Posted on 06/26/2009 12:12:02 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Some benchmarks have numbers and tables. Some have bar graphs. They're all very nice, but I just revisited a demo that I used to do at Apple, and the results on a Mac Pro will take your breath away. Buckle up, because you may not have seen this amazing visual demo ever before.
Back in the 2000-2005 time, I was involved with lots of professional conferences with Apple. In some cases, Apple ran the both, like SuperComputing and FOSE. In the case of smaller shows, like the American Astronomical Society (AAS), I would manage the booth along with another sales exec or system engineer. A typical booth would have several different kinds of Macs, big displays, and scientific or engineering software to demo.
One of the things that I noticed in those big shows, held in convention centers, with thousands of attendees, was that it was vital to catch the eye of the passerby. If the Mac was running a static display, even if it was the coolest scientific app ever, the passerby's eyes would quickly move on. So I devised a very visual demo that was sure to catch the passerby's eye and lure them into the both. Then we could move on to other things.
It always worked. And here's the secret I used.
I would download a lot of movie trailers from Apple. In those days, they were standard definition. But movie trailers are unique in that they have fast moving action, quickly changing scenes, explosions, pretty women, and so on. I would load up six or seven of these trailers in QuickTime, lay them out on a 23-inch display in a grid, and set them all running in an endless loop.
Once a passerby saw this, he (typically) would go into a trance and start wandering towards my station at the booth. The thing was, you couldn't do that with a PC. Well, I tried it once and the best I could do with Windows was two videos. If I started a third, they'd all start stuttering.
One measure of the Mac is how many trailers it can play at once without any one of them stuttering. When I was using a dual processor 800 MHz Mac Pro G4, the best I could do was about seven or maybe eight simultaneous trailers. It's been awhile since I did that demo, so I decided to revisit with a Mac Pro, Nehalem (March 2009), quad core, with 3GB of RAM, standard video card (NVIDIA GT120) and two displays attached.
Here's the video, taken with an iPhone 3GS. Note that the audio comes only from the frontmost copy of QuickTime. (The Bourne Supremacy)
[See the demo video on the YouTube site]
If you'd rather not count, there are 21 standard definition videos running at the same time. Why not high-def? I wanted to retain a baseline to compare against what the Mac Pro G4 was doing in 2003. Note that none of the trailers are stuttering.
Also, take a look at the main screen where I have the Activity Monitor app running. None of the eight virtual cores* appears to be working very hard. I'll propose that if I had many more screens attached, I could have run 50 or more of these QuickTime trailers.
Of course, this isn't a quantitative benchmark. What it does do, however, is visually express the power of the new Mac Pro. The next time you have a friend over who's thinking about switching to a Mac, show him/her this demo. After her/his eyes finish glazing over, you can accompany your stunned friend to the local Apple retail store.
I would download a lot of movie trailers from Apple. In those days, they were standard definition. But movie trailers are unique in that they have fast moving action, quickly changing scenes, explosions, pretty women, and so on. I would load up six or seven of these trailers in QuickTime, lay them out on a 23-inch display in a grid, and set them all running in an endless loop... When I was using a dual processor 800 MHz Mac Pro G4, the best I could do was about seven or maybe eight simultaneous trailers... with a Mac Pro, Nehalem (March 2009), quad core, with 3GB of RAM, standard video card (NVIDIA GT120) and two displays attached... there are 21 standard definition videos running at the same time. Why not high-def? I wanted to retain a baseline to compare against what the Mac Pro G4 was doing in 2003. Note that none of the trailers are stuttering... I have the Activity Monitor app running. None of the eight virtual cores* appears to be working very hard. I'll propose that if I had many more screens attached, I could have run 50 or more of these QuickTime trailers.Heh... I guess this is one definition of "multimedia". ;') Thanks Swordmaker. I remember the first time I saw that rotating stalking tiger demo thing on an Amiga. Can't quite figure out what computer store I was in, the store itself is probably a Subway or Starbucks now.
