AE crashing on startup, GPU update suspected culprit. Any advice appreciated.

Question

So yesterday, after 8 weeks of waiting on my order, I finally welcomed the arrival of my new MacPro.  Only 12 GB of RAM (I didn't want to spend megabucks on Apple memory since the computer was already setting me back), 6-core Intel, AMD FirePro D700 GPU, running OSX 10.9.2.
I'm a Creative Cloud member, so one of my first orders of business was downloading After Effects and making sure it was updated. 
So far, so good.
However, my System Preferences told me I needed to update my NVIDIA "CUDA" driver.  That should have been my first red light--why would I need an NVIDIA driver update for an AMD graphics card?  But being overly eager to update everything, I pulled the trigger and downloaded the updated driver.  I blame the fact that I'm more of an artist and less of a tech guy. 
Now, After Effects crashes instantly upon launch, with the following error:
Right now, all I want is to be able to use After Effects ... but I'll also say that I'm pretty disappointed that this new, flashy computer may not be able to take advantage of the OpenGL capabilites of CS6 because of the brand of the GPU.
Any advice would be hugely appreciated.

Answer 1

thevisualedge1 wrote:
I'm pretty disappointed that this new, flashy computer may not be able to take advantage of the OpenGL capabilites of CS6 because of the brand of the GPU.
First of all, you are working with CC (version 12 of After Effects) - not CS6 (which was version 11).
Secondly, the only thing you're missing out on by not having an NVIDIA GPU is acceleration of the 3d ray-tracing renderer. That's it. And, since CC comes with a free (LIte) version of Cinema 4D, you have a superior option for creating 3d objects anyway. More info about the GPU in AE here. So don't worry about not having an NVIDIA GPU for After Effects. (Although, if you were really planning to use the 3d ray-tracing renderer a lot, I would have assumed you would at least have looked at the tech specs of After Effects before you made a big purchase.)
Anyway, to solve your problems, you will proably need to get rid of the CUDA driver that was installed. Luckily, since it's a new machine you haven't done much with it yet, if you're having trouble with that, you can wipe it and start over.