Can't seem to use more than 50% cpu

[gillett]

No matter what I do I can't seem to get the other 50% of my cpu usage. Earlier I was encoding songs with iTunes-LAME and adding them to iTunes, surfing the web, and watching movies with VLC, and according to iStatPro I never used more than 50% cpu, which is kind of annoying since I was encoding pretty slowly. You'd figure with 48% cpu "idle", I'd be able to encode a little faster than the ~5.7x I got Maybe I'm not sure exactly what would use both cores, but I figured mp3 encoding would have done it

 

[fleshman03]

No matter what I do I can't seem to get the other 50% of my cpu usage. Earlier I was encoding songs with iTunes-LAME and adding them to iTunes, surfing the web, and watching movies with VLC, and according to iStatPro I never used more than 50% cpu, which is kind of annoying since I was encoding pretty slowly. You'd figure with 48% cpu "idle", I'd be able to encode a little faster than the ~5.7x I got Maybe I'm not sure exactly what would use both cores, but I figured mp3 encoding would have done it

Try ripping a DVD with Handbrake. That will do the job.

Besides, I think the OS likes to leave a core available if you are doing web surfing or other light activities. (Just my observation)

Oh and make sure the power settings are set to better performance.

 

[Apple Ink]

Trash a big video and secure delete!

Also, Im not a great fan of iStat so I would prefer if you use Activity Monitor for monitoring CPU usage at least!

 

[edesignuk]

Try ripping a DVD with Handbrake. That will do the job.

Depends on where the OP is getting this 50% figure from exactly. Handbrake only seems to use 1 core, so depending where you look will only use 50%. On my 8 core MP Handbrake only uses ~13%% of total power, but ~100% of a single core. The usage figure depends on where you're finding your processor utilisation info.

 

[fleshman03]

Depends on where the OP is getting this 50% figure from exactly. Handbrake only seems to use 1 core, so depending where you look will only use 50%. On my 8 core MP Handbrake only uses ~13%% of total power, but ~100% of a single core. The usage figure depends on where you're finding your processor utilisation info.

Wow. That is why I love these forums. I always learn something new. Seriously, thank you for the correction.

I'm guessing the ability to utilize more than one core will change with Grand Central in Snow Leopard. (maybe)

 

[fredr500]

Handbrake

Run 2 copies of Handbrake using the internal and a USB optical drive. I do this all the time on my mac pro, but I recall it maxing out all 4 cores (watching with iSTAT).

As an aside, what do you have against iSTAT?
Fred

 

[Radio Monk33]

Using Winclone to backup a windows partition will also max out your system resources..

 

[e12a]

open up a few terminal windows and type "yes" without quotes.