mplayer eating cpu resources

[stealthelephant]

hey everyone,
mplayer is absolutely eating my cpu resouces (it has over 50 %) when just watching a movie, compared to much much less on my amd running gentoo (under 10 % most of the time). i thought that ppc's had superior performance? is this normal or is my system running very slow, i did hear somewhere that the level 2 cache is disabled in panther but nobody seems to give the any merit

 

[MisterMe]

hey everyone,
mplayer is absolutely eating my cpu resouces (it has over 50 %) when just watching a movie, compared to much much less on my amd running gentoo (under 10 % most of the time). i thought that ppc's had superior performance? is this normal or is my system running very slow, i did hear somewhere that the level 2 cache is disabled in panther but nobody seems to give the any merit

And this is a problem how? Don't forget that you are now running a UNIX-based system and this is how UNIX-based systems work.

 

[stealthelephant]

And this is a problem how? Don't forget that you are now running a UNIX-based system and this is how UNIX-based systems work.

linux is a nix system too and its the system it is running on & i have been running nix systems on pcs @ home for over 5 years.
i have 3 systems, 1 a gentoo box (only because freebsd does not support the hw on it) 2 a freebsd box (an awesome os) 3 my powerbook - also freebsd based, the 1.2 gh amd encodes at 30 fps and also keeps usage under 10% (well under 10 too) so the problem has much less to do with the type of OS since the app is opensource

 

[MisterMe]

Yes, but...

linux is a nix system too and its the system it is running on & i have been running nix systems on pcs @ home for over 5 years.
i have 3 systems, 1 a gentoo box (only because freebsd does not support the hw on it) 2 a freebsd box (an awesome os) 3 my powerbook - also freebsd based, the 1.2 gh amd encodes at 30 fps and also keeps usage under 10% (well under 10 too) so the problem has much less to do with the type of OS since the app is opensource

MacOS X is not Linux. It is much more than FreeBSD. The type of comparisons that you are trying to make across platforms are really meaningless. The most important question, however, you have yet to answer: What is the problem caused by the condition that you have identified?

 

[kphinney]

X and 'nix

Keep an eye on Activity Monitor's '% CPU' and open MPlayer, then open additional aps. It allocates and frees up your CPU depending on how much actual need arises. MPlayer may run just fine using 30%, but it'll use more if you got it available. - Much like RAM alocation under linux. It'll clear out physical RAM when it needs to (and use disk ram when it's all full and in use, like a huge gimp render while using MPlayer).

btw - MPlayer ran fine on my G3 333 laptop and my Pent 400. Switching to full screen mode may help if it's bogged down. This'll switch your screen res. to a more suited mode.

 

[stealthelephant]

MacOS X is not Linux. It is much more than FreeBSD. The type of comparisons that you are trying to make across platforms are really meaningless. The most important question, however, you have yet to answer: What is the problem caused by the condition that you have identified?

sorry in advance if u find this rude.
1. OS X is still only a Nix (i use that phrase very lame here i know), no matter what i will never think it is the best, freebsd for me will always hold that spot! -(1 - OS X has still to prove itself to me like the way freebsd has done)
2. OS X will never be more than a BSD - take a look at the BSD's first before u start claiming that X is better - it is a BSD but designed with a nice interface (aqua) - if they open sourced it (aqua) the other BSD's (and linux) would probably become more popular than X (probably. subjective i know).
3. the comparison most def holds! Apple did not redisign unix, they designed aqua around it (and ignored XFree86 - but at least 10.3 can run the apps without switching gui's which i think it 1 big cool plus). when i run mplayer from a console across different Nix's the performance is practically the same apart from 10.3.

dont get me wrong, i think the best thing apple ever could have done is switch to a nix system (the bsds still hold a major stability advantage over linux) - but i have been nix only now (on a pc) for 5 years (NOT linux only, freebsd & gentoo [linux is kinda lame - only in comparison to freebsd])
it is absolutely crap just to claim that because it is unix [OS X] that it will use more of the cpu to do the same application when the same OS does the same on a different system/arch & uses over 10 times less resouces - thats very ignorant

what i am asking is has anyone else gotten this performance hit when they use possibly the best open source app in OS X?

