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Mac Pro or iMac, needs are in thread.

kresh

kresh

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
I've recently settled with Worker's Comp insurance for an accident that has disabled me. For the 1st time in my life I can afford a Mac Pro, but I don't want to just waste money. I would like to buy a computer I can use for 5 or 6 years.

My main need is converting video files to h.264 for my :apple:TV and iPod (2 or 3 videos a day).

This is what I am currently faced with (click thumbnail):


This conversion has been running for 40 mins and there's 360+ left to go on my Mac Mini 1.5 G4 (overclocked 1.25 G4) (This is for a video of 49 mins)

Will I notice a huge improvement in speed of the Mac Pro Quad Core 2.66 over the iMac 2.8 for encoding h.264, or ripping DVD's, for :apple:TV and iPods?

I don't play any games, nor will I use Windows.

Sorry if this has been asked a hundred times already. I looked through the forums, but didn't see this exact scenario addressed.
 
1st your dealing with one processor instead of 2.

If you check mac speedzone you can get an idea of the speed difference between 1.5 and 2.8

The speed diif between a single 1.83 and a singles 2.8 (testing one core that is) is Approx 164%. Now that that and compare it to your SINGLE 1.5 and think double....

I would guess a 300% speed gain. At minimum.

http://macspeedzone.com/html/hardware/machine/comparison/all/archive/2007_8.html

I think you'd be quite satisified with a 2.8Ghz iMac. though a Quad 2.6 would probably net you a 400-500% speed increase, IF this program is multithreaded. If not, then at best you'd see 1.5 to 1.8 times increase.
Looking at what you use. I think Visual Hub is there true baby, and upgrading to that would be an even bigger boon in addition to the Hardware upgrade.....

Just my .02

kresh said:
I've recently settled with Worker's Comp insurance for an accident that has disabled me. For the 1st time in my life I can afford a Mac Pro, but I don't want to just waste money. I would like to buy a computer I can use for 5 or 6 years.

My main need is converting video files to h.264 for my :apple:TV and iPod (2 or 3 videos a day).

This is what I am currently faced with (click thumbnail):


This conversion has been running for 40 mins and there's 360+ left to go on my Mac Mini 1.5 G4 (overclocked 1.25 G4) (This is for a video of 49 mins)

Will I notice a huge improvement in speed of the Mac Pro Quad Core 2.66 over the iMac 2.8 for encoding h.264, or ripping DVD's, for :apple:TV and iPods?

I don't play any games, nor will I use Windows.

Sorry if this has been asked a hundred times already. I looked through the forums, but didn't see this exact scenario addressed.
Click to expand...
 
If you're looking for it to last that length of time, you should probably consider waiting for the new Mac Pros which will undoubtly be comming soon. While the iMac would likely be fine for you now, if you plan on continuing to ripping and encoding video for 5-6 years you will surely want something more powerful. It's perfectly possible the next Mac Pro base model will have 8 cores at 2.8GHz or 2.83GHz, while not exactly 4 times the performance, its certainly may not be far off as software gets better.
 
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