Can't believe my MacBook Pro isn't powerful enough to play iTunes 1080p videos

[pgiguere1]

Ah, the good old Megahertz myth.

It's pretty hard to compare processors when they use a different microarchitecture and different built-in technologies, so next time I suggest looking at Geekbench scores instead of comparing clock speeds.

Mac laptops with 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processors have a Geekbench score of around 3,150, while the baseline Retina MacBook Pro has a Geekbench score of 10,881.

FYI, OP's MBP is the only unibody MBP model ever made that has a sub-2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor. Other incompatible models include pre-unibody MacBook Pros (2006-2008), the white MacBook (except the 2010 model) and the baseline 2008 aluminium MacBook.

 

[Zwikker]

That donkey will perform better if you make it walk down hill instead of an up hill.

Lazy coding? Some of you guys should be comedians.

If you have a donkey, it does not matter if you feed it oats designed for racing horses. It still won't perform like a racing horse. The particular C2D CPU does not have a hardware dedicated to compression and decompression of video. Perhaps Apple should also spend money on getting a 2004 Power PC to run the latest FCP X?



I am sure your post sounded great in your head, but on paper... not so much.

 

[covertsurfer]

guys, the article is referring to a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo.
new macbook pros have Core i7, so the frequency is not the only factor.
It's like comparing a 3.4GHz pentium 4 (remember those?) to a 1.8GHz Core i5.

This is still something that confuses me! Why is a 1.8Ghz Core i5 faster than an P4 3.4GHz?

 

[nateo200]

There is so much misinformation and crap in this thread that I barely want to touch it. Well my arthritic hands don't but I do Seriously I can play 28mbps Blu-ray content all the way down to my insanely compressed 720p content with like a thousand reference frames, with Dolby TrueHD 5.1, etc. Just close some tabs guys. Take a look at my model of Mac in my sig...its a 2010 and it still has the Core 2 Duo and its not "From 2006 dude" like half the people are saying...I run multiple programs on this thing like its my job and it doesn't choke.

 

[theSeb]

That donkey will perform better if you make it walk down hill instead of an up hill.

True, but can you make a donkey walk down some steps?

 

[NewbieCanada]

The rMBP is easily fast enough to play 1080p content. It should be fast enough to play 4K content.

Is and does. It stutters a bit playing 4k in Media Player Classic under Parallels, but does just fine with 4K video in iTunes.

It's also powerful enough to play 1080p in Windows under Parallels.

 

[TheMacBookPro]

This is still something that confuses me! Why is a 1.8Ghz Core i5 faster than an P4 3.4GHz?

Because it's a dramatically newer and more advanced architecture.

 

[covertsurfer]

But why is the clock speed slower? It makes it harder for comparison. Over the years clock speeds got faster and faster now they are still at 2.6 or 1.8 and I don't really understand

 

[gloss]

But why is the clock speed slower? It makes it harder for comparison. Over the years clock speeds got faster and faster now they are still at 2.6 or 1.8 and I don't really understand

It's something you'll have to get used to. The mHz myth has been dead for years.

 

[MagicBoy]

There is so much misinformation and crap in this thread that I barely want to touch it. Well my arthritic hands don't but I do Seriously I can play 28mbps Blu-ray content all the way down to my insanely compressed 720p content with like a thousand reference frames, with Dolby TrueHD 5.1, etc. Just close some tabs guys. Take a look at my model of Mac in my sig...its a 2010 and it still has the Core 2 Duo and its not "From 2006 dude" like half the people are saying...I run multiple programs on this thing like its my job and it doesn't choke.

Yeah, and it's got H.264 acceleration in the GPU. Early C2D Macs didn't.

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This is still something that confuses me! Why is a 1.8Ghz Core i5 faster than an P4 3.4GHz?

Because it's a more efficient design.

More MHz needs better quality components, which costs more to manufacture. In operation it will need more voltage, therefore increase power consumption and reduce battery life for portable machines.