(once again - i am not trying to be rude to you, but i think your answers are way to subjective, almost as if you assumed that i am running windows just because i am comming from a pc background). thank you for your reply non the less

 

[stealthelephant]

Keep an eye on Activity Monitor's '% CPU' and open MPlayer, then open additional aps. It allocates and frees up your CPU depending on how much actual need arises. MPlayer may run just fine using 30%, but it'll use more if you got it available. - Much like RAM alocation under linux. It'll clear out physical RAM when it needs to (and use disk ram when it's all full and in use, like a huge gimp render while using MPlayer).

btw - MPlayer ran fine on my G3 333 laptop and my Pent 400. Switching to full screen mode may help if it's bogged down. This'll switch your screen res. to a more suited mode.

there is only 1 app running though thats what i am wondering about (mplayer only)

i like flash MX 2004, this is the only reason why i bought OS X cos it will run natively without having to configure bsd/linux on a pc laptop(thro WINE) for over 1 week just to get it working,

it seems like the whole ppc advantage thing is utter bulls*it, the same OS on 2 different archs has very differnt perfromances running the same app

 

[stealthelephant]

there is only 1 app running though thats what i am wondering about (mplayer only)

i like flash MX 2004, this is the only reason why i bought OS X cos it will run natively without having to configure bsd/linux on a pc laptop(thro WINE) for over 1 week just to get it working,

it seems like the whole ppc advantage thing is utter bulls*it, the same OS on 2 different archs has very differnt perfromances running the same app

once again guys, i am not trying to troll, i just dont accept an answer 'just because'.

OS X is very very cool and well worth the price apple charge for ppc systems, i particularly like the private sector support for this nix system, i was however expecting a better performance off my 1.25 g4 (its slower than my AMD 1700+) which is practically the same speed as it (1.33? < even?)

 

[MisterMe]

sorry in advance if u find this rude.
1. OS X is still only a Nix (i use that phrase very lame here i know), no matter what i will never think it is the best, freebsd for me will always hold that spot! -(1 - OS X has still to prove itself to me like the way freebsd has done)
2. OS X will never be more than a BSD - take a look at the BSD's first before u start claiming that X is better - it is a BSD but designed with a nice interface (aqua) - if they open sourced it (aqua) the other BSD's (and linux) would probably become more popular than X (probably. subjective i know).
3. the comparison most def holds! Apple did not redisign unix, they designed aqua around it (and ignored XFree86 - but at least 10.3 can run the apps without switching gui's which i think it 1 big cool plus). when i run mplayer from a console across different Nix's the performance is practically the same apart from 10.3.

Show me where I said that MacOS X is the "best" UNIX. It is obvious that you can't read any better than you can write.

dont get me wrong, i think the best thing apple ever could have done is switch to a nix system (the bsds still hold a major stability advantage over linux) - but i have been nix only now (on a pc) for 5 years (NOT linux only, freebsd & gentoo [linux is kinda lame - only in comparison to freebsd])
it is absolutely crap just to claim that because it is unix [OS X] that it will use more of the cpu to do the same application when the same OS does the same on a different system/arch & uses over 10 times less resouces - thats very ignorant

what i am asking is has anyone else gotten this performance hit when they use possibly the best open source app in OS X?

If you knew anything about MacOS X, then you would know that underneath the MacOS X layers that we all know and love is Darwin BSD, which is based on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and quite a bit of Apple-written code. Darwin, in turn, resides on top of Mach. That makes it a lot more than FreeBSD.

(once again - i am not trying to be rude to you, but i think your answers are way to subjective, almost as if you assumed that i am running windows just because i am comming from a pc background). thank you for your reply non the less

Oh, think nothing of it. Someone other than you can respond to your posts.