I should also point out that these are running in a Fusion Virtual Machine on my Mac Pro (circa 2007). I can run WinXP in a window, or full screen, or in “unity” mode where the programs run in individual windows, just like under Windows, but on the OSX desktop. My OSX session is currently running Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Adobe Acrobat Professional, ITunes, and Firefox. I can, with a keystroke, jump to any of these programs running on their own desktop instantly. NO DELAY. I can drag and drop files from one desktop to another AND from one operating system to another.
The Mac has NEVER crashed (although my Windows session has frozen up a couple of times) in over two years.
I was a PC person for 23 years before switching to Mac. Before they were too expensive and too limiting. Now I can do anything a PC can do AND anything a Mac can do. Oh, and I also run Ubuntu Linux every once in a while.
Macs are just far superior machines.
LOL! Easy to say, but the proof that you are wrong is that you can't give a different reason why the PC stutters with multiple videos under Windows.
I've got NT 4 (you know, a "Windows" version after 98) running on my oldest machine. Care to make a bet that running more than 4 videos at once will stutter?!
I thought not. You're busted...
“but the proof that you are wrong is that you can’t give a different reason why the PC stutters with multiple videos under Windows.”
You call that proof? Just how dumb are you? You sound as dumb as a conspiracy theorist who says if you can’t answer his retarded question then he must be right. “Well, if you can’t explain why there are contrails then that is proof they are caused by the government.”
“I’ve got NT 4 (you know, a “Windows” version after 98)”
Actually, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4 have nothing to do with each other. You obviously don’t know the product history of Windows NT versus Windows for DOS.
Why don’t you stop acting like you know everything and actually get an education on the subject. You’re really making an dumbass out of yourself to those who do know.
Any other application that requires high speed manipulation of large data streams...
Amigas in the late 80's could do it. I saw it demonstrated at an Amiga show.
It never fails... a user of the majority platform comes onto a discussion of an Operating System... and attacks the USERS of the minority platform. Ad Hominem attack, the last refuge of those without facts.
The proof that you are wrong is that you can’t give a different reason why the PC stutters with multiple videos under Windows.
Are you bored? Was that a snark?
If you continue to visit threads that hold no interest for you you will stay bored. Snarks are unbecoming and shunned by the well mannered.
:-)
I didn't even mention OS X in my post. For your time frame reference, OS X didn't exist in the mid 90s. But in general, we compare OS X to Windows NT 5 and 6 all the time, so what's the problem?
I was giving an example of how the operating system's architecture greatly influences its ability to perform such tasks. BeOS could do it on the same hardware that Mac OS couldn't. This was around the PPC 604 era, long before the Altivec instruction set that made the Apple G4s fast. Windows PCs couldn't do this even after the x86 had leaped past the 604's performance.
The reason is simple. BeOS was designed to efficiently use multiple processors, it was was pervasively multithreaded, and it preemptively multitasked to make sure nothing could hog the system. Sure, NT had SMP and preemptive multitasking, but it was not designed as well as BeOS for this sort of task. The MacOS at the time but could not use multiple processors well and it was not preemptively multitasked.
Of course here you also get into a bit of horses for courses. For example, I can safely say Windows NT-based products suck at real-time processing compared to the likes of VXWorks. But VXWorks has its own limitations.
The “proof”? You really are that stupid, aren’t you?
I KNOW that Windows NT has preemptive multitasking, so I KNOW that you are wrong about that. How could I possibly know why that machine is stuttering when I don’t have access to the box, and just because I don’t doesn’t mean you are right.
I don’t know what makes you so stupid but it is really working. Seriously.
The proof that you are wrong is that you can’t give a different reason why the PC stutters with multiple videos under Windows.
Snarks are unbecoming and shunned by the well mannered.
Yup, that be's me.
I beg to differ, think of streaming video for sports junkies (five or six NFL games at the same time).
Good point. Not something I do, but I can see how some people might want to do it...
Thanks
Sounds like a great machine. More machine than what I need
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.