[uicandrew]

i've been using toast to convert divx files to dvd. in order to be more efficient, i have been encoding with my macbook (2.0ghz with 1.5gb ram) and with my imac (intel 2.0ghz, 256mb vram, 2.0gb ram) at the same time.

the results were humbling. my macbook finished at the same time as my imac. the added/dedicated vram didn't give my imac any advantage. Neither did the memory. iStat Pro reports that the processor was used completely in the decoding.

well, i'm fibbing a little bit. the macbook finished 7 minutes behind, but only because it was burning at 4x instead of 8x. The difference was in the dvd burner, not the ram, or the vram.

this makes me feel better about my macbook purchase. the integrated vram can handle encoding like an imac and can run full aero effects. the only thing i really miss from the powerbook series is the backlit keyboard. but the size is perfect for me.

[hookem2oo7]

vram has little to nothing to do with encoding video. what you did is purely processor based, which is why the two machines finished so close to one another

[mduell]

Video encoding is always completely CPU bound (maybe disk bound for really high bitrate streams). No knowledgeable person would expect VRAM or the GPU to have any impact on video encoding time.

You'll see the difference in 3D games and other applications that make use of the graphics processor (Motion, Aperture).

This is like saying... gah, I can't even come up with an analogy bad enough.

[SuperJ]

I hear so many people claim that they need a good GPU to work with Video... on a consumer level the processor is way more important.

Does iMovie or Final Cut use the GPU to render?

I've been impressed with my H.264 encoding speeds on my MacBook. iMovie seems to run great too.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by SuperJ

I hear so many people claim that they need a good GPU to work with Video... on a consumer level the processor is way more important.

Does iMovie or Final Cut use the GPU to render?

I've been impressed with my H.264 encoding speeds on my MacBook. iMovie seems to run great too.

Motion (I'm sure) and Shake (I think) use the GPU quite a bit. FCP and iMovie don't really use the GPU, aside from the basic display-images-on-screen stuff that every app does through Quartz.