8-Core vs Quad-Core for Adobe After Effects

Question

With AfterEffects running native on Intel, how much difference will it make to run AE on an 8-core MacPro vs the Quad-core?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Without specifically knowing AE, it's behaviours and requirements, it's hard to say. However, generally speaking the ability to saturate 8 cores is dependent on two things…
1) Mac OS X. The performance of Mac OS X and its handling of multi-threaded applications is all important. While Tiger does a decent job of this you'll find that Leopard will put it to shame in this regard. If you actually monitor your core saturation during processing you'll notice that many application, which includes the like of iTunes etc, won't simultaneously saturate all cores. What they'll actually do is saturate one core at a time sequentially. Funnily I find that multi-threaded PowerPC applications/Rosetta saturates all cores very well.
2) Data source and destination. Where your data is coming from and going to, obviously with CPU processing in between, is a hugge consideration. For instance, if data must come and go from hard disk you might well find that this will be you bottleneck. This also goes for RAM. How much data must come and go from the processors is all important as this will result, or not, in the processor cores waiting for data or not. If they're waiting they won't saturate.
Obviously there are things you can do in this regard to minimise your data bottlenecks such as using RAID and optimal RAM installations (I'd recommend anyone going with 8 cores go with a minimum 8GB - 4 x 2GB in Slots 1/2 - RAM)
Ultimately, unless you know how efficient AE is in the multi-threaded and its data handling stakes you might well find a huge benefit by going with 8 cores. On the other hand, you could also be wasting your money. My advise would be to call Adobe and ask them. Additionally, find someone with AE and a quad-core MP and watch the core saturation for yourself. I'd use MenuMeters…
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17713
… set to update as fast as possible for this to see what's going on.
I get the feeling the biggest benefit, as others have noted, will be more efficient multiple application processing/multi-tasking rather than single application processing. Until it gets into oswers hands it's hard to really say for certain.