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#76 2006-01-16 3:46 pm
- jr57k
- Member
- Registered: 2006-01-16
- Posts: 11
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
How's this?
Downloaded BBC Motion Gallery 720p from Quicktime HD site (~69MB) http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd … yreel.html
re-encoded to Movie to Quicktime Movie, Broadband - Medium
dual 867G4 (1.75Gb of memory) took 10 minutes 3 seconds
Core Duo Intel took 5 minutes 21 seconds
Anyone else can duplicate. I think I am done for the day.
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#77 2006-01-16 3:48 pm
- Shadowless
- LCpl, USMC

- From: San Diego, CA
- Registered: 2005-10-10
- Posts: 2969
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
Just to show that the amount of RAM on your computer shouldn't affect Fractographer results too much, I used my PB (same as below) on 1GB and .5GB of RAM.
Fractal 1GB .5GB
Mendelbrot Zoomed : 136 - 142
Julia 6 24 - 24
Julia 7 24 - 24
Julia 8 23 - 23
E Zoomed 1 20 - 23
E Zoomed 2 16 - 16
E Zoomed 3 19 - 19
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#78 2006-01-16 4:59 pm
- Czachorski
- Member
- Registered: 2002-12-20
- Posts: 5567
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
jr57k wrote:
The edits are killing me. Seems more like a chat than a forum
As for the original topic, I've imported an 8MP photo, done a 10 seconds Ken Burns (start = 1X and finish = 2X) on it and exported it to CDROM (Quicktime). Here is what I saw
DUAL 867G4
import and process ken Burns - 15 seconds
export to Quicktime CDROM - 11 seconds
Core Duo 2Ghz Intel
import and process Ken Burns - 15 seconds. (seemed to take longer on the import but less time on the Ken Burns)
export to Quicktime CDROM - 16 seconds. The export progress seemed to surge forward, then pause, then surge again, G4 was smooth.
I've got the photo if anyone wants to try it let me know and I'll post it somewhere.
This seems to jive pretty well with my bencmarks at the store. (I did verify that the store was running iLife '06 and that they were universal, but forgot to put that in the original post - sorry 'bout that).
I like the explaination about the duos not being optimized yet. When would be the logical time for the optimizations to be ready? Maybe when the pro stuff is reased, just in time for the release of the quad intel PowerMac across the line?
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#79 2006-01-16 5:45 pm
- jr57k
- Member
- Registered: 2006-01-16
- Posts: 11
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
the Ken Burns thing sounds like it was on track. It took forever for iMovie to import it, but once it did the processing seemed faster. Your original post implied this as well.
One thing that did occur to me was that the machine in the store, if just turned on might have been doing a spotlight index. I waited for mine to complete before I testing. This would certainly slow down any HD based activity.
Overall I think it compares well to a Dual 2Ghz G5. It's oddly different with some stuff running much faster (Safari comes to mind) and other stuff being much slower. For home use I think it will be great, but for the office I think I'll stick with the G5 for a while. The GPU does rock for an iMac, I was able to play a little UT2004 even in emulation. It wasn't fast, but it wasn't too terrible either.
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#80 2006-01-16 5:55 pm
- MacBoy4139
- BHA

- From: Big Hair Anonymous
- Registered: 2000-10-31
- Posts: 10911
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
Czachorski wrote:
jr57k wrote:
The edits are killing me. Seems more like a chat than a forum
As for the original topic, I've imported an 8MP photo, done a 10 seconds Ken Burns (start = 1X and finish = 2X) on it and exported it to CDROM (Quicktime). Here is what I saw
DUAL 867G4
import and process ken Burns - 15 seconds
export to Quicktime CDROM - 11 seconds
Core Duo 2Ghz Intel
import and process Ken Burns - 15 seconds. (seemed to take longer on the import but less time on the Ken Burns)
export to Quicktime CDROM - 16 seconds. The export progress seemed to surge forward, then pause, then surge again, G4 was smooth.
I've got the photo if anyone wants to try it let me know and I'll post it somewhere.This seems to jive pretty well with my bencmarks at the store. (I did verify that the store was running iLife '06 and that they were universal, but forgot to put that in the original post - sorry 'bout that).
I like the explaination about the duos not being optimized yet. When would be the logical time for the optimizations to be ready? Maybe when the pro stuff is reased, just in time for the release of the quad intel PowerMac across the line?
When Intel releases their final version of their compilers - expected this Summer is a good start.
From there, it will probably take a version of things to really start to take off. I expect Leopard will take full advantage of it - kinda like Jaguar was an upgrade to Cheetah - incredible.
When iLife '07 is announced, expect Steve to say "performance, performance, performance."
Dive in the Pool!
I'm still trying to figure out if you're a girl posing as Macboy4139, or a boy posing as a girl, and a bit confused sexually. <shrug> laughinol
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#81 2006-01-16 5:58 pm
- Cobalt60
- Member
- Registered: 2002-04-17
- Posts: 1302
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
I haven't been following this thread too closely. It doesn't appear the Intel machine is leaps and bounds faster no matter which way you cut it.
Somebody copied Czachorski's benchmarks and posted them in another place. So I see they are getting play on the web now.
I'm not a doctor but I'll take a look!
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#82 2006-01-16 6:00 pm
- MacBoy4139
- BHA

- From: Big Hair Anonymous
- Registered: 2000-10-31
- Posts: 10911
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
Yeah, thanks to Czach - www.macrumors.com caused a server crash.
Good job Czach!

