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bniu

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 21, 2010
1,128
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I'm kinda curious as to how fast handbrake would operate on a 12 core Mac Pro? (let's say with 16-32GB RAM)

Let's say a 24 minute episode at 640x480 2.5mbps off of a DVD, normally takes about 24 minutes on a 13" 2.4 C2D MBP with 8GB RAM.

how fast will the 12 core MP process that?

if one day I should have $10K to throw around, I want to go buy a top of the line MP just to have one...:D It costs the same as an International Business class air ticket, but the MP will last several years while the ticket is only good for a 30 hour experience...
 
if one day I should have $10K to throw around, I want to go buy a top of the line MP just to have one...:D It costs the same as an International Business class air ticket, but the MP will last several years while the ticket is only good for a 30 hour experience...

This is the most bizarre justification to spend $10k on a computer I've ever heard...
 
Save yourself ALLOT of cash and build your own for half the price. The put ubuntu on it. Handbrake rips great, just like in OS X. I built my dual quad core westmere system (E5640 processors) for around 2800 bucks. Apple wants over 5 grand for a comparable system. Handbrake does use all cores but not at 100%. still takes around 20 minutes to rip. If your hung up on buying a pro, get the cheapest 2010 model, then after awhile, upgrade the processors yourself. Otherwise, grab the single socket 6 core. I had a 2008 2.8 Mac pro w/24 gb ram. Ripped about the same time. Sold it while I could still get something out of it.
 
I built my dual quad core westmere system (E5640 processors) for around 2800 bucks. Apple wants over 5 grand for a comparable system.

Apple wants $5000 for a system that offers 50% more CPU performance than your system. Nothing that I'd call "comparable".
 
Just a bit of information if you end up getting a 12-core for whatever your needs might be and need to use handbrake. As of right now, handbrake does not take use of hyperthreading. I have used it for a few movies on my 12-core and I watch every other core go up and all the others stay all the way down.
 
Just a bit of information if you end up getting a 12-core for whatever your needs might be and need to use handbrake. As of right now, handbrake does not take use of hyperthreading. I have used it for a few movies on my 12-core and I watch every other core go up and all the others stay all the way down.

Hyper threading wont benefit you if the physical core is being maxed out.
 
I see that apples 2.66 westmere is the 6 core, not the 4 core I thought they were using. Thanks for pointing that out. When I built mine, I looked at apples web site and thought I saw the 8 core used 2.66 quads. Still not 50% more power but close enough.
 
To the OP: When ripping directly off of a DVD, the DVD drive is the bottleneck. Additional cores or higher clocks won't give you anything if the DVD drive can't read the DVD any faster.
 
I see that apples 2.66 westmere is the 6 core, not the 4 core I thought they were using. Thanks for pointing that out. When I built mine, I looked at apples web site and thought I saw the 8 core used 2.66 quads. Still not 50% more power but close enough.


It's exactly 50% more.

12 core 2.66GHz Westmere vs. 8 core 2.66GHz Westmere. Very, very simple math.
 
You must use fuzzy math. 24 processes (apple), 16 processes (mine). Both same speed. More like 40% if that. Definitely not worth spending over $2000 for the Mac.
 
You must use fuzzy math. 24 processes (apple), 16 processes (mine). Both same speed. More like 40% if that. Definitely not worth spending over $2000 for the Mac.


Since when was 24-16 not 8?

Since when was 8 not 50% of 16?

And value is relative. There are plenty of cases where CPU intensive work would allow that box to make that $2000 seem trivial quite quickly.

I used over $250k worth of supercomputer CPU time for 1 research project. A lot of people wouldn't have realized a benefit over the SPARC workstations I had available, but I definitely did. The $250k made an otherwise impossible task feasible.
 
I'm kinda curious as to how fast handbrake would operate on a 12 core Mac Pro? (let's say with 16-32GB RAM)

Let's say a 24 minute episode at 640x480 2.5mbps off of a DVD, normally takes about 24 minutes on a 13" 2.4 C2D MBP with 8GB RAM.

how fast will the 12 core MP process that?

if one day I should have $10K to throw around, I want to go buy a top of the line MP just to have one...:D It costs the same as an International Business class air ticket, but the MP will last several years while the ticket is only good for a 30 hour experience...

The 12-core computer will not rip a DVD any faster than a one-core computer but when it can do is rip 12 DVDs at the same time, asuming you have 12 DVD drives attached to the computer.

It is like like if you own a car and use it to drive to work buying two cars does not get you to work faster but you can get twice as many people to work in the same amont of time

That is why most consumers don't need 12 cores, they simply don't have very much work that needs to be done.

Well, OK not 100% true. There are some programs that can use multiple CPUs. Prime examaples are Logic and Aperture and then MacOS itsef. So for most peope two cores is the right, most cost effective solution.
 
The 12-core computer will not rip a DVD any faster than a one-core computer but when it can do is rip 12 DVDs at the same time, asuming you have 12 DVD drives attached to the computer.

It is like like if you own a car and use it to drive to work buying two cars does not get you to work faster but you can get twice as many people to work in the same amont of time

That is why most consumers don't need 12 cores, they simply don't have very much work that needs to be done.

Well, OK not 100% true. There are some programs that can use multiple CPUs. Prime examaples are Logic and Aperture and then MacOS itsef. So for most peope two cores is the right, most cost effective solution.

The OP's talking about handbrake, which is multi-core aware.
 
How do you disagree? From what I read of the article, allot depends on coding of the application to use all cores. Plus, the HT core is really not a physical core but part of one. All tests I have seen show 20 to 30 percent boost in performance provided the application is programed properly. You have evidence to prove different? BTW, interesting link. Allot of good arguments for and against HT.
 
Hyperthreading is actually a pretty worthwhile piece of technology. Back in the P4 days it saved me in a few benchmarks against AMD machines. :)

But only certain apps will be able to really take advantage of it. Certain kinds of operations can easily bottleneck Hyperthreading. It's still pretty handy, but not as good as another actual core with it's own full pipeline.


The 12-core computer will not rip a DVD any faster than a one-core computer but when it can do is rip 12 DVDs at the same time, asuming you have 12 DVD drives attached to the computer.

It is like like if you own a car and use it to drive to work buying two cars does not get you to work faster but you can get twice as many people to work in the same amont of time

That is why most consumers don't need 12 cores, they simply don't have very much work that needs to be done.

Well, OK not 100% true. There are some programs that can use multiple CPUs. Prime examaples are Logic and Aperture and then MacOS itsef. So for most peope two cores is the right, most cost effective solution.

This is entirely not true. Encoding and decoding are two operations that can be very nicely sped up by multicore. Of course your drive speed is going to be a possible bottleneck, but most of this post is rubbish. Handbreak will use multiple CPUs.

Whether a consumer needs 12 cores is a good debate, but not for the reasons above.
 
You must use fuzzy math. 24 processes (apple), 16 processes (mine). Both same speed. More like 40% if that. Definitely not worth spending over $2000 for the Mac.

16/2 = 8, in other words 8 is 50% of 16

24 is 8 more than 16, in other words it is 50% more powerful.

Did i break it down enough for you?

I would consider 10-15% more power to be the at the furthest end of the spectrum of what i would consider "comparable," but 50% more power definitely does not fall into that category. You are also comparing a computer you built yourself to a computer built by a company to make money. Whatever manufacturer you compare it to, the computer from the manufacturer is ALWAYS going to be more expensive than the one you build yourself. Taking all of that into consideration, apples price definitely isn't insane. A similarly specced Dell is actually more than the Mac Pro.
 
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