Now Available: PugetBench for After Effects 1.0!

What is PugetBench?

While gaming or synthetic benchmarks can offer general insights, they fall short when it comes to measuring performance in the actual workflows that matter to content creators. That’s where PugetBench comes in. PugetBench is a suite of performance benchmarks developed by Puget Systems, designed to evaluate hardware using the same real-world creative applications professionals rely on every day.

We built these benchmarks out of necessity. There simply wasn’t a reliable way to test hardware using real creative applications in realistic scenarios. So, we began the process of turning our knowledge of computer hardware and creative workloads like video editing, motion graphics, and photography into a series of benchmarks to help users make the most informed workstation purchasing decisions possible.

Announcing PugetBench for After Effects 1.0!

We have been steadily expanding our suite of polished benchmarks in the PugetBench for Creators application, with the After Effects benchmark being the fourth to reach a “1.0” state (following Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and DaVinci Resolve). Leaving beta means that the tests are stable and reliable enough to be used by the public, and that we don’t expect the tests or scoring to change within the next few years. The exact performance measured can – and likely will – change as Adobe releases new versions of After Effects, but reviewers and end users can expect the tests themselves to remain stable.

In the case where a new version of After Effects is released that significantly impacts performance, we actively create new benchmark/application groups for our benchmark comparison and profile pages (example) so that when you are examining results, you will not be looking at results from application versions that perform differently.

About the Benchmark Tests

A full breakdown of the tests is included in the PugetBench for After Effects page, but to summarize, our After Effects benchmark includes three main categories of tests:

2D Tests

These projects focus on traditional 2D workflows. While GPU acceleration is used to some extent, these tests remain primarily CPU-limited and only moderately threaded.

3D Tests

Using the new Advanced 3D renderer, these tests stress modern 3D features in After Effects. They are highly GPU accelerated. Currently, the Advanced 3D renderer in After Effects performs exceptionally well on NVIDIA GPUs – averaging 4x faster than AMD or up to 20x faster than Apple systems. This is accurate, and a proper representation of how After Effects currently performs in these workloads. If Adobe introduces optimizations in the future (we are already noticing some changes in the 25.3 beta), our benchmark will automatically reflect those changes.

Tracking Tests

These evaluate various tracking algorithms and are mostly CPU-bound. Of particular interest is the test for Roto Brush 3.0, one of the few AI-powered features in AE that can be reliably benchmarked.

Application Support

Due to the need for new back-end functions, our After Effects benchmark requires After Effects 25.2 or newer. The current After Effects 25.3-beta is compatible, although support for beta versions should be considered experimental, as Adobe releases frequent updates, and there could be issues.

How to Run PugetBench for After Effects

If you want to run the benchmark on your system, you can download the main application from the PugetBench for Creators page. That app will automatically download all benchmark scripts and assets, and runs on top of your currently installed version of After Effects.

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