MAC vs PC

[ToiletDuck]

Ok i've been searching and haven't found any stats on MAC's encoding speed. I did however read on MAC's and PC's floating point abilities. It was said that most codecs don't use floating point because they deal with 8 pixels at a time or something similar to that. So is there a way to turn that off so you could use the floating point abilities of a mac? I have been a life long PC user and lately have been using a MAC at the school library and really like OS X. I was thinking about getting one. My PC right now is a dual processor rig that runs pretty good. However a G4 processor can do 128bit procecssing vs my current 32 bit. So I was wondering if that had any affect on encoding speed.. The 128bit vs the 32 bit. Can someone explain this to me? For instance would a 1ghz g4 powerbook with 1mb cache and 128bit architecture get much faster encoding speed than a 2 or 3 ghz PC running with 32 bit?
Duck

[int 21h]

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/11_nov/reviews/cw_macvspciii.htm

Of course they don't benchmark things like ffmpeg, but it will give you a good idea of performance. (P4 3.06 vs dual G4 1.25)

[ToiletDuck]

That's pretty good stuff but did any of those test deal with streaming video which is what the MAC's are supposidly good for? And isn't encoding a video just streaming information?
Duck

[int 21h]

Rendering in Adobe Aftereffects is shown...

[ToiletDuck]

Does anyone here encode using a mac? Using RV9 or 3ivx? I'd like to hear how it works for you

[phrentec]

they should do a test using discreet's cleaner video encoder since it is available on both OS's, so they should look at the average encoding fps on a certain video and compare. i am looking forward to such comparisons just to see how well 128bit is for video processing

[ToiletDuck]

my thoughts exactly

[int 21h]

Originally posted by phrentec
they should do a test using discreet's cleaner video encoder since it is available on both OS's, so they should look at the average encoding fps on a certain video and compare. i am looking forward to such comparisons just to see how well 128bit is for video processing

How would this be different than the test they already did!? They used Adobe Aftereffects (Which is available on BOTH OSes) and rendered the SAME test video on both OSes....

Here's a test that uses Quicktime to do some encoding, in both Mpeg-4 and Sorenson...

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/macvsx86/

[Nic]

I have a Mac OS X g4 dual 1ghz and a 1ghz celeron pc on my desk at work. When using both of them to goto QuickTime MPEG-4 the QuickTime one flies taking about 40secs to do what the other takes about 6mins to do. But I cant help but feel the Mac Codecs are optimised far more for the Apple computers.

Ill try and do a test with 3ivx and get back to you as that should be a rough fair test (even though, of course, my 1ghz celeron cant be compared exactly to a dual 1ghz g4 ;) )

-Nic

[Doobie]

Originally posted by ToiletDuck
Ok i've been searching and haven't found any stats on MAC's encoding speed. I did however read on MAC's and PC's floating point abilities. It was said that most codecs don't use floating point because they deal with 8 pixels at a time or something similar to that. So is there a way to turn that off so you could use the floating point abilities of a mac? I have been a life long PC user and lately have been using a MAC at the school library and really like OS X. I was thinking about getting one.

I think it safe to say that the PC would clobber the Mac, especially if the system prices were in the same ball park. If you want a fast encoder, get a fast Athlon or P4. If you have money to burn, be the first kid on the block with a multi-processor Opteron system.

If Mac users could brag, you would had been able to find stats on Mac vs. PC encoding speeds.

The school library has a Mac for two reasons. First, Apple gave them a sweet deal, are they giving you one? Second, the ease-of-use hype which shouldn't mean much to a long-time PC user who has already overcome the learning curve. Maybe you just need a new desktop theme?

And, yes, some codecs don't use floating point. This isn't because of the number of pixels processed at a time but because emulated floating point can be faster (such as when high precision is not needed), this is especially true if FP support is weak or non-existent.

[NeVeRLiFt]

http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:_wZrqbwVMPIC:www.adobe.com/motion/pcpreferred.html+&hl=en&start=1&ie=UTF-8

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.htm

These test and benchmarks show the Mac getting its arse kicked and looking really slow :D

[pacohaas]

Seems like the reviewers in all these articles are plaugued with the same affliction as most of us: lack of funds. I mean, the recent one that compares the P4 3.06GHz doesn't pit it against the top of the line dual 1.42GHz from apple, but instead an older machine that they had(1.25). Even though we all know that MHz has nothing to do with performance when you're comparing different architectures(AMD has certainly proved this to the x86 crowd), we usually will pit the top end Athlon XP against the top of the line P4 when making comparisons.

