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OMG macbook pro is so damn slow..

J

jjahshik32

macrumors 603
Original poster
Sep 4, 2006
5,366
52
Ok I was using my macbook pro 2.4ghz SR model with 4gb of ram with a hitachi travelstar 7k200 as my one sole machine this past 2 days just to test out because I was going to sell my mac pro (because I thought the macbook pro could get the job done).

But I was WRONG! OMG just macparing a 1080p movie just made my macbook pro just come to a hault and I couldnt even look or view webpages and that spinning beach ball just keep popping up. So that means everything I macpar something I have to wait about 20 minutes without even browsing the web!! Damn I took the mac pro for granted and will keep the mac pro forsure now and probably sell the macbook pro.
 
uh..yeah :) 4x the ram and 4x the cores is going to make a difference...i never would have guessed.
 
Really? I never knew a desktop quad core 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo was that much faster than a low voltage mobile dual core 2.4Ghz processor. And I certainly never knew a 3.5" 10,000rpm raptor was faster than a mobile 2.5" 7200rpm drive lol ;)
 
jjahshik32 said:
But I was WRONG! OMG just macparing a 1080p movie just made my macbook pro just come to a hault and I couldnt even look or view webpages and that spinning beach ball just keep popping up. So that means everything I macpar something I have to wait about 20 minutes without even browsing the web!! Damn I took the mac pro for granted and will keep the mac pro forsure now and probably sell the macbook pro.
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So, instead of blaming this problem on the ****** programmer who coded his app to completely dominate system resources, you blame it on the machine? :rolleyes:
 
I'm just trying to save alot of $$ by just using the mbp as my machine. For everything else it works fine but damn I shouldnt have taken granted on the mac pro. I guess I've never macpar'd a 1080p movie before on the mbp, I knew to expect it to take longer of course but I didnt know that it would be this awful at it.

I just unpar'd it on the mac pro and it unpar'd and extracted in like 5 minutes as to where it took 15 minutes just for it to unpar it on the mbp and took another 15 minutes to extract the files.

I just thought that I could use the mbp instead since most of the stuff I do is unpar or encode hd video content and I see alot of people getting along with the mbp just fine. But I guess I was wrong.

And I noticed that instantly I've been attacked by only the mbp users, lol.
 
Realize that the thing you are doing with HD video is far far higher demand application than what everybody else is doing with their machines.

Yes, MBP is great for desktop apps and almost all graphics apps, and for consumer level video and audio.

If you stress it with over the top demands, though, you will see the difference in performance to a desktop machine.

There is the tradeoff -- you want to save $$$ -- you get to wait 4 times as long for your HD video tasks. Simple.
 
I mean I was expecting to wait that 4x longer you know, but I didnt know that the machine would not be usable while its unparing. I thought at least I could view some webpages while I wait. I dont mind waiting like 20 minutes for it to do its thing but I want to be able to multitask while its doing it in the background.
 
Normally OS X handles multi-tasking fine, though obviously the MBP isn't as fast as a Mac Pro.
 
burningrave101 said:
Should you expect anything less when posting in the MacBook Pro forum? haha
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Well not really, since I thought alot of people on this forum just owned mbp doesnt mean that those same people couldnt own the mac pro as well. Same goes in the mac pro section I dont expect everyone to just own the mac pro in that section and not own a mbp.

Eraserhead said:
Normally OS X handles multi-tasking fine, though obviously the MBP isn't as fast as a Mac Pro.
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I'm trying another macpar of a 1080p movie again on the mbp to see how long it would take. Maybe if I get used to it, it wont be a problem.

I'm selling my mac pro rig for $4600, I mean that's a nice chunk of change in the bank, ya know?
 
What is "macparing"?

When I do video conversion in MPEG StreamClip, my MBP is still usable. What application do you use to "macpar" something? Even though the MBP is slower than your MP (no surprise), it's surprising that you're bringing it to a grinding halt with a single process.
 
