What do I need for better rendering times and stability

[IAmAndre]

Hi,

 

For starters, here's a quick summary of the my specs: Ryzen 5 2600X, 16GB of RAM and an RTX 3070. I also work on a fast WD m.2 SSD. I'm still experiencing slow render times and crashes during my workflow, which often includes using simultaneously Premiere and After Effects or Photoshop. I'm noticing that my CPU is often not running at full speed. Sometimes my GPU isn't either. But my RAM usage is very often higher than 90% as you can see on the screenshot.

 

It might sound obvious, but is adding some extra RAM a must right now, or should I also consider investing in a better CPU? I might not be able to upgrade both the RAM and CPU this year if I go for a large amount of RAM (buying a house yay!), which actually isn't a bad thing considering the new Ryzen lineup is expected in Q3.

 

So what is the right upgrade path? I'm torn between getting a lot of RAM now (either 32GB or 64GB) then upgrade the CPU next year, or get just another 16GB kit and upgrade the CPU a bit earlier. What do you think?

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

But my RAM usage is very often higher than 90%

Get more ram then. RUnning out of ram will tank performance.

 

Whats your full system specs?

 

What are you doing in the programs? What codecs? 

 

Do you have a upgrade budget in mind?

[IAmAndre]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Whats your full system specs?

It's all listed on my profile.

 

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What are you doing in the programs? What codecs? 

 

Mostly H264 but ProRes sometimes. It's mostly video animations on After Effects, then Premiere for mixing and sound design. For the record, my colleague, who's the main animator, managed to slow down a fully-spec'd MBP 16" with the M1 Max and 64GB of RAM. Now I'm not in charge of this kind of crazy animation works, but I often need to make some adjustments on his files, but rendering a 5-10 second scene usually takes me 10-20 minutes.

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you have a upgrade budget in mind?

I don't have a budget in mind but I would like to keep the prices low. So my plan was to spend up to $100-150 on RAM to at least solve the memory issue. Now if RAM isn't necessarily the issue, then I'll need to reconsider my options.

[FloRolf]

Yes, get more ram! When i upgraded from 16 to 32gb i saw a huge impact on render times.

 

Obviously a faster CPU will also help but your ram bottleneck has to be adressed first, this will probably also drive up CPU usage since currently it has to wait for ram.

[SpookyCitrus]

37 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

often includes using simultaneously Premiere and After Effects or Photoshop.

But my RAM usage is very often higher than 90% as you can see on the screenshot

So what is the right upgrade path? I'm torn between getting a lot of RAM now (either 32GB or 64GB) then upgrade the CPU next year, or get just another 16GB kit and upgrade the CPU a bit earlier. What do you think?

Ram is the main upgrade I'd recommend for right now. 16GB is not nearly enough for all that you're trying to do. If you really are running all of this simultaneously, that's also going to cause issues. Such as the crashing and slow times. Trying to run all three of these programs at once let alone if all three are rendering something out at the same time, that's going to take up a lot of resources this system just doesn't have. I'd upgrade the ram and stop running the programs simultaneously until you get a much beefier CPU. A 2600X isn't going to cut it for this level of workstation use.

[IAmAndre]

6 minutes ago, FloRolf said:

Yes, get more ram! When i upgraded from 16 to 32gb i saw a huge impact on render times.

 

Obviously a faster CPU will also help but your ram bottleneck has to be adressed first, this will probably also drive up CPU usage since currently it has to wait for ram.

Fine then, more RAM it is. Should I get an extra 16, 32, or 64GB? I know it's hard to answer on my behalf but I'm also concerned about timings and frequency. My current RAM is clocked at 3200MHz, so considering that I'm supposed to upgrade the CPU down the road, should I aim for higher frequency or just match the frequency and timings I have currently?

