New MacBibble Test Results

[Ron_Ross]

First-This is NOT intended to start another major PC vs. Mac discussion. God knows it was getting ugly toward the end. I do not have a problem with the moderator closing this topic after I post it.

Eric just sent to me, what we hope is the last revision of MacBibble before it hits the streets.

Everything seems to be working very well, most notably, however is the decrease in batch processing times.

Using a G4 DP 1Ghz, w/1.5G RAM on OS 10.2.3 I got 30 NEF conversions to 16-bit tiffs in 2m40s. That is a 3 minute decrease since my last post about a month ago.

I believe this is about as fast as we're going to see before Eric releases it. When? Soon we all hope. I think he has a few minor fixes to finish.


RSR

[ January 21, 2003: Message edited by: Ron Ross ]

[Kees_Bennema]

Ron, can you tell us what else is new?

[Ron_Ross]

Kees,

I have to reserve all the good stuff for Eric to post. Right now he is finishing up so that verrrrrrry sooooooon you will have a program to have and to hold.

One note, if you're still on OS 9, don't look for any more updates past this version. Besides OSX makes better use of memory. You'll need 350Megs of RAM for MacBibble.

RSR

[Kees_Bennema]

Fair enough Ron, we shouldn't be discussing unreleased stuff here anyway. It's just that I'm d**n curious! Been working in OS X for 18 months now, and love it, by the way.

[Rob_Galbraith]

FYI, using an even newer beta than Ron tested, D1X NEF processing speed is dramatically faster on a dual 1.25GHz Mac. Running the same files through the same conversion process as was used in the speed report, this Mac's processing times dropped from 172 seconds to 81 seconds (and faster yet again, at 72 seconds, if the program's autolevel function is disabled - previously, switching off autolevel only brought about a negligible drop in processing times).

This is not only a huge speed boost, thanks to what Eric describes as making good use of the Altivec processing engine of the G4 chip, but also it puts the dual 1.25GHz Mac ahead of the single processor Alienware 3.06Ghz PC, which processed the same files in 110 seconds with autolevel on.

For Mac users, this should provide some hope that RAW file processing, at least for some cameras, CAN be a lot faster than it is on the Mac overall now. This makes it all the more important that Apple and the software vendors get the message that the current level of RAW processing performance on the Mac isn't acceptable. And, if you're on the Mac now and also need speed now, the soon-to-be-released new version of MacBibble is worthy of a look.

-Rob Galbraith