Dive in the Pool!
I'm still trying to figure out if you're a girl posing as Macboy4139, or a boy posing as a girl, and a bit confused sexually. <shrug> laughinol
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#83 2006-01-16 7:01 pm
- sparkn
- Conspirator

- From: South of Canada
- Registered: 2000-03-01
- Posts: 3057
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
akb825 wrote:
There are some 1080p trailers here.
Thank you. I now feel my eMac 1 GHz is inadequate due to it not being able to play anything above 720p without the jitters.
I think I can safely say that I don't care what the benchmarks are because either new Mac will trounce what I currently have.
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#84 2006-01-16 7:11 pm
- jr57k
- Member
- Registered: 2006-01-16
- Posts: 11
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
Yeah, I should have added the 720p playback on the 2Ghz Core DUO was at full 24fps (with only 512MB RAM). My G4 could barely do 12fps. The FrontRow feature is kinda nice once you get used to it. It's a good way to turn "off" the OS and simplify the interface for just a few things. Kind of like Dashboard, but it seems to work a whole lot better. I tried a few 1080p streams as well and they were full 24fps as well. Of course the whole image was not visible at once on the screen since 1080p is just a bit larger than the 20" iMac allows.
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#85 2006-01-16 8:20 pm
- Czachorski
- Member
- Registered: 2002-12-20
- Posts: 5567
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
jr57k wrote:
the Ken Burns thing sounds like it was on track. It took forever for iMovie to import it, but once it did the processing seemed faster. Your original post implied this as well.
One thing that did occur to me was that the machine in the store, if just turned on might have been doing a spotlight index. I waited for mine to complete before I testing. This would certainly slow down any HD based activity.
I noticed the import lag too. It took like 5 seconds for the import, and then the KB effect was pretty zippy. I am pretty sure that spotlight was not importing in the background. I opened activity monitor and watched the load pretty closely, and it was in the usual less than 3-4% range, as I recall, before the tests. When spotlight is indexing, it usually places a pretty heavy load on the processor like 50% or more, and I did not see such a load before I launched the tests.
For me what these benchmarks do is make me pretty content with my MDD G4 PowerMac. I installed iLife '06, and it runs wonderfully on this machine and it still performs very well for my needs with photos, music & video. When I can see something like a 10x increase in speed, then I will be itching to upgrade, but I am quite content for right now.
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#86 2006-01-16 8:57 pm
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
jr57k wrote:
How's this?
Downloaded BBC Motion Gallery 720p from Quicktime HD site (~69MB) http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd … yreel.html
re-encoded to Movie to Quicktime Movie, Broadband - Medium
dual 867G4 (1.75Gb of memory) took 10 minutes 3 seconds
Core Duo Intel took 5 minutes 21 seconds
Anyone else can duplicate. I think I am done for the day.
Dual 2.7GHz [3GB]: 3:07
"Overall, the results are pretty clear: Mac users might not actually be smarter than PC users, but they certainly use better English and a larger vocabulary to express more complex thinking."
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#87 2006-01-16 9:49 pm
- pcguy
- Member

- Registered: 1999-11-18
- Posts: 5234
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
how much is a dual 2.7?
Do not settle for the world in shades of grey
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#88 2006-01-16 10:25 pm
#89 2006-01-17 1:16 am
- Pixel Shader
- IntelŪ PentiumŪ 4

- Registered: 2004-05-23
- Posts: 1376
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
Shadowless wrote:
PowerBook G4 1.67GHz 1GB RAM took 133 seconds to render the "mendelbrot variation zoomed" setting.
Oh, by the way, very impressive upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0.2. I noticed that in 1.0, it took 50 seconds to render the default fractal, where now that takes 5 seconds. Well done!
For s***s and giggles, I'll post my results on my newly upgraded PowerPC 7500 266GHz G3 later.
EDIT: NVM on the 7500. My copy of Tiger isn't getting here soon enough.
47.72 seconds for the "mandelbrot variation zoomed"
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#90 2006-01-17 1:39 am
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
Pixel Shader wrote:
Shadowless wrote:
PowerBook G4 1.67GHz 1GB RAM took 133 seconds to render the "mendelbrot variation zoomed" setting.
Oh, by the way, very impressive upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0.2. I noticed that in 1.0, it took 50 seconds to render the default fractal, where now that takes 5 seconds. Well done!
For s***s and giggles, I'll post my results on my newly upgraded PowerPC 7500 266GHz G3 later.
EDIT: NVM on the 7500. My copy of Tiger isn't getting here soon enough.47.72 seconds for the "mandelbrot variation zoomed"
What computer specs?
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#91 2006-01-17 1:41 am
- Pixel Shader
- IntelŪ PentiumŪ 4

