores split up across core 2 duos would be no contest. The 12 core would probably beat it by 2x the speed, even though it only has 1/3 more processors.
I like the idea of having a dedicated farm for rendering though. That would be a nice alternative to faster renders; the fact that you could continue to work on a dedicated station while your renders to off and finish on the network.
On this small topic, I know it's been asked before, but does anyone have an idea if there are good modern AE benchmark project files out there that stress the Mp setup and RAM and can be measured by speed of render? I'd love to have statistics like Cinebench provides and 3dfluff archives at cbscores.com
Maybe we can put one together as a list, and make sure we find processor intensive plugin actions, then have a second render that relies more on RAM (time /echo effects maybe?)
////Greg Balint
///Art Director / Motion Graphics Designer
delRAZOR.com/
On Jan 24, 2012, at 9:20 PM, "Chris Zwar" <chris@chriszwar.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 12:49 PM, Jim Lang <james.c.lang@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Does AE work decently on a mini?
>
> From: Teddy Gage [mailto:teddygage@gmail.com]
> I think it depends on your definition of "decently," and of course, the
> project. Could you mock up a few quick titles? Sure. Would you be able to
> render a 1080p project with 5 million+ particles and a mess of 3D layers
> and depth of field? probably not.
>
>
> Actually I respectfully disagree. Mac Minis come with a dual-core i5 (i5 is what's in an iMac), if you give them enough ram they'll run After Effects just fine. My home machine is an iMac that's just over 3 years old, it has 4gb ram and a Core 2 Duo in it. It runs AE v5 without any problems and I've done a lot of high end jobs with it - it's less powerful than a current mac mini and is due to be replaced but it can still do anything I want it to (just slowly).
>
> Here's a thought experiment:
>
> If you were to buy a high-end, 12-core Mac Pro and stick 24 GB ram in it, the Apple Store will happily charge you $6000 for it.
>
> For the same $6000, you could buy a 27" quad-core iMac with 16GB ram, and 4 dual-core Mac Minis with 8GB ram. If you use the change to buy Deadline network rendering software, you've got yourself a nice iMac workstation and a 4 machine render farm. With dual cores and 8 GB ram, each mac mini can have 2 instances of AE render running at the same time, so you've got 8 render engines at your disposal.
>
> Would such a setup be faster than a single 12-core Mac Pro? I don't know. But it's worth thinking about...
>
>
> -Chris
>
>
>
>
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