In the last article that neverlift linked to, they say their first test was with a dual 1GHz apple vs dual AMD 1800+MP's, then they decided to do an updated test, but in fact only updated the PC machine to a P4 2.53 and dual 2000+MPs. They go on to list the price that they paid for the dual 1GHz machine, vs the current price of the updated PC's.

I don't think it's just me that sees mac vs. PC arguments as inherently biased, but maybe it is. I've been using both for quite a while now, and realize that they both have their place, but I've certainly never would pit my old 400MHz iMac against my XP2500+ in an encoding battle. I realize my example is extreme, but it is exactly what these articles are doing, just to a lesser degree.

just thought I'd throw my 2 cents into the ring.

[ToiletDuck]

Doobie everyone of your statements was completely off the question being asked.

[int 21h]

Originally posted by Doobie
And, yes, some codecs don't use floating point. This isn't because of the number of pixels processed at a time but because emulated floating point can be faster (such as when high precision is not needed), this is especially true if FP support is weak or non-existent.

The bottom line in video processing is: more instructions per cycle, faster encoding. That's why Athlons keep up so well with Pentiums (shorter instruction pipes, also dooms them to lower clock speeds) and its also why good SSE2 optimizations (i.e. more simultaneous execution per cycle) makes a big difference (specifically coding for the vector processor on a G4 would do the same I imagine).

Not only that.. but when it was first mentioned about the '128bit' architecture, I was somewhat confused... You do realize that the G4 is still just a 32bit architecture on top of a 128bit bus... the speed gain of double precision math operations on a G4 comes from the Double Precision FPU...which means that every clock cycle it can complete one double precision calculation (not sure at what accuracy though)... However, with SSE2 and a P4, you can also achieve 2 64bit calculations per clock cycle.

Doesn't matter much anyways... Mpeg-2 decoding spends most of its CPU time in iDCT (which very few people run at 64bit precision), and Mpeg encoding spends most of its time in ME (which again, I dont think goes out to 64bits.. I could be wrong though).

[ToiletDuck]

So are you saying that should there be a codec that is designed to use 128bit encoding that it would slaughter the rest when ran on a MAC?

[pacohaas]

Originally posted by ToiletDuck
So are you saying that should there be a codec that is designed to use 128bit encoding that it would slaughter the rest when ran on a MAC? :) mac folks sure would be happy to have the software edge for once.

[int 21h]

It would have to take advantage of the FPU and the Vector processing stuff...

I would be very suprised if Quicktime and other Apple movie products didn't already do this.

[Doobie]

Originally posted by ToiletDuck
Doobie everyone of your statements was completely off the question being asked.

Oh yeah, you were asking if the Mac's 128-bit processor is faster at encoding than the PC's 32-bit processor. And, I told you that the PC is faster. But, if you think the Mac has a 128-bit processor, I can see how you think that a direct answer to your question is "completely off the question being asked."

You better go with a Mac. Even though you claim to be a life-long PC user, I can see that Mac's alleged ease-of-use is more important than the unscalable learning curve of Windows XP (especially as Microsoft no longer includes that sign to press the Start button).

[ToiletDuck]

ummmm no no. I started the thread. I know what it's about. And you aren't commenting on the subject. the question wasn't which is better. Which offers ease of use or is more compatible. The question is does encoding benifit from having 128bit processor vs a 32 bit one. Or is it the mhz that matters. It's basically a yes or no question. But we have managed to surface some very good issues about them. The fact that one is cheaper than the other has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion. Thank you. Drive through.

[ppera2]

As I know DivX 5.xx codec is available for MAC too.
If some MAC user can perform encoding test - DVD to DivX 5.xx and write here results (speed), it would be very helpful. Of course need to give exact parameters of video - origin resolution, output resolution and methode.
I can give then results for same parameter video encoded on PC with DVD2AVI, and with G.Knot methode.

128 bit processor in MAC? I think that it is very partially 128 bit... SSE and 3DNow work with much more than 32 bit data.

[ToiletDuck]

I was at the school library where they have 700mhx G4 imacs. I tried to install divx and it wouldn't let me. I told them I needed it because of a project i did using Adobe premier and I wanted to see if it would run on a mac. But the girl taht was working couldn't get her password to work. I was almost ready. Even had a DVD already ripped on the harddrive.