- Registered: 2004-05-23
- Posts: 1376
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
akb825 wrote:
Pixel Shader wrote:
Shadowless wrote:
PowerBook G4 1.67GHz 1GB RAM took 133 seconds to render the "mendelbrot variation zoomed" setting.
Oh, by the way, very impressive upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0.2. I noticed that in 1.0, it took 50 seconds to render the default fractal, where now that takes 5 seconds. Well done!
For s***s and giggles, I'll post my results on my newly upgraded PowerPC 7500 266GHz G3 later.
EDIT: NVM on the 7500. My copy of Tiger isn't getting here soon enough.47.72 seconds for the "mandelbrot variation zoomed"
What computer specs?
If you really want to know - (please don't delete) 3GHz hackintosh P4. . . 10.4.3 (intel), I won't go further than telling you that.
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#92 2006-01-17 1:50 am
- Pixel Shader
- IntelŪ PentiumŪ 4

- Registered: 2004-05-23
- Posts: 1376
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
182.72 on my iBook G4 1.2GHz. . . wow, just wow. . .
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#93 2006-01-17 2:01 am
- Mr. T
- Uses STOS implicitly

- From: omnipresent
- Registered: 2002-04-02
- Posts: 3597
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
Pixel Shader wrote:
akb825 wrote:
Pixel Shader wrote:
47.72 seconds for the "mandelbrot variation zoomed"What computer specs?
If you really want to know - (please don't delete) 3GHz hackintosh P4. . . 10.4.3 (intel), I won't go further than telling you that.
I get 42 sec (same but OC'd)
This is a pretty fun app.
while (1) {fork();}
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#94 2006-01-17 2:01 am
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
The Haxintosh is actually rather interesting, since it shows how current previous generation PCs fare.
Shadowless: if you export the fractals as a large image, you probably will notice a lot larger difference with less RAM.
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#95 2006-01-17 2:02 am
- Pixel Shader
- IntelŪ PentiumŪ 4

- Registered: 2004-05-23
- Posts: 1376
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
Lol. See, these P4's aren't that bad after all (not that I thought they were in the first place).
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#96 2006-01-17 2:08 am
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
I'll bet you anything that the differences between Intel and PPC are because of the cache sizes. I'm mainly accessing large arrays often, so if it's accessing the RAM half or a quarter as often on the Intel processors as on the PPCs, then it's certainly possible that it would go quite a bit faster.
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#97 2006-01-17 2:08 am
- Mr. T
- Uses STOS implicitly

- From: omnipresent
- Registered: 2002-04-02
- Posts: 3597
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
Question, akb825. I think I already know the answer (nature of fractals) but I'll ask anyway. Will a second core make a difference?
while (1) {fork();}
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#98 2006-01-17 2:17 am
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
A second core will indeed make a difference. This doesn't have to do with the nature of fractals, but rather how I programmed it. (though because of the nature of fractals, it makes it rather easy to put it on multiple threads) I have it done in 4 threads, that way up to 4 cores will be taken advantage of. I could have added more threads, but since there likely won't be any Macs with more than 4 cores for a while, it won't do any good.
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#99 2006-01-17 2:37 am
- Freezer mac
- iPod scroll wheel

- From: next to a big cold lake.
- Registered: 2001-01-06
- Posts: 7367
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
Pixel Shader wrote:
Shadowless wrote:
PowerBook G4 1.67GHz 1GB RAM took 133 seconds to render the "mendelbrot variation zoomed" setting.
Oh, by the way, very impressive upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0.2. I noticed that in 1.0, it took 50 seconds to render the default fractal, where now that takes 5 seconds. Well done!
For s***s and giggles, I'll post my results on my newly upgraded PowerPC 7500 266GHz G3 later.
EDIT: NVM on the 7500. My copy of Tiger isn't getting here soon enough.47.72 seconds for the "mandelbrot variation zoomed"
115 seconds for mendelbrot variation zoomed on dual 1.2Ghz DA PMac w/ 1.5 GB RAM
2 seconds for the default.
Last edited by Freezer mac (2006-01-17 2:44 am)
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#100 2006-01-17 8:52 am
- Mr. T
- Uses STOS implicitly

- From: omnipresent
- Registered: 2002-04-02
- Posts: 3597
Re: Intel iMac Benchmarks - Slow With Encoding
akb825 wrote:
A second core will indeed make a difference. This doesn't have to do with the nature of fractals, but rather how I programmed it. (though because of the nature of fractals, it makes it rather easy to put it on multiple threads) I have it done in 4 threads, that way up to 4 cores will be taken advantage of. I could have added more threads, but since there likely won't be any Macs with more than 4 cores for a while, it won't do any good.
Actually, my initial instinct was telling me it couldn't be done, but upon thinking about it, I slapped myself on the forehead, went "d'oh!" and had myself an epiphany.
while (1) {fork();}
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