"Strange Parallels performance
Have you seen this before?
I have a 2008 Mac Pro (Harperstown 2.8GHz 8 core) with Parallels 5.0 running Windows 7. Under OSX 10.6.2, I ran Handbrake and converted a 500MB AVI file to MPEG4. Handbrake converted the video running at an average rate of 90 fps.

When I performed the very same conversion on my Mac Pro by using the Windows 7 version of Handbrake running inside Parallels 5.0, I got 190 fps! The conversion finished in less than half the time!
(What codec was the AVI file? (same presets, etc. used I assume) I was also curious if he'd tried converting DVDs to H.264, which is the most popular use of Handbrake IMHO.-Mike)

As a double check, I ran the same test on a 2.8 GHz Core i7 PC running Windows 7 (64-bit). Although the hardware is obviously different from my Mac Pro, it's in the same ballpark (i.e., both are 2.8 GHz processors with 8 threads running the same version of Windows). On the true PC, I saw about 75 fps, which was in line with my Mac Pro.

So, Handbrake gets 75 fps on a Core i7 PC running Windows 7, it gets 90 fps on a Harperstown Mac Pro running 10.6.2, but it gets a whopping 190 fps on the same Mac Pro using Handbrake for Windows 7 running inside Parallels 5.0. How can I get over 100% BETTER performance in Handbrake running in a virtual machine than I do when running on the native hardware?
(he later wrote w/more info)
Sorry I didn't offer these details in the first place:

• I used the latest 64-bit version for OSX (0.94). I used the only version of Handbrake for Windows.
• I used the Regular > High Profile preset with all settings left at default.
• On all machines, the source file was located on one hard drive and the destination file was written to a second hard drive (to maximum drive throughput)
• All machines (e.g., Mac Pro, Windows via Parallels, and Core i7 PC) had 4GB of RAM
• I used Activity Monitor (or Windows Resource Monitor) during all tests, and Handbrake made full use of all cores/threads. Most of the time, every core/thread was running at 75% or higher.
• No other task was running on any machine.
  
• In all cases, I repeated the test at least twice to verify results, and the fps rates were perfectly consistently across tests.

Bottom line: I really did convert a video file through Parallels for Windows at better than double the rate of running Handbrake natively on the Mac. This is a really weird result. It suggests either that the 64-bit version of Handbrake for the Mac is not optimized to the same degree as the version for Windows, and/or the Parallels is capable of using the eight cores of my Mac Pro more efficiently than the native OS (though this makes no sense since Parallels is running on top of the OS).

I'm stumped. I would think someone else would have noticed this, but if not, can someone else repeat this result? As for me, I'm done running Handbrake in OS X. I'm going to fire up Parallels and run Handbrake under Windows 7 because it finishes in less than half the time!

(To rule out any question of timing accuracy in VM, I asked if he'd actually timed the Parallels/Win 7 conversion.)
Mike, I triple checked my times again this evening. On the Parallels machine, I repeated the 190-ish fps performance, but then on a subsequent run it was only 80 fps...so now I feel a little foolish. I'm not sure what to believe. Maybe the high score was a fluke/bug or operator error. I've always doubted the result from the start because it seemed like getting something for nothing, so maybe it was too good to be true.
(I'd be curious if you repeat the tests again a few times to know how consistent they are using a stopwatch or (independent) clock rather than its reported FPS or ETC.-Mike)
I would still be interested in knowing if anyone else saw this happening too.

