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gpro · Mar 18, 2007, 05:57 PM

Is it possible to turn performance on a mac pro up? i noticed my CPU doesn't use more then 20% of power.
when i encode a video or do something that requires power and time to finnish my CPU doesnt use more then 20% of its power. why doesnt it use like 70% and finnish it quicker.

BigBadBiologist · Mar 18, 2007, 10:29 PM

Try encoding 4 videos and see if it uses 100% of the CPU.

Big Mac · Mar 19, 2007, 02:01 AM

How are you determining it's only using 20%?

gpro · Mar 19, 2007, 06:14 AM

i use a widget i got which shows you the CPU useage.
i will try encoding 4 videos when i get home

slpdLoad · Mar 19, 2007, 07:10 AM

Do towers have a "Processor Performance" setting in the Energy Saver preference pane like the laptops do? You might make sure you don't have it set to Reduced or something like that.

Simon · Mar 19, 2007, 07:13 AM

Open four different shells and launch 'yes' in each one. That should get your load up.

gpro · Mar 19, 2007, 09:23 AM

what you mean open 4 diffrent shells. how do u do that?

Simon · Mar 19, 2007, 09:35 AM

Open Terminal or X11 and start four shell sessions (4 windows if you like). Then launch 'yes' in every one of those sessions. That makes four 'yes' processes. One process for each available core.

gpro · Mar 19, 2007, 10:17 AM

so will that allow the mac to use all for cores on anything it does? because now i realised is only useing one core

Simon · Mar 19, 2007, 11:11 AM

yes will saturate one core. If you launch 4 instances of yes on your 4-core MP and you don't get close to 100% load something's wrong.

gpro · Mar 19, 2007, 11:41 AM

alride thank you i will try that tonight when i get home

gpro · Mar 19, 2007, 01:15 PM

i done that and it works. if i close the terminals does it not work? do i have to have all four teminals on all the time?

BigBadBiologist · Mar 19, 2007, 01:34 PM

What you are seeing is how single threaded apps work on a multiprocessor system. If you load multiple individual tasks, OS X distributes the tasks to each core. But if you are using a single threaded app, then only one core can be utilized for that app. I don't do any encoding, so I'm not sure what encoding apps are multithreaded so that you could better utilize your system.

Madrag · Mar 19, 2007, 01:36 PM

As I understand correctly, what the Original poster wanted was to max the processors when encoding video.

The yes command will do that, but as an exercise, it won't do what the OP wanted.

I think the reason your Mac only uses 20% of the proc. is due to the app you're using isn't prepared to use more (someone correct me, this is a guess).

But on the other hand, if you try encoding four videos as suggested already, you'll see the processors maxed out.

Uncle Skeleton · Mar 19, 2007, 02:05 PM

...unless you are encoding to such a high bitrate that the disk i/o bottlenecks before encoding speed.

anthology123 · Mar 19, 2007, 04:39 PM

This is a new thing - some apps out there are not designed to handle more than one core. Also, if you look at some high powered software out there, some companies charge more depending on how many cores or CPUs you are using. I guess since some apps have to be re-coded to take advantage, they are tying to legitamize the cost by charging more for 4 and 8 core versions of their software.

gpro · Mar 19, 2007, 08:01 PM

i aint in to video encoding that much it was just a test to see if the cpu usage would go any higher but it wouldn't but now when i open dreamweaver or fireworks it works perfectly all cores are working properly. is their a way to save the terminal? or do i just reopen it when i switch my mac on?

BigBadBiologist · Mar 19, 2007, 10:43 PM

Ugh. Ok, that terminal thing was just a test. "yes" is the command to "Print a string until interrupted". (ex. if you type: {yes "I have a dog"}, it will just scroll I have a dog over and over on your terminal) It loads your CPU(s) to the max. It doesn't have anything to do with actually enabling your cores or anything.

Your other apps load your cores either because they are multithreaded or because OS X can thread the processes within that app. Encoding a DVD traditionally is a single threaded task so it can only load one core at a time. Maybe newer encoding apps fix this, I don't know.

But in short, your computer is running fine.

davepk · Mar 20, 2007, 01:16 PM

Originally Posted by BigBadBiologist

...
But in short, your computer is running fine.

To be even clearer...

Do not run the terminal,
Do not use the "yes" command in the terminal,
Otherwise you will only slow your computer down.