Why is my G5 iMac so slow???

jasonh · Post by **jasonh** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:25 am

I've got a 20" 2.1ghz G5 iMac with 1.5gb of ram and 250gb HD. Unfortunatly it will only rip a DVD at 4fps. Where as my 2.0ghz Mac Book will rip the same DVD at 16fps. Any idea what the story is? Am I doing something wrong? Or are Intel processors just that much faster?

Thanks, Jason

Post by **s55** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:47 am

Intel processors are not only significantly faster, they are also dual core.

Unless you give us more details on your settings, one can not say much more than that. That difference in speed may well be correct though.

http://handbrake.m0k.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2741

stmiller · Post by **stmiller** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 12:51 am

Even though they use the nice G5 chip, the iMacs have a slightly slower FSB than the Powermac G5s, and that really hurts iMacs in some things.

I don't know if Handbrake OS X rips from a DVD drive? (I don't have a Mac). But copying a disc to the hard drive first will help, as the slot-loading drive in an iMac does not have the best I/O speeds.

There is a G5 optimized version of Handbrake floating around on this forum if you want to try that. Also try turning off deinterlacing, and experimenting with other encoding options to find a faster solution.

baggss · Post by **baggss** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 1:00 am

stmiller wrote:Even though they use the nice G5 chip, the iMacs have a slightly slower FSB than the Powermac G5s, and that really hurts iMacs in some things.

I don't know if Handbrake OS X rips from a DVD drive? (I don't have a Mac). But copying a disc to the hard drive first will help, as the slot-loading drive in an iMac does not have the best I/O speeds.

There is a G5 optimized version of Handbrake floating around on this forum if you want to try that. Also try turning off deinterlacing, and experimenting with other encoding options to find a faster solution.

Yes, you can rip directly from the DVD.

The FSB on the G5 iMacs was, IIRC, 600Mhz whereas the upper end G5 PowerMacs were 1Ghz or higher (my Quad has a 1.25Ghz FSB)

lazza32 · Post by **lazza32** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 4:42 am

I think theres a problem because my G4 PowerBook 1.25Ghz rips at about 15fps

baggss · Post by **baggss** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 5:22 am

lazza32 wrote:I think theres a problem because my G4 PowerBook 1.25Ghz rips at about 15fps

It all depends on what settings you use. Doing 320x240, 700k MPEG-4 will be significantly faster than doing 640x480, 2500k H.264/MPEG-4.

INFOLC · Post by **INFOLC** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 1:58 pm

my ibook g4 1.2g rips appletv setting (h.264) at ~ 2fps so it doesnt surprise me at all.

as mentioned above by bagss, it all depends on your settings. mpeg4 will be much much faster. encoding to mpeg-4 (using target size 1gb for instance) results in ~ 8 to 9fps.