I have just bought my wife the 24' iMac 3.06 with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 /4GB. And ordered a basic 2009 Mac Pro 2.66 4 Core. My other Macs are a 1st Gen G5 Duel 2.0/6GB and a 1st Gen Macbook 2.0/2GB. All the machines are as stock.

Whilst waiting for my MacPro to come I could not resist in loading FCP onto the iMac.

I rendered the same footage using the same custom presets:

The preset includes frame resizing 1080p to 720p Prores, (Frame Controls On) frame rate conversion 30-25 and 3 way colour correction with the filters. Also multiclip Prores playback within FCP. And FPS from quicktime playing a 1920 x 1080p H.264 clip.

The results may help some people who are in the same boat with older macs thinking of upgrading with a smaller budget.

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Test file name: MVI_4881.mov
Size 144.9mb
Duration: 00:30:05

Compressor Preset Name "Canon5D-30to25-720Vintage" (Vintage / Includes Compressor Colour Correction)

Compressor Conversion Times:

iMac 3.06 / Conversion Time: 01:50
QT 1080p Playback Speed 30fps

Macbook 2.0 / Conversion Time: 03:13
QT 1080p Playback Speed 26-28fps

G5 Duel 2.0 / Conversion Time: 05:55
QT 1080p Playback Speed 10-12fps

The 3.06 iMac can cut/play up to 9 720p multiclips.

The 2.0 MacBook can cut/play up to 3 720p multiclips.

The G5 Duel 2.0 can cut/play up to 2 720p multiclips.
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Motion, FCP, Color, CS4 Photoshop all fly on this iMac and I am totally impressed. I almost feel I should have ordered one instead of the MacPro.

James

Nice James. I am using FCP on the same iMac and have been very happy with the performance. I was using a dual G5/2.5ghz before that and the speed increase is indeed very noticeable!

Were you using the internal drive or an external?

Standard internal stock drives.

More test results.

To confirm the 2009 2.66 Quad Mac Pro using the same files/presets and clean system.

Compressor encoding: (As my other post).

iMac 3.06 / Conversion Time: 01:50
Mac Pro 2.66 Quad / Conversion Time: 01:03

The 3.06 iMac can cut/play up to 9 720p multiclips. (RT Safe)
The 3Mac Pro 2.66 Quad can cut/play up to 8 720p multiclips. (RT Unlimited) - Can cut/play up to 6 in (RT Safe)

This must be down to disk speed. I'll put a fast SATA into a spare slot and re test.

The iMac just feels overall faster.

You should also check to see if Compressor is accessing all the processors on the MacPro. Those results are oddly slow and don't jive with other speed tests on the internet.

It sounds like the iMac with a FW800 hub of some sort (Newer Tech MiniStack v3 should work) is a very capable upgrade for people with older G5 towers who don't have any extra boards installed. It's certainly tempting to me over a Mac Pro at this point in time.

Attached is the printout from the CPUs. 4 Cores HT/8.

They are by no means max out, so the slowness seems to lie elsewhere.

You need to set up a qMaster cluster to get the most out of your cores. If you simply use compressor with the "This Computer" setting then it doesn't maximise the load on each core, resulting in the results you have a screen cap off (this overhead allows you to continue working on the computer as you want to.

With a qMaster cluster set up, you should see greatly improved times. There is a bunch of information about this available online, if you do some searches.

Hi Craig, I have dabbled in this before but got into a bit of a 2 and 8. Didn't realise you needed this enabled for just one mac. Tried again and processor at full tilt now thanks Craig.

Settings:
Share this computer as:
Bullet 'QuickCluster with services'

Services:
Share Tick / Managed Tick

Options for selected services (8 Instances)

ID for cluster & start.

:)
James

New conversion time:
Mac Pro 2.66 Quad / Conversion Time: 00:46 - But It is a 100% at 00:31 but I suppose it has to joint the files back together hence the extra seconds.

In a real world test the results would be much better as putting a 30sec clip through is not fair on the Mac. Sorry Mac.

Attached processors running on max.

James