Ultimate After Effects Machine

[bounderboy]

We are video production company and I am in process of Upgrading one of our Graphics suites. The two main products we use are After Effects and Photoshop and a little bit of 3d MAX. I want a machine that is optimised for running these progs.

The question is what do I go for, I want to spend a maximum of £1800. I don't require Monitors Keyboards Etc..

Processors AMD 64Bit, Intel P4 HT, Dual Core, Xeon, Operon etc. etc.

RAM - How much?

Graphics Cards - The cards listed on the Website for After Effects are quite old. Would I notice big performance increases using PCI Express cards with SLI.

Hard Drive, does this really speed or slow the machine down - or should I have raid drives etc..

Should I go branded eg. Dell... is there any specific manafacturers producing tailor made machines for After Effects..

Any help or hints guys would be most grateful..

I liked the look of this machine = the SLI spec machine at the bottom of the page for £1645.. any opinions

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/full_systems.html

Thanks for any help and hope my html above works Ok..

Cheers

Rob

 

[fordfox]

I would either go with AMD FX-57, Athlon 64 X2, P4 EE, or P4 D. If you go try to go with Xeon, you're going to end up spending most of your money on the processor. Hmm. 2gigs ram at the least. Go for 3-4. Don't know about the graphics cards. HD. SATA II. Don't go for a performance RAID. They don't give much enhancement speed wise, and are more liable to crash. If you want RAID, then do it for the data backup. As for manufacturers, it all depends on how much support you want, how much technical knowledge you have, and what you want.