Hello all- first time poster, longtime reader.
In January, I bought my first Mac Pro (of course, a matter of weeks before the new one came out) and I got the 8-core version with 4 gb of RAM and the 8800GT graphics card.
Well, I've been using Final Cut 6 to edit and render videos. But, I noticed that the program wasn't using nearly as much of the resources available as it really should for rendering video. We're talking maybe 10% of the CPU and very little memory.
After much research, I found that OSX is a multitasking system and doesn't necessarily allocate all free resources to one task.
Then, I downloaded XBench and decided to give benchmark testing a whirl. Graphics card blew the baseline G5 out of the water. So did CPU speeds and memory speeds.
Then, I noticed the hard drive speeds compared to the baseline:
Disk Test
My Mac Pro: 59.37
Baseline G5: 100.00
Here are the full results: Baseline benchmark testing. This is using the hard drive that came with the computer. HOW COULD THIS BE??
Can this be the bottleneck in my video rendering process? I mean, for standard definition video, it takes at least real-time or slower to render without even using all the system resources.
Should I buy a new video card like the 4870? Anything to make the hard drive read/write speed faster? Is something wrong with the system?
I would appreciate any help, as this is very frustrating and I just want my $3000 computer to work the best it can.
Thanks and it's great to finally be on the board!
~Jim
In January, I bought my first Mac Pro (of course, a matter of weeks before the new one came out) and I got the 8-core version with 4 gb of RAM and the 8800GT graphics card.
Well, I've been using Final Cut 6 to edit and render videos. But, I noticed that the program wasn't using nearly as much of the resources available as it really should for rendering video. We're talking maybe 10% of the CPU and very little memory.
After much research, I found that OSX is a multitasking system and doesn't necessarily allocate all free resources to one task.
Then, I downloaded XBench and decided to give benchmark testing a whirl. Graphics card blew the baseline G5 out of the water. So did CPU speeds and memory speeds.
Then, I noticed the hard drive speeds compared to the baseline:
Disk Test
My Mac Pro: 59.37
Baseline G5: 100.00
Here are the full results: Baseline benchmark testing. This is using the hard drive that came with the computer. HOW COULD THIS BE??
Can this be the bottleneck in my video rendering process? I mean, for standard definition video, it takes at least real-time or slower to render without even using all the system resources.
Should I buy a new video card like the 4870? Anything to make the hard drive read/write speed faster? Is something wrong with the system?
I would appreciate any help, as this is very frustrating and I just want my $3000 computer to work the best it can.
Thanks and it's great to finally be on the board!
~Jim