[Acapella75]

How fast does it take iTunes to encode a CD to mp3. Does the G4 in Macs make it faster than their windows counterparts at encoding mp3?

Currently, I have an emachines 5310 laptop. the specs are:

AMD Athlon XP-M 2400+
40gb 4200 rpm HDD
512 mb RAM
15.4 widescreen (nicest screen i have seen on ANY notebook)
802.11g
8x DVD/24x10x24 Combo drive
Windows XP Home

I recently began using iTunes for Windows(and love it), but it takes my computer about 10-12 min to encode a CD to mp3 format in iTunes. Is this normal? Will the pb 12" be faster at this task? That is the model I am looking at purchasing soon (my first apple).

I guess what I want to know is, does the G4 processor do this type of stuff more effeciently and quicker than the Windows notebooks?

Thanks in advance for all the help.

Lawrence

[cenutrio]

I just encoded to AAC the Jimy Hendrix (The ultimate experience) in my TiPB G4 400 40 GB GNX/384 MB in (20 songs, 1:11 min, 726.3 MB) in 11.5 minutes.

Encoding speed oscillated between x5.9-7.2

I was also running word, Mail, and safari.

Not a fast system but still very good multitasking (perssonal opinion).

This an almost 3 years old computer running Panther and iTunes 4. New systems should crush my PB (I have seen a G5 1.6 encoding at speed x29 with no sweat). I bet the bottleneck was the CD drive not the processor. They are that good.

Hope it helps

[Ohenri]

Would the bit rate not be a factor as well??? I'm assuming the lower the rate - the less data intensive work it does - no??

H!

[cenutrio]

Originally posted by Ohenri:
Would the bit rate not be a factor as well??? I'm assuming the lower the rate - the less data intensive work it does - no??

H!

Very good point, the more you compress it, the longer it takes.

[Acapella75]

So, is the velocity engine in the G4 faster or not? Also, does the HDD speed have anything to do with it? Thanks for the replies so far.

[cenutrio]

Encoding music using iTunes in G4s is faster than in equal MHz G3s. This is due to the altivec vector unit present in G4 chips and that iTunes is optimized to take advantage of altivec.

Apple and developers have been optimizing the OS and many applications to take full advantage of the altivec unit. Without it Macs performance in Photoshop, video rendering in iMovie or FCP, iTunes encoding, etc would be way behind Intel and AMD offers.

Apple presented the "Megahertz myth" when Motorola G4s half the frequency of top of the line Intel where able to stand in performance (I'm talking 1999 when Apple offered G4s at 500 MHz able to crush Intel's P3 at 900 MHz). Later the difference in MHz got bigger because Motorola's inability increasing frequency speed.

So, yes. The altivec unit really improves the G4 performance, who knows but may be even by x1.5-1.8 (but the program must be altivec aware, so developers must optimize it). Some parts of the OS X are thought to be altivec aware, that's why having hardware with G4s/G5s is so important.

The G3 was a very good chip, but the altivec unit really makes a difference.

For example, the new G5s altivec unit is still a work in progress (like earlier G4s), there's lots of performance still to come.

I wrote way too much, I hope it helps.