Dual Core Mac only using 30% processor power.

Hi,
I'm running Motion on a Dual-core 2.3GHz G5 Power Mac. My Motion renders are really slow - and bring the whole system to a crawl.
Using Activity Monitor and Menu Meters, I can see that Motion is only using, at most, 50% processor power between the two cores.
The machine has 4GB of RAM so that shouldn't be an issue, and I've run the same Motion files on my old 2.0 Dual G5 at home and the renders use 95% of each processor and are much faster.
Is Motion not dual core aware?
Thanks,
Joe

CPU processing in Motion is not the workhorse. GPU does all the heavy lifting. What graphics card are you using?
See this thread for a comparison of various cards:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=378164&tstart=0
Patrick

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I tested iWork on my iMac and MacBook Pro (both DualCores) as well: same problem.
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roman

How much memory do you have in your system? I'll bet if you check activity monitor (applications/utilities) and go to system memory tab therein you will see lots of page outs. This happens with huge docs and little memory as the doc is being swapped between active operating memory and the hard disk The only way to solve this problem is to get more memory (not storage) in your system. For a 2,000 page doc you're going to need lots and lots and lots of extra gigs of memory. By the way - how big is the too big file of yours?
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My friend recently bought a Dual Core Intel Mac mini and when hooking it up to a 19 inch MAG monitor there are often wavy lines on the edges of the screen. They go up and down both sides, are jagged, and also are not static but moving quickly. Sometimes it seems to behave normally while other times if it doesn't show up on the boot screen it will show up after a little bit of use.
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So is the MAG monitor your brother's monitor? That wasn't clear.
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IMovie only using 50% CPU power

Hi,
When I export my project in iMovie my CPU usage holds at 50%. I accept this does mean I can do other things but would like the export to go faster.
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dcbevan

Hi
As I get it - Doesn't iMovie take full use of multiple core processors. Not even Pro
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BUT
RAM - iMovie or FinalCut are not that RAM hungry - 1 to 2 GB would be OK
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• 10Gb my minimum for iMovie
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FireWire or internal e-Sata performs best.
• Screen savers - may be (by directing it to an empty folder - I got the feeling of slight increase
in performances)
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*Speed up iDVD*
To speed up iDVD
TO GET IT TO WORK SLIGHTLY FASTER
• Minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up hard disk - if less than 5Gb slow and unstable - less than 1Gb might even not start.
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*Professional Quality (movies + menus up to 120 min.)* - BEST
Takes about 2 x times the other ones - but if quality is of essence
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2 hour movie + menu = about 4 hours to encode at it’s best on my system
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1 hour including menu = about 1 hour to encode
*High Quality* (in iDVD08 or 09) / Best Quality (in iDVD6) *(movies + menus up to 120 min.)* - slightly lower quality than above
2 hours including menu = about 2 hour to encode
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else FW-800 or FW-400 or USB2 or network storage (slowest and near to useless)
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Normally my d-G5 2GHz takes about 2 x movie material when iDVD and Mac OS on one internal HD and material is on the other internal one.
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Choise and use of hard disks is essential.
• I guess that a Solid State Disks might improve speed
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eg iMac or ProBook or alike.
from Karsten -
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Yours Bengt W

HP Compaq CQ43-400TU Dual Core 2.2 (Second Gen) Processor Upgrade

I have HP Compaq CQ43-400TU Dual Core 2.2 (Second Gen) Laptop.
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Here is the manual with a list of possible processors:
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Camino using 90% processor power

Hi all,
I downloaded a G4 optimized build of Camino from
http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis. (latest version)
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Mahesh.

Hello! I use a little program called menumeters that
puts a guage in the menu bar for the processor. When
loading a new page in Camino I notice that at the
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Thanks for your reply, however the processor usage increases to 90-100% and stays there until I quit Camino.
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Does dual core Mac Pro take advantage of NCQ drives?

I've only used native command queuing drives in card based RAID systems up to this point, so I'm unsure if this functionality is taken advantage of in a Mac Pro.

I get the impression from your replies that unless I'm using RAID of some sort, the NCQ drives will not give me any advantage.
NCQ does not always provide the best performance. In many cases, a RAID driver that disables NCQ with striped RAID sets and individual hard drive volumes will perform a little faster than a controller that always has NCQ on. The Areca and the new HighPoint RAID card drivers allow the user to turn NCQ off or on. This feature allows the user to test these settings using DiskTester or another performance testing application.
Some of the faster RAID card drivers automatically turn off NCQ for striped RAID sets and individual hard drive volumes. Next, they turn on NCQ when SATA PM is used or with RAID 10, 5, 6, 30, 50 or 60 configurations.
NCQ is not a cure all and it does not provide a huge performance difference in real life testing. However, with PM and redundant RAID configurations it can provide 2-10% better performance. It can also hurt read performance by as much as 8-10% when used with striped RAID sets.
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Have fun!

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Dual Core Mac only using 30% processor power.

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