Season 2 Begins
Monday, September 24, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Mac Pro Observations Part 1
Haven't taken any pics yet. Its sitting on the table in the media room. I haven't evicted the old iMac from its spot just yet, but I've been rearranging, putting away stuff and making space.
I've transferred the settings and files from the old mac. Must remember to delete some of the user accounts. So far everything seems to have moved over effortlessly, apart from taking about 4 and a half hours. A couple of weird things though. The apps in the dock had '?' in the icon, but clicking on it restored the icon and launched the app. I guess there's some sort of automatic re-linking of the alias or short cut. I need to check the admin account privilages and make sure its not too accesible.
I installed Final Cut Studio 2, which took about 2 hours and 8 DVDs. The box of manuals would kill someone if you dropped it on them. The Mac Pro comes with the new iLife 07 which was released a few weeks ago. MS Office and iWork are only trial versions. :( This is a CTO machine as I custom ordered it with an ATI X1900XT video card instead of the standard GeForce 7300GT. Apple really needs to get around to shipping the latest video cards a lot sooner! RAM and monitors are 3rd party as its much, much cheaper. No, they haven't arrived yet. The RAM just transited Alaska. The monitors are probably still in Penang/China.
Performance
I haven't edited any video on the new machine yet, so I decided to try encoding some videos to mpeg2 for DVD which took forever on the 1.8Ghz G5 iMac. An hour long video took hours to encode and burn. I had some pending videos which I've not gotten around to mastering to DVD. I tried using Compressor and selected the 120min fast setting. It finished converting a 60min DV video to mpeg2 DVD in a about 14 mins. The computer only has 1 Gig of RAM and this point and I could see Compressor using all 4 cores at about 69% total processor utilisation rate. I tried playing videos and doing other stuff while this was going and and didn't notice any slowdown. It converted all 5 hour long videos in about the time the iMac takes to do an hour long video. The video was sitting on an external RAID 0 dual drive casing connected by Firewire 800.
I'm looking forward to seeing how much real time performance I can get out of Final Cut.
The other app which I sometimes run is C&C. Hehe. :) Its my stress relief. So shoot me.
On the iMac on lowest graphics setting its fairly sluggish with more the 3 computer opponents.
I tried turning on all the graphic options. (now i know what the game is supposed to look like) The gameplay was going much faster than normal even at the same speed settting. Wonder what it'll be like with 7 computer opponents? Hmmm.....
I should be doing some real work with this thing soon.
The cooler on the X1900XT video card is fairly loud. More so because the MacPro is very quiet for such a large machine. The fans do kick in for a couple of seconds at startup, but then throttle down to near silence. Then I can hear the video card's fan. On the upside, third party coolers aren't expensive.
Just when I thought I'd just have to put up with noise from the external drives, I turned on the new 2kVA UPS after it was charged and this rather loud fan kicks in! Sheesh. Can't win them all. I suppose I could go look for a quiet fan for it too. Now I know why the 3rd party silent cooler market for PCs is so huge.
I've transferred the settings and files from the old mac. Must remember to delete some of the user accounts. So far everything seems to have moved over effortlessly, apart from taking about 4 and a half hours. A couple of weird things though. The apps in the dock had '?' in the icon, but clicking on it restored the icon and launched the app. I guess there's some sort of automatic re-linking of the alias or short cut. I need to check the admin account privilages and make sure its not too accesible.
I installed Final Cut Studio 2, which took about 2 hours and 8 DVDs. The box of manuals would kill someone if you dropped it on them. The Mac Pro comes with the new iLife 07 which was released a few weeks ago. MS Office and iWork are only trial versions. :( This is a CTO machine as I custom ordered it with an ATI X1900XT video card instead of the standard GeForce 7300GT. Apple really needs to get around to shipping the latest video cards a lot sooner! RAM and monitors are 3rd party as its much, much cheaper. No, they haven't arrived yet. The RAM just transited Alaska. The monitors are probably still in Penang/China.
Performance
I haven't edited any video on the new machine yet, so I decided to try encoding some videos to mpeg2 for DVD which took forever on the 1.8Ghz G5 iMac. An hour long video took hours to encode and burn. I had some pending videos which I've not gotten around to mastering to DVD. I tried using Compressor and selected the 120min fast setting. It finished converting a 60min DV video to mpeg2 DVD in a about 14 mins. The computer only has 1 Gig of RAM and this point and I could see Compressor using all 4 cores at about 69% total processor utilisation rate. I tried playing videos and doing other stuff while this was going and and didn't notice any slowdown. It converted all 5 hour long videos in about the time the iMac takes to do an hour long video. The video was sitting on an external RAID 0 dual drive casing connected by Firewire 800.
I'm looking forward to seeing how much real time performance I can get out of Final Cut.
The other app which I sometimes run is C&C. Hehe. :) Its my stress relief. So shoot me.
On the iMac on lowest graphics setting its fairly sluggish with more the 3 computer opponents.
I tried turning on all the graphic options. (now i know what the game is supposed to look like) The gameplay was going much faster than normal even at the same speed settting. Wonder what it'll be like with 7 computer opponents? Hmmm.....
I should be doing some real work with this thing soon.
The cooler on the X1900XT video card is fairly loud. More so because the MacPro is very quiet for such a large machine. The fans do kick in for a couple of seconds at startup, but then throttle down to near silence. Then I can hear the video card's fan. On the upside, third party coolers aren't expensive.
Just when I thought I'd just have to put up with noise from the external drives, I turned on the new 2kVA UPS after it was charged and this rather loud fan kicks in! Sheesh. Can't win them all. I suppose I could go look for a quiet fan for it too. Now I know why the 3rd party silent cooler market for PCs is so huge.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Update
Spent most of merdeka weekend working on a video. Still tired. Sigh. Recovery from all nighters takes a lot longer these days.
Will be visiting the Timbua church this weekend. The foomobile V2 will see some dirt. Hehe.
The Mac Pro is here! Can't pick it up until the cheque is ready. Besides the RAM and monitors aren't here yet. Stay tuned for the unboxing.
Have a good week all.
Update:
Picked up the Mac Pro last night. Plugged it into a old 15" CRT monitor. Good thing Apple includes a DVI-VGA adapter in the box. Ran migration assistant to move stuff off the iMac and then went home. Will take a look at lunch time.
Will be visiting the Timbua church this weekend. The foomobile V2 will see some dirt. Hehe.
The Mac Pro is here! Can't pick it up until the cheque is ready. Besides the RAM and monitors aren't here yet. Stay tuned for the unboxing.
Have a good week all.
Update:
Picked up the Mac Pro last night. Plugged it into a old 15" CRT monitor. Good thing Apple includes a DVI-VGA adapter in the box. Ran migration assistant to move stuff off the iMac and then went home. Will take a look at lunch time.
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