6-core Mac Pro 2010 and XBMC: A good combination?
#1
Hi,

I'm thinking about buying a new hexacore Mac Pro.

What do you think, will this machine be able to smoothly play the "heavy", high bit rate BD-mkvs?

I guess it's GPU doesn't support hardware accelerated playback, but the CPU performance should be more than sufficient for the purpose.

Obviously the mini display port on the 2010 Mac Pro also supports audio (at least according to Apple's web site).

What are your thoughts about this idea? Or maybe there is even an owner of a 2010 Mac Pro who could give a comment on that.

Cheers,

Chris
unRAID Server, Pioneer VSX-LX52, Panasonic 65VT30, Marusys VU+ Duo, Zotac AD10
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#2
Why in God's Name would you buy that machine to play BD-mkvs? It's absolute insane overkill. Not to mention they start at $2500. The 6 core option over the base 4 is $1,200 more.

And who says it won't do hardware acceleration? Apple should have built in methods for doing acceleration on their own hardware. I can't imagine Apple ships their high end machines and they can't do GPU acceleration. All the methods should be about the same whether it's Photoshop or x264 being accelerated.

I have a 1.8 gHz CELERON processor that will do the biggest and baddest BD-mkvs with a GT220.

You won't find a bigger Apple fan than me, but ... It's not even that small.
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#3
... of course I'm not planning to use the machine solely for XBMC. Recently I bought Final Cut Studio, and to be honest, the Mini 2010 is a bit to slow for it.

So the idea is to have one machine that can handle both, XBMC and FCS.

I thought the hardware accelerated H.264 playback is only supported on Nvidia Chipsets / GPUs. The Mac Pro comes with an ATI GPU.

Chris.
unRAID Server, Pioneer VSX-LX52, Panasonic 65VT30, Marusys VU+ Duo, Zotac AD10
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#4
ix400 Wrote:I thought the hardware accelerated H.264 playback is only supported on Nvidia Chipsets / GPUs. The Mac Pro comes with an ATI GPU.

Under Linux you won't be able to use VDPAU. Apple (with 10.6) has included their own system hooks and calls for doing video acceleration. It's how FinalCut Express and such work.

And if the Mini can't keep up, something is wrong.
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#5
Count me in for a slot to do some simulations, my machines here at work aren't the speediest Big Grin
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#6
ix400 Wrote:... of course I'm not planning to use the machine solely for XBMC. Recently I bought Final Cut Studio, and to be honest, the Mini 2010 is a bit to slow for it.

So the idea is to have one machine that can handle both, XBMC and FCS.

I thought the hardware accelerated H.264 playback is only supported on Nvidia Chipsets / GPUs. The Mac Pro comes with an ATI GPU.

Chris.

Still overkill. I used to run Final Cut on my G4 and that includes DVD Studio Pro. My new Quad i7 27" iMac runs EVERYTHING perfect.
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#7
I stand corrected. VDADecoder does only work on Nvidia stuff.

Who the heck is running the show over at ATI. I guess Apple assumes people with a 6 core machine won't need it to decode x264 in the GPU?
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6-core Mac Pro 2010 and XBMC: A good combination?0