Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Mac Pro Heaven

Tom Sawyer

Tom Sawyer

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 29, 2007
686
40
I am loving my new machine. Dropped 6 more gigs in it this evening and it is just purring along beautifully. I've been handbraking a few of my DVD's I had not yet encoded and am blown away at the speed difference. Movies that are long enough to have taken well over an hour on my 2.4ghz iMac and 2.53ghz MBP are ripping in 20 minutes! And it looks like handbrake is letting all 8 cores work for it! :D

I have a 150gb raptor for my OS X drive, a 500gb Seagate ES for my OS X data drive, and the OEM 320gb drive as my Windows XP 64 bit system and could not be happier with the setup. I still have to find my true solution for a Panel but this Samsung 21.5" 16X9 unit I picked up for $200 is doing fine for now. I'm going to wait to see what Apple comes out with for the new Cinema Displays and go from there.
 
the best part of handbrake is watching all 8 meters in istat go *BAM* and hit the top.
ooooohhhh yeah...:cool:
 
It's the only Mac desktop I'll buy now after being able to use one at work - the iMac just feels slow now.

Mac Pro + MacBook Air in 2011 when AppleCare on my current laptop expires. Going to be an awesome setup.
 
Glad you like the machine!

I also enjoy my Mac Pro, it feels (and is) considerably faster than my MacBook, which in turn feels faster than my parents' iMac. :)
 
I love my Mac Pro too, just got it a couple weeks ago and have a Macbook Pro also. They are both awesome!

Photoshop runs like a banshee on the Mac Pro!:D
 
Thanks! It is definitely very cool to see those 8 cores crankin' away!
 
Nice setup. I have pretty much the same setup except I have not added any more ram yet. I went with two Sammy F1 750s instead of Raptors and just love how fast and quiet they are. One for OS X, the other for data. The 320 is for XP but have not had success loading XP.

What mac program did you use to run your XP 64?
 
Soop53 said:
Nice setup. I have pretty much the same setup except I have not added any more ram yet. I went with two Sammy F1 750s instead of Raptors and just love how fast and quiet they are. One for OS X, the other for data. The 320 is for XP but have not had success loading XP.

What mac program did you use to run your XP 64?
Click to expand...

The F1's are VERY fast drives... I think their transfer rates are actually a bit faster than the Raptor. The 10K does help in access time though, but the new high density platters make for very quick drives @ 7200 RPM.

One interesting thing I found when upgrading the ram... you have to install them in perfectly matched pairs side by side... if your using the original 1 gb dimms, you actually have to move one from one riser over to the other to be beside the other original. I bought 6 more Apple OEM dimms, pulls from Mac Pro's in fact... and just throwing all of them on the boards did not work, only saw 4 gigs! Once I found that you have to have them in side by side pairs and set it up that way, it all worked fine. The strange thing is that all of my dimms are the same model and brand. There is a number on the dimm label that you have to match up, almost like a firmware version (mine ended in 030 for the originals, then 2 pair of 042's and then 029's for the last pair)... very strange, have never run into a ram upgrade that was so particular, even with the same brand/model of memory. Just something to keep in mind if you go the route of adding more 1gb dimms to keep the cost down. I got them for $69 bucks per 2gb pair, not bad.

The XP 64 install was interesting... I first had to slipstream my SP1 XP64 CD to SP2 as the mac refused to boot off the oem sp1 version. Once I did that and created a new CD... it was only a matter of putting the CD in and holding down C just like you would to boot off the Mac OS install DVD. The system will drop into 'dos mode' so to speak, and then you are looking at the good old XP setup screen. I'm sure you could also run the boot camp assistant and start the install that way. Create your partition on the desired drive... and install away. I did have to pull the drivers down separately, boot camp drivers install did not work from the Leopard DVD.
 
Sounds like a sweet setup. My dad took me to his company server room where they have a couple top spec Mac Pros (3.2ghz, 32GB ram, etc). Man, that was breath taking. But yea, Mac Pros are good for stuff like ripping dvds, rendering images, simulations (what my dad's company uses them for), etc. Nice to hear it's all working out for you.
 