 

[TheMacBookPro]

But why is the clock speed slower? It makes it harder for comparison. Over the years clock speeds got faster and faster now they are still at 2.6 or 1.8 and I don't really understand

Because more MHz does not necessarily mean it's faster, and it hasn't for many years now. Just like how more megapixels does not necessarily mean it's better.

You can still use the numbers for comparison, as long as the processors you're comparing is based on the same architecture

 

[nateo200]

Because more MHz does not necessarily mean it's faster, and it hasn't for many years now. Just like how more megapixels does not necessarily mean it's better.

You can still use the numbers for comparison, as long as the processors you're comparing is based on the same architecture

Exactly. BTW I'm digging the ///M5 logo as your avatar..do you have an ///M5? Someone on Macrumors was showing their's off a few years or so back...my dad had an ///M3 and I loved that thing!

 

[TheMacBookPro]

Exactly. BTW I'm digging the ///M5 logo as your avatar..do you have an ///M5? Someone on Macrumors was showing their's off a few years or so back...my dad had an ///M3 and I loved that thing!

Sure do

I have several pictures posted here and here.

I briefly considered an E90 M3 Saloon at that time but it was just too small... and who can resist the allure of a V10?

 

[Tsuchiya]

According to Apple, my MBP Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz isn't powerful enough to play 1080p videos from iTunes, and they are right, as I tried it and it stuttered! It requires 2.4GHz or higher.

Apple iTunes 1080p video system requirements, the link: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3209

Why in the world does it require so much CPU power to play 1080p vids? I am shocked that I have to upgrade what I thought was a powerful computer just to play 1080p vids!

Bring on the comments!

Believe me, 2.4GHz doesn't exactly cut it either

Don't even get me started on streaming anything 720p or above online...

I guess I can't complain though, apart from this (and gaming of course) my MacBook Pro is hardly showing it's age.

 

[lockdown571]

I have a 2.4 ghz Core 2 Duo "Santa Rosa" Macbook Pro from 2007 and the CPU can't handle high bit rate 1080p. This is not all that surprising. IIRC, the 8600 GT it has can handle high bit rate 1080p videos as long as the software has the appropriate GPU acceleration. If not, I get stuttering.

 

[nateo200]

Sure do

I have several pictures posted here and here.

I briefly considered an E90 M3 Saloon at that time but it was just too small... and who can resist the allure of a V10?

I must say you have excellent taste in cars my good sir! Haha my dad had an E30 87' I wanna say was the year 2 door ///M3 when I was about 6 years old. Was a BMW fan even then. I loved pulling the seats up to climb in the decent sized back and sitting on the leather. We drove through Canada once and he put the cruise control on at 105MPH like it was nothing...the car was soooo smooth. He bought her used but she was strong as an ox. Eventually he reached about 310,000miles and my little sister came along so he sold it. I remember as a 6 or 7 year old putting up "counter sale signs" that said "Not really for Sale" and crying when the new owners drove away....I loved that car so much. Im still in undergrad so no BMW anytime soon for me but if I could have one I would grab a used E46 ///M3 for sure. When I'm older and finish med school Ill be eating Ramen everyday to make sure I can get my beloved M3 (used and cheap if possible)! It sounds totally douchey to do that but I want the car for its history and meaning to me. I swear no car drives like The Ultimate Driving Machine I've been a obsessed fan since I was damn near born..BMW should give me a nice gift haha but I digress as I really just exploded words off topic terribly written about my dream car. Carry on gentlemen!

PS: TheMacBookPro, I will definitely check your thread out!

 

[Kingofnima]

So I saw this and immediately thought no way my new rmbp would fall in to this category but sure enough I got the base model and the 2.3 GHz doesn't cut it. Its not a huge lost, not big enough to make me regret not getting the higher end model. On the go the iPad will suffice with movies even the iPhone isn't to bad if need to be extra portable, and at home thats why i got a tv duh, I can't see the mac ever being my primary device for video content.

