Very slow RAM preview (novice user in need of help)

Question

I am looking for some recommendations for hardware.  I had a Mac Pro (8 core with 8MB RAM) and it rendered at the same speed as my IMAC.  I am using AE CS5 and the trapcode 10 suite, in my comps.  A ten second comp will take over 10 minutes to RAM preview, it takes 4-5 seconds for each frame, frame by frame.  I tried enabling and disabling the (multiple frames simultaneously) function, as well as experimenting with the number of cores for AE setting.  Any hardware recommendations would be gratefully appreciated.  If you could share your hardware configuration / AE settings, It would be much appreciated. 

Answer 1

See this page for information and recommendations about memory and improving performance in After Effects.
Recommendations in general are difficult because every composition and computer are different, as are people's preferences regarding rendering speed versus length of RAM previews, what other software they want to run at the same time, et cetera.
But, I'll make a very broad recommendation:
For HD-sized movies, you want to have 3-4GB of RAM installed per processor. So, for a quad-core with hyperthreading (which effectively has eight processors), you'd want 24-32GB of RAM. This describes my personal computer, by the way, so you know that I have put my personal money where my recommendations are.
Don't neglect hard disks. You need to have more than one hard disk. Sooooo many people complain of poor performance and fret about RAM and CPUs, and then I find that they're running their OS and applications from the same single disk that they're reading source files from and writing output files to... or their external disks are over a USB connection. [*shudder*]
BTW, particle effects like Trapcode Particular take a long time to render. That's just a fact of life. You may make them faster, but you'll never make them fast.