On Jul 26, 2010, at 9:16 AM, JoeTaxpayer wrote: >> > > It sure does. Much appreciated. > I have a wife who actually tells me that we spend on her and our > daughter, but I don't buy much for myself. I am green-lighted to go > full Mac Pro $3K machine, but really wonder what I'll see. I suppose I > should track down an owner who is encoding a DVD to TiVo, and discuss > with him. If the software to do this particular task is not written to > fully use multicore, it seems that I'd see little improvement over > what you suggested the G5 would give me. Not an Intel discussion/ > issue, but one of the application itself properly using all cores. I > have 4 of these puppies (the G4 MDD) and offload the encoding to one > with no monitor remotely. If the G5 at 2.5GHz /64 bit gives me the > improvement, I'm not sure how much more a 3GHz machine would, > depending how the SW runs. > > BTW - that link? Beautiful - it really gave me the comparison I was > looking for. Again, thanks.
I'm not sure about encoding a DVD to TiVo, but I have done a lot of encoding of uncompressed MOV files to H.264 streaming files. To give an example, with my old Dual 1 Ghz Quicksilver 2002, it would take about 20 minutes to compress a 20 minute clip. Roughly a 1:1 compression time. My Dual 2 Ghz G5 will do the same movie in anywhere from 7-10 minutes. My 13" MBP with a 2.26 Ghz Core2Duo will compress the same movie in anywhere from 5-7 minutes. I haven't compressed a DVD on my Macs in a long time, I usually dedicate the desktop PeeCee to do that since it usually sits idle anyway. Modern software is explicitly written to take advantage of the Intel platform, so you definitely do get a tremendous boost in performance. I haven't had the joy of using a MacPro personally (still too rich for my blood), but with the speeds I've experienced with my MBP and my iMac at work, I've been relatively impressed. I do wish Apple had stuck with PPC since it was one of the things that made them unique in the computer world. Nowadays I view them as a PeeCee with the privilege of running OSX. The thing to consider is the cost of what you're looking at. A Dual G5 can be had for around the $500 mark. A MacPro can be had for about 6x that with roughly twice the performance of the G5 (or more depending on how many cores it has). It really all depends on what you're looking to spend, how much of a hurry you're in, and what you really want to do with the machine. Regarding the link, I know it's old news, but I like reports with numbers, comparisons, and relatively complete testing of various aspects of the machines. I never go by synthetic benchmarks, I like to find reports of people's real-world experience with the hardware in question (hence why I give times of compression of videos I've actually compressed!). Hopefully again the above info is helpful. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