The article is referring to Core 2 Duo Processors but are you seriously telling me you would be ok with a 2K+ computer that doesn't play 1080p? Seriously man you gotta be crazy!

 

[gokart mozart]

This is still something that confuses me! Why is a 1.8Ghz Core i5 faster than an P4 3.4GHz?

For the same reason why a twin-turbo charged V6 BMW from today can outrun a V12 Bimmer from a decade ago. Improved efficiency introduced through new designs.

A Pentium 4 had fewer cores, and only later versions introduced hyper threading tech.

 

[iDutchman]

The old early 2006 MacBook with it's 2Ghz Intel Core Duo plays 1080P .mkv files perfectly fine within Plex. No issues, at all.

1080P YouTube also no problem.

 

[the.orange.tuba]

My MBP specs for those that asked

For the record my MBP isn't THAT old! For those that wanted to know, my MBP 13" is a late 2009 model(2 1/2 years old) with 8MB of RAM and 1TB hard drive with plenty of free space. It has the Nvidia 9400M graphics.

I was just disappointed since a cheapo blu-ray player and an inexpensive Apple TV, etc. can play 1080p and my MBP can't. My MBP plays YouTube 720 fine, but I haven't tried 1080 yet. My MBP also plays Netflix HD fine too. So, I was just shocked when it couldn't handle iTunes 1080p videos.

Thanks for all the replies. Post on, if you have more to say!

 

[l.a.rossmann]

So the new ipad with a mobile CPU chipset can play 1080p videos, but not laptop CPUs. Help me understand this please.

That's Apple for you.

----------

Call me nuts. I remember 2006 vividly. I had a mid-end Opteron 165 processor slightly overclocked to 2.6 GHz with an ATI Radeon X800 gto2 video card, and I remember decoding 1080p x264 just fine. I felt so awesome with my 2 GB of DDR400 memory I ramped to DDR 500 with 2-2-2-5 timings. That machine would be considered dead right now, but it has no problem decoding any 1080p x264 file I play on it. Why would any Macbook Pro, either?

 

[AsicFoo]

I am surprised how much arguing has been spawned off this question. There is much more to processing power than clock speed. There are different cache sizes and speed, and those generally make the biggest speed difference. But there are major cache issues with multi-core CPUs that hurt performance. This was seen in the Core2 which yielded almost no performance improvement over a single core design. There is the question of the FSB and system busses, which result in throughput and latency issues on streaming data applications. But, the biggest difference with video codecs comes from the hardware acceleration. A desktop CPU is really not optimized for that type of application where calculations are performed on multi-dimensional blocks of data which cause cache miss issues and result in poor performance. Yes, the CPUs listed are all capable of handling the decode if that is ALL they were doing and used highly specialized software, but with an OS and a scheduler the software just doesn't get access to the resources long enough to decode the video without glitches and stuttering.

As far as why a i7 at 2.0 Ghz blows away a 3.0Ghz P4 it is truly a combination of FSB, cache, on-chip memory controller and CPU architecture. The super scalar processors like i7 can increase performance and execute multiple instructions per clock by adding more compute blocks like ALUs, FPUs, branch predictors and custom hardware acceleration IP.

The reason we have seen clocks stop at 2.4-3.3Ghz is that the rest of the system bottlenecks performance to the point that higher frequency doesn't result in improved performance.

Does that all make sense?

 

[12dylan34]

I have an early 2008 2.4 GHz pre-unibody MacBook Pro, which is apparently the minimum, and it plays 1080p rather well. I guess it's something they built in to handle the decoding.

 

[skitzogreg]

I have an early 2008 2.4 GHz pre-unibody MacBook Pro, which is apparently the minimum, and it plays 1080p rather well. I guess it's something they built in to handle the decoding.

Agreeing with another poster, it's likely due to the fact you have the 8600M and not the ATi counterpart.

 

[racer1441]

3+ year old computer, what do you expect.