3 minutes ago, SpookyCitrus said:

Ram is the main upgrade I'd recommend for right now. 16GB is not nearly enough for all that you're trying to do. If you really are running all of this simultaneously, that's also going to cause issues. Such as the crashing and slow times. Trying to run all three of these programs at once let alone if all three are rendering something out at the same time, that's going to take up a lot of resources this system just doesn't have. I'd upgrade the ram and stop running the programs simultaneously until you get a much beefier CPU. A 2600X isn't going to cut it for this level of workstation use.

Actually they aren't all rendering at the same time, usually only one program is actually in use. But I need to have all of them running simultaneously. For example, I might realize when mixing with the voice over or the sounds FX that an animation needs to be slowed down in AE, or that some text needs to be shrunk down in Photoshop.

[SpookyCitrus]

Photoshop isn't a big deal as it doesn't take up as many resources as the other two. But Premiere and After Effects even just running simultaneously, they don't even have to be rendering, are going to be a lot for some computers. It takes resources to preview the files. So when you have both running and previewing projects it's going to take up a lot of resources too. I'd upgrade the ram and see if it alleviates some of the issues, it should for sure, but just know that you may still have slowness until you get a better CPU especially if you're going to have all three open at the same time with projects open.

[Chris Pratt]

7 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Fine then, more RAM it is. Should I get an extra 16, 32, or 64GB? I know it's hard to answer on my behalf but I'm also concerned about timings and frequency. My current RAM is clocked at 3200MHz, so considering that I'm supposed to upgrade the CPU down the road, should I aim for higher frequency or just match the frequency and timings I have currently?

That's a pickle, because ideally, you'd want faster RAM, particularly if you want to carry it forward to a future upgrade. However, Zen+ has a very weak IMC and often doesn't handle faster than 3200MHz well. You could potentially buy faster RAM and downclock until you upgrade the CPU, but that can be a non-trivial process.

[IAmAndre]

13 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

That's a pickle, because ideally, you'd want faster RAM, particularly if you want to carry it forward to a future upgrade. However, Zen+ has a very weak IMC and often doesn't handle faster than 3200MHz well. You could potentially buy faster RAM and downclock until you upgrade the CPU, but that can be a non-trivial process.

Complicated. And DDR5 is coming too. What's the best bang for the buck as of right now in terms of frequency? 3600MHz? Or is 3200MHz still an option for a next-gen Ryzen CPU?

[Chris Pratt]

34 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Complicated. And DDR5 is coming too. What's the best bang for the buck as of right now in terms of frequency? 3600MHz? Or is 3200MHz still an option for a next-gen Ryzen CPU?

3200MHz is passable if you get a CPU with a single CCD like a 5600X or 5800X. You pretty much need 3600MHz for the 5900X or 5950X, or you'll be leaving a significant amount of performance on the table.

[IAmAndre]

8 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

3200MHz is passable if you get a CPU with a single CCD like a 5600X or 5800X. You pretty much need 3600MHz for the 5900X or 5950X, or you'll be leaving a significant amount of performance on the table.

So I'm seeing two refurbished 16GB kits:

• G.Skill RipJaws 5 Series Noir 16 Go (2 x 8 Go) DDR4 4266 MHz CL16 at €108
• Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 16 Go (2 x 8 Go) DDR4 3600 MHz CL18 at €107

What should I go for? Are these good deals?

 

EDIT: There's also this Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO Series 32 Go (4x 8 Go) DDR4 3600 MHz CL18 at €182, which would imply selling my current RAM.

[Imbadatnames]

More RAM but you’re using Adobe products expect crashes. 

[IAmAndre]

So here's a quick update on the situation. I now have 32GB of RAM, and right now both RAM and CPU usage are close to 100%. In this example, I'm not even rendering the most complex scene, but it's still rendering at 1 frame per second, and I'm exporting a preview at 360p.

 

So what is the next step? Should I get even more RAM or even more CPU power? What's the priority. Now the Mac Studio suddenly looks very tempting, but I can see that for about $1000, I could get a 12th gen i7 with a motherboard and 64GB of RAM. Would that be a better option?