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Looking to buy an 8-core Mac Pro. Would love some info!

J

jimmypopjr

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 7, 2009
107
0
Philly
I finally got to play with a 4-core Mac Pro at work last week. I do video work with Final Cut, as well as a lot of video conversion with Handbrake (large DVD collection).

The 4-core cut the conversion time for a 90-minute movie down to about 25 minutes. I have to imagine an 8-core would bring that down even further? How quickly can you guys convert using handbrake?

Also, I know that with Snow Leopard we'll see GPUs playing a greater role for systems. If I go for 2 or 3 GT 120s... will each one be able to assist in Parallel Processing, or only one?

Finally... I'd just love some general impressions from 8-core users.

Thanks so much!
 
It has been some time since I did much with Handbrake but I believe that most movies in the 90 minute range would take somewhere in the 10-15 minute range, very fast indeed. I can also tell you that there was a noticeable spike in my electric bill that month when I was ripping my DVD collection into iTunes :)

I can't comment on the your second question, not sure.

General impressions, this beast takes anything I throw at it... and quickly. The amazing thing is that the fans almost never run loud, it's very quiet.
 
Just a guess knowing that twice the cores doesn't mean half the time to process, but I'm guessing that you would likely see a 30-40% decrease in rendering time for processors of the same clock speed.

Sadly, not much is known how exactly the GPU will play a role with SL. We'll just have to wait and see.
 
That's good to hear. I mostly rip my TV collection, so episodes that are 22/45 minutes long should go pretty quickly, which is awesome news.

I also have a collection of various monitors laying around and would love to set up an impressive display array.

Just the other day I attached a 2x4 to the back of my desk and mounted a 22" monitor over my 24" LED ACD, using a VESA arm. Looks pretty awesome. Would love to incorporate the other monitors I have around (couple 15" and a 17").
 
How about the optical drives found in mac pros? Are they riplocked like the ones found on all the other macs? What would be the best way around that?
 
jimmypopjr said:
How about the optical drives found in mac pros? Are they riplocked like the ones found on all the other macs? What would be the best way around that?
Click to expand...

Ignore this. Couldn't you delete posts on this forum before? Am I missing something?
 
jimmypopjr said:
How about the optical drives found in mac pros? Are they riplocked like the ones found on all the other macs? What would be the best way around that?
Click to expand...


I've reflashed my drives to be riplock free. It's pretty straightforward with Pioneer drives.
 
grue said:
I've reflashed my drives to be riplock free. It's pretty straightforward with Pioneer drives.
Click to expand...

Good to know, and thanks for the input! I assume that the performance gains on using handbrake are nominal when eliminating riplock? On the 4-core I used I tried two things:

1. Tried ripping Jackass the movie directly from DVD with handbrake. Estimated time: 28 minutes

2. Ripped using Mac the Ripper and then loaded that into handbrake. Estimated time: 24 minutes.

A noticeable, but small difference. Would it be worth it flashing? Does it dump your warranty?
 
jimmypopjr said:
I finally got to play with a 4-core Mac Pro at work last week. I do video work with Final Cut, as well as a lot of video conversion with Handbrake (large DVD collection).

The 4-core cut the conversion time for a 90-minute movie down to about 25 minutes. I have to imagine an 8-core would bring that down even further? How quickly can you guys convert using handbrake?

Also, I know that with Snow Leopard we'll see GPUs playing a greater role for systems. If I go for 2 or 3 GT 120s... will each one be able to assist in Parallel Processing, or only one?

Finally... I'd just love some general impressions from 8-core users.

Thanks so much!
Click to expand...

you might like to check out amug's review on the two 8-cores (early 2008 and 2009) i think they have a review on the 2006 model too but that's 4-cores. hope that helps.
 
Wow, that amug source is awesome. Reading it now. Much appreciated! Thanks to all you guys for assisting!
 
jimmypopjr said:
Good to know, and thanks for the input! I assume that the performance gains on using handbrake are nominal when eliminating riplock? On the 4-core I used I tried two things:

1. Tried ripping Jackass the movie directly from DVD with handbrake. Estimated time: 28 minutes

2. Ripped using Mac the Ripper and then loaded that into handbrake. Estimated time: 24 minutes.

A noticeable, but small difference. Would it be worth it flashing? Does it dump your warranty?
Click to expand...


Reflashing probably does void the warranty on the drive, but as they're only $30 I'm not too worried about it. The reason I did it is because I do batch encodes: I'll rip 6-10 movies to the drive, then batch convert them with Handbrake overnight.

That and I hate region encoding :D
 
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