(I'd forgotten it earlier today but AVI's and handbrake rang a bell. Back in the Oct. 2nd news page here, a reader had complained about the 64bit version of Handbrake back then not having support for AVI and OGM - and that post linked to a handbrake forum thread about their future "roadmap" and that the next update (i.e. 0.9.4) would not have support for them (focusing on what they did best). (Ref: Oct. 2nd news page post titled "Reader notes on 64-bit Handbrake not supporting AVI and OGM (ditto for 0.9.4 release)".) The current Handbrake home page has a note about that also.)
Handbrake dropped support for converting into AVI, but it still supports converting from AVI to other formats. I was converting AVI to H.264 MPEG4.
-Steve"

I don't know of anyone that's tried that but in the past I have seen much higher performance reported by readers in VM (even virtualPC) on some things (some pure benchmarks and MS office app benchmarks IIRC).
I don't use Parallels v5 or any VM personally. (I do have separate HDs in a Mac Pro w/64-bit Vista U and Win 7 Pro, but never used Handbrake in Windows.) But if any other readers care to comment on this (and especially if you've compared DVD to H.264 conversion performance) - let me know

"Hi Mike, I have a Drobo 4-bay unit and installed the latest firmware and Drobo Dashboard and my new i7 iMac was slowing down terribly. I then came across this blog post on Drobo Dashboard and mysterious Mac slowdowns.
I removed Dropo Dashboard and now all is fine. I am waiting to confirm a fix before reinstalling it.
(I asked for info on Dashboard version he's using.)
I am running 1.6.1 Drobo Dashboard and the latest firmware 1.1.3 on the unit. The Drobo unit works fine without the Dashboard software installed. It was definitely the culprit in my slowdown on the computer.
-Lonnie"

Another reader (thanks David) seeing this same problem sent an FYI on a Drobo site knowledge base page on the issue (Why has my Mac slowed down since I installed version 1.6.x of Drobo Dashboard?) confirming they are aware of it and working on a fix/update:

"We are aware that this symptom is showing up with a few Mac customers and are actively working to fix it. A new release of Drobo Dashboard will be out shortly that addresses this problem. This issue affects all connection types.

In the meantime, if you need to use Drobo Dashboard, you can revert to version 1.5.1 of Drobo Dashboard. Please refer to our knowledge base article, What is the proper way to uninstall and re-install Drobo Dashboard on my Mac? to uninstall version 1.6.0 or 1.6.1. After you successfully uninstall Drobo Dashboard, install 1.5.1. You can get this version at: http://www.drobo.com/support/updates/dashboard/. The file you should download is: ddinstaller_1-5-19930.dmg. We apologize for the inconvenience."

And another reply today on this subject:

" I got tired of waiting for Sonnet to release new drivers for Snow Leopard, and decided to take the plunge on getting a DroboPro as I needed more space for backup storage.
I saw exactly the same problem, after several hours (not sure exactly how long, certainly overnight), my Mac Pro (early 2009) started to act crazy. Mouse movements became very erratic, applications took forever to load, the USB and Firewire connections started dropping data, my LED Cinema Display started flickering, etc., etc.

Needless to say, I wasn't very happy... The culprit is definitely the Drobo 1.6.1 software. There is a process called DDServiced, which seems to act as the intermediary between the Drobo Dashboard application and the device itself. It isn't chewing up that much CPU time, but it is consuming a key system resources - Mach Ports. Ports are a low-level construct used by applications to communicate with Mac OS X. If you look at a typical application, it will max out at using maybe a couple of dozen ports. Complex (or just plain complicated) apps like iTunes use maybe a few hundred. After only three hours, I found that DDServiced was using over 17 THOUSAND. Clearly it's allocating these ports, then forgetting to release them again when done - a classic resource leak. Unfortunately, these ports need to be indexed by the operating system, which ends up getting bogged down, and legitimate apps either can't get a port when they need one, and either crash or lock up.

Unfortunately, you can't just get rid of DDServiced if you are using iSCSI, as it is required for establishing the iSCSI connection (you can kill it once the connection is made, but if you unmount the disk or reboot then you are stuck). You will need to revert to version 1.5.1 as your previous poster mentioned. If you use FW800 or USB, you don't need the Drobo s/w installed at all once you have configured the Drobo box.

Hope this helps someone - I thought I was seeing something far more serious when my FW and USB connections started going haywire!
Cheers, Hugh"

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