New MacBook Pro transcoding issues

[Russ Campbell]

Just received my new 17" MacBook Pro i7 Quadcore with 8GB of Ram. Tested it with RR and transcoding is slower than my old 2008/2009 2.8 Core2Duo. Activity monitor shows that only 10% of my CPU is being used. Any ideas? Anyone else using the new MBP and RR?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

How do you have the Rocket connected? Any other differences in software and hardware? What are you writing your files to?

 

[Russ Campbell]

RR is connected via the Expresscard port using a Maxx Digital Mobile Rocket enclosure. Quick test transcoding to the internal drive on both machines for comparison. My old MBP is about 20% faster. OS and software is the same - 10.6.6 and RedcineX 356.

 

[Stephen Gentle]

Have you updated to OS X 10.6.7? It was released on Monday and apparantly fixes some performance problems.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

What are the specs of the internal drives? Transcoding to the internal drive isn't a good benchmark for this anyway. You should probably hook up a decent FW800 unit with a couple HDD's inside.

It's probably the 20% speed difference could come from having differing drives; Such as the 750GB 5400rpm in the new MBP and the old MBP might have a 500GB 7200rpm drive.

I don't have a Mobile Rocket unit to test. It could also be a PCIe expresscard interface and the Sandy Bridge PCIe host. Perhaps they don't play as well together and you may want to contact Maxx Digital and see if they have tested this and perhaps found any issues.

And yes, Stephen is correct. 10.6.7 targets some performance issues, Apple wasn't forthcoming with what all of them are. Some people are of the opinion that the new MBPs with Sandy Bridge were targeted for the performance enhancements.

 

[AnthonyFlores]

Russ, please do post when you get to the bottom of this. I was strongly considering the new MBP along with Maxx Digital's mobile rocket, and so I'm curious to see if you can get it to work at the proper speed ....

Anthony

 

[Stephen Lovett]

Hi,

I don't own a mobile Rocket enclosure, but throughput on the expresscard 34 bus seems to be identical to older MacBook Pro's.

This is based on e-sata speeds measured by AJA's system test connected via Sonnet's Tempo Pro expresscard 34 to e-sata adapter.

I think Jeff has it right. The build to order option for the 750 is a 5400 rpm drive. I've replaced mine with a 7200 rpm 750 (identical to my earlier model) and disk performace is slightly better on the new MacBook Pro, but that's likely an artifact of it being less full and less fragmented.

OTOH, I'm super pleased with performance otherwise, WAY faster at processor intensive stuff than my previous MacBook Pro. I just wish they'd have put the EC 34 in the 15", I ended up with the speed bumped 17", and I'm getting used to it, but still like the 15" form factor better.

You can bet you boots I'll be evaluating all the Thuderbolt storage options shown at NAB.

Steve

 

[Russ Campbell]

Just received the MBP so haven't had a chance to check all the variables.
Came pre-installed with 10.6.6. There are 2 versions of 10.6.7, one referring to early
2011 MBP's and the standard one which I'm assuming is the correct one for
this MBP. Will do more tests in the next day or 2 - on set today.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Just run software update and it will install the correct versions for your system. In this situation, it's the 10.5.7 update for the early 2011 MBP.

 

[Russ Campbell]

Thanks Jeff. Did a quick test comparing transcoding times without RR and the new machine is significantly faster - around 3x faster. Also checked write speed and the new machine is much faster even with the 5400 rpm drive, so that isn't the bottleneck. I've installed the 10.6.7 update, but haven't tested transcoding with RR yet. Btw, Activity monitor shows 8 cores, but only 4 are really working when transcoding - not sure how that works.

 

[Russ Campbell]

I've done some more testing. First re-installed RED FCS3 Quicktime plugin and now RR transcoding speeds match on the 2 MBP's. Roughly 2x real time for Prores HQ 1080p and real time for 720p and SD on both machines. On the older MBP, CPU's are working at around 70% and only 19% on the new MBP.

Transcoding without RR shows up a significant difference between the 2 machines, with the new MBP transcoding around 2.4x faster than the old MBP. CPU usage increase to 45% on the new MBP and 98% on the old MBP.