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G5 verses MacBookPro shootout (You are not going to believe this!)
OK folks, time for the shootout between one of my G5’s and the shiny new MacBookPro.
In the red corner, A G5 Dual 2G with 4G of RAM installed, A Radeon X800XT, OS 10.4.5 and the UNIVERSAL installed PPC version of FCS.
In the blue corner a MacBookPro 2Ghz Intel Dual Core with 2G of RAM, OS 10.4.5 and the UNIVERSAL installed Intel version of FCS
I used two Motion templates from my template page as tests:- https://www.peterwiggins.com/motiondownload.htm
Each downloaded of my website and run for the first time on BOTH machines.Now for the science and I hope you are siting down.
Filmstrip template
G5 plays at minimum 17/18 FPS RAM preview took 15 seconds
MBP plays at minimum 23 FPS RAM preview took 14 secondsMotion Wars template 300frames
G5 plays at minimum 2, max 4 FPS RAM preview took 1 minute 26 seconds
MBP plays at minimum 3, max 8 FPS RAM preview took 54 seconds!!!!I thought the Radeon was meant to be a beefy card!!!!!
A few notes, I cannot do a render to a quicktime as the G5 is connected to a XSR and the MBP only has its internal drive, so rendering could be limited by the disk write speed – something i’ve become aware of watching those blue lights on the front of the XSR. I couldn’t run the test on my other G5 with the Nvidia card (which I reckon has the edge on the radeon) as I am mid big project & don’t want to upgrade
So what I’m trying to say I guess is my laptop is actually faster at running Motion than my G5s!
I can’t wait for the Intel towers – they are going to scream!
Peter
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32 Replies
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That is the result I was hoping for. It is very encouraging. Did ya get a chance to try it with FCP?
Thx for the info…much appreciated.
-gl
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The problem is disk speed – My G5’s are on fibre to an XSR so render files are not going to be limited as much by write speeds.
Any ideas on how I can compare them that doesn’t involve disk writing?
Peter
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Do you have any firewire drives? Hook it up to the G5 and then to the MBP and do the same tests.
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This confirms our initial testing here and why we are so frustrated about lack of support for AE plugins on MacIntel version in this initial release (the transition not being as friction-free as could be), our initial internal Universal Binaries test suite runs faster on MacPro Book then on a dual G5. Probably a good idea for people to hold on buying computers and updates until we see what Apple will pre-announce at NAB (in a few weeks) if ThinkSecret speculations are at least half true. Also it’s not because Adobe delivers low-expectations in public statements about MacIntel that they won’t jump in faster then people think, again something to better understand after NAB, and to hope for.
Pierre
http://www.revisionfx.com -
Unfortunately both my big firewire drives are out at clients ;(
But then again the MBP is going to be throttled by that write speed, I get 97 MB/s write from one half of the XSR.
Also the MBP only has a firewire 400 connector. Can’t somebody invent a Express card with SFPs on it????
Peter
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Pierre,
Interesting have you tried instaling any AE filters at all to see what happens ??
Peter
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Just tried all the above with a 23inch cinema plugged into the MBP AND IT IS STILL FASTER THAN THE G5!
I hope the Intel towers get released at NAB 🙂
Peter
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[Peter Wiggins] “But then again the MBP is going to be throttled by that write speed, I get 97 MB/s write from one half of the XSR”
For the sake of comparing apples to apples (terrible, tired pun I know), firewire will become the great equalizer and enable a better comparison. For a production setup it’s another matter as you will have to start thinking about shared storage and it’s issues.
-gl
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OK not very scientific but here goes..
I took the FCP Apple_Pro_Training_Tutorials-Pal (of course!) and copied the folder to both hard drives.
Then opened up the sequence “Mastering Features Finsished”
With the firewire disk set as the scratch disk etc I selected all the clips then hit render all.1’25” for the MBP, 1’12” for the G5 (all as previous posts)
OK so the speed of the boot drive might be a problem here, so I copied the project onto the firewire drive and ran the test again:
1’03” for the MBP and 57” for the G5 Thats bit closer!
Now how about just rendering one clip with a filter – OK how about emboss in the Quicktime filter folder.
17″ for the G5, but the MBP did it in 12″
So there you go, as I said not very scientific but a good reason to wait until the Intel boxes come out…
Can I go to bed now?
Peter
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[Peter Wiggins] “Can I go to bed now?
Peter”
Please do 🙂
Thanks for that very interesting data.
-gl
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