Soop53 said:
Nice setup. I have pretty much the same setup except I have not added any more ram yet. I went with two Sammy F1 750s instead of Raptors and just love how fast and quiet they are. One for OS X, the other for data. The 320 is for XP but have not had success loading XP.

What mac program did you use to run your XP 64?
Click to expand...

BTW... did you consider striping those F1's? A little more risk but the speed would be quite sweet. :D I'm assuming you can boot from a Raid 0 setup... have never tried that.
 
What do you normally use your Macs for? I mean, why do you need a Mac Pro?
 
Sigur said:
What do you normally use your Macs for? I mean, why do you need a Mac Pro?
Click to expand...

Hmm... Need is probably stretching it, more want than need. HD Video editing (FCE) has been the most taxing semi-regular task I have thrown at them. Have not been in it lately but planning on getting back into that after the first of the year, new camcorder for xmas hopefully! It will probably be an AVCHD based unit which the MP should help tremendously with. My son is 3 now and much more interesting to film. :)

Beyond that, re-ripping my dvd collection to h.264 mp4's for streaming to my PS3 has been a one or 2 dvd a night task for a while. Now it's 5 a night with no problem!

I would like to say I code on the Mac as well (thought the MP would be WAY overkill for just that task) but I develop software for a living and frankly writing code after working with it all day has become less appealing to me in the last few years; guess I'm getting older / de-geeking (nah, scratch that!).... :D
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Hmm... Need is probably stretching it, more want than need. HD Video editing (FCE) has been the most taxing semi-regular task I have thrown at them. Have not been in it lately but planning on getting back into that after the first of the year, new camcorder for xmas hopefully! It will probably be an AVCHD based unit which the MP should help tremendously with. My son is 3 now and much more interesting to film. :)

Beyond that, re-ripping my dvd collection to h.264 mp4's for streaming to my PS3 has been a one or 2 dvd a night task for a while. Now it's 5 a night with no problem!

I would like to say I code on the Mac as well (thought the MP would be WAY overkill for just that task) but I develop software for a living and frankly writing code after working with it all day has become less appealing to me in the last few years; guess I'm getting older / de-geeking (nah, scratch that!).... :D
Click to expand...

I use my MacBook Pro only for Image Manipulation and Organizing and of course a little Coding/Webdesign. It is probably totally overpowered but it just looks better and I got it for the same price :-D
 
rockinrocker said:
the best part of handbrake is watching all 8 meters in istat go *BAM* and hit the top.
ooooohhhh yeah...:cool:
Click to expand...

Is there a feature within Handbrake you must select to have it going full throttle?

I don't see my CPU being stressed though it does seem all 8cores are working.

 
supercooled said:
Is there a feature within Handbrake you must select to have it going full throttle?

I don't see my CPU being stressed though it does seem all 8cores are working.

Click to expand...

Make sure you are running the latest/greatest.... 0.9.3. Beyond that, there is nothing that I had to set in HB to get it to use all 8 cores, it "just did". Now they are not 100% pegged at all times, but the CPU utilization is pretty high at all times while encoding (I'm assuming your encoding using h.264?).
 

Attachments

  • picture-4.png
    picture-4.png
    7.7 KB · Views: 617
Just using the standard encode settings for 720P. Source is a DVD straight to MP4. It's a standard SD DVD (non-HD) and it's taken about 40minutes.

Not bad I guess if I'm bypassing VisualHub altogether. Results remain to be seen.
 
supercooled said:
Just using the standard encode settings for 720P. Source is a DVD straight to MP4. It's a standard SD DVD (non-HD) and it's taken about 40minutes.

Not bad I guess if I'm bypassing VisualHub altogether. Results remain to be seen.
Click to expand...

If I recall correctly, Handbrake is utilizing 'external' connectors/routines for each compression method. Try encoding with h.264 and see if your times and utilization change. h.264 is a superior compression method to straight mp4 (ffmpeg) and most devices process it fine (Apple TV within bitrate limits due to hardware limitations, PS3 etc).
 

Attachments

  • Picture 1.png
    Picture 1.png
    18.5 KB · Views: 62
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back