MacPAR is an OS X user interface for the PAR utility, to easy create PAR archives or to recover missing files in a chain of multipart files (like .001, .002 etc.) by using .PAR files (like .P01, .P02).
Nowadays everybody should add PAR files to their uploads of multipart split files on Internet newsgroups. With the PAR utility it is possible to recover any missing part (e.g. that didn't manage to get thru to your news server). Using PAR files will greatly diminish spoiled Internet bandwidth and will prevent you from the deception of having downloaded many files yet not being able to use them since only one part (or more) is missing.

DaveF said:
What is "macparing"?

When I do video conversion in MPEG StreamClip, my MBP is still usable. What application do you use to "macpar" something? Even though the MBP is slower than your MP (no surprise), it's surprising that you're bringing it to a grinding halt with a single process.
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what I did was downloaded a 1080p movie (its about 9gb) and it has macpar files where it puts the movies together and then extracts it into the .wmv movie. Just try it and you'll see what I'm talking about.
 
DaveF said:
What is "macparing"?

When I do video conversion in MPEG StreamClip, my MBP is still usable. What application do you use to "macpar" something? Even though the MBP is slower than your MP (no surprise), it's surprising that you're bringing it to a grinding halt with a single process.
Click to expand...

I was wondering the same thing.. I had no problem ripping a movie to MP4 yesterday while playing Tiger Woods 2008 - the game ran fine while the conversion was being done in the background.
 
Hls811 said:
I was wondering the same thing.. I had no problem ripping a movie to MP4 yesterday while playing Tiger Woods 2008 - the game ran fine while the conversion was being done in the background.
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Well what your describing is much different. I've ripped a dvd(childs play) movie to mp4 on the mbp and does it fine with multitasking and whatever but I'm talking about 1080p movies about the size of 9gb. And just try macparing something that big and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. Where you open up safari and the color wheel will spin forever and making you wait 20-25 min just macparing and extracting to be finished.

I dont watch dvd's anymore and only opt for 720p/1080p (1080p preferred) movies. My sony bravia xbr4 loves 1080p movies~ =D

Also I ripped 1080p/720p movies using virtual hub on the mbp and it doesnt slow down the mbp at all. But what I'm talking about is macparing 9gb worth of 1080p/720p movies that you download in .wmv format (which plays beautifully with the xbox 360).
 
Do you have Leopard on both of your computers? It doesn't look like its supported w/ Leopard (or even 10.4.11).. Could that be part of the problem?

I've used StuffIt to re-compile RAR's before (up to 4GB) and its run smoothly in the background while I did some other things - it never seemed to overtake my entire machine.
 
I have leopard on both machines, thats a good point but currently it saids macpar supports 10.4 and I dont see 10.5. Maybe that could have something to do with it but I highly doubt since its already a ub and usually if its not compatible with leopard, it usually either kernel panics (like older azureus) or just wont run.

I mean it seems to work fine on macpro and the mbp just that much slower in the mbp.

I notice if I use unrar, then I can multitask on the mbp but its just macpar. I just think macpar just takes so much of the cpu usage on the machine.
 
jjahshik32 said:
I have leopard on both machines, thats a good point but currently it saids macpar supports 10.4 and I dont see 10.5. Maybe that could have something to do with it but I highly doubt since its already a ub and usually if its not compatible with leopard, it usually either kernel panics (like older azureus) or just wont run.

I mean it seems to work fine on macpro and the mbp just that much slower in the mbp.

I notice if I use unrar, then I can multitask on the mbp but its just macpar. I just think macpar just takes so much of the cpu usage on the machine.
Click to expand...

Thats what I was getting at.. it seems more application specific than hardware specific... your title is misleading, your macbook pro isn't so damn slow.. MacPar on a Macbook pro is to damn slow.

As for it running on the MacPro - it could be that the power of that PC compensates for the shortcomings of the compatibility with the OS. (The only reason I think there may be compatibility issue was that I did a quick search of the app and saw a few threads with people running into problems with 10.4.11 and 1.05.x)
 
This whole problem doesn't have as much to do with the cores and RAM as it does with the HD's ability to keep up. I'm not sure if your raptor drives are in RAID 0 or something, but when you're working with HUGE files like that, it's going to have problems doing much else since it's continuously writing at the fastest speed possible to piece those files together.
Go check your Activity Log...I bet the CPU usage is lower than you'd think, and the HDD usage is through the roof.
 
Hls811 said:
Thats what I was getting at.. it seems more application specific than hardware specific... your title is misleading, your macbook pro isn't so damn slow.. MacPar on a Macbook pro is to damn slow.

As for it running on the MacPro - it could be that the power of that PC compensates for the shortcomings of the compatibility with the OS. (The only reason I think there may be compatibility issue was that I did a quick search of the app and saw a few threads with people running into problems with 10.4.11 and 1.05.x)
Click to expand...

But what your describing is rosetta. Its a UB file and using it on leopard or tiger doesnt really matter in terms of speed. Its usually if the file will run at all or not and if it will give you kernel panics.
I've ran other programs that wasnt supported by leopard and they all ran fine and the same speed as what i was used to on tiger if not faster and its just that they crashed once in a while.

I already read on versiontracker.com where people were saying the program would crash, not slow down their machine. But for me it runs fine with no crashing whatsoever its just that much of a difference in speed since maybe the hd's limiting factor.
I'm seriously thinking about keeping the mac pro now. =P

Area51Tazz said:
This whole problem doesn't have as much to do with the cores and RAM as it does with the HD's ability to keep up. I'm not sure if your raptor drives are in RAID 0 or something, but when you're working with HUGE files like that, it's going to have problems doing much else since it's continuously writing at the fastest speed possible to piece those files together.
Go check your Activity Log...I bet the CPU usage is lower than you'd think, and the HDD usage is through the roof.
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I think your right the hd is just limiting part of the whole process here. I dont have my raptor on raid 0 or anything but it is that much faster (even though I have the 7k200). Man if only I could get the fastest ssd drives =/
 
I have used MacPAR deLuxe on my MacBook Pro 2.4SR 4GB to par some big files, 100+ parts adding up to 6GB+ but have never experienced anything even close to what you seam to be going thru.
Sure the whole process takes significantly longer then it does on my Mac Pro but I can still run Safari, Mail, FireFox and do some basic Photoshop stuff.
 
pnyc said:
I have used MacPAR deLuxe on my MacBook Pro 2.4SR 4GB to par some big files, 100+ parts adding up to 6GB+ but have never experienced anything even close to what you seam to be going thru.
Sure the whole process takes significantly longer then it does on my Mac Pro but I can still run Safari, Mail, FireFox and do some basic Photoshop stuff.
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For some reason I dont totally believe you. Try a 1080p wmv file with 9gb + and try surfing the web as you would normally. I highly doubt that you will be able to escape the color wheel and safari will start to take forever to load pages and freeze off and on.

For God's sakes I have a hitachi travelstar 7k200 pretty much the fastest 7200rpm drive money can buy right now.
 
^ Which is still tons slower than the average 7200 RPM desktop drive, because it's 2.5 rather than 3.5 inches in diameter. Can't get away from geometry, a larger disk (longer perimeter length) simply passes more data under the heads each 1/7200th of a second.
 
jjahshik32 said:
MacPAR is an OS X user interface for the PAR utility, to easy create PAR archives or to recover missing files in a chain of multipart files (like .001, .002 etc.) by using .PAR files (like .P01, .P02).
Nowadays everybody should add PAR files to their uploads of multipart split files on Internet newsgroups.
Click to expand...
I see. I've not used a newsgroup in maybe 15 years -- not since it was USENET -- much less recombined split files. That was back when I knew how to use "tar" from the command line :)
 
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