I'm running my Plex server off a Mac Pro tower, 8-core: Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 series processors with 32 GB of RAM. The OS is Snow Leopard (osx 10.6.8). It's pretty much dedicated to the task of running the server.
I have about a dozen friends with whom I share the library, but almost never is there more than 2 people watching at once, myself included. My question is "what can I get away with" in terms of transcoding settings to give my friends the best possible image quality without choking. I realize a lot has to do with their setup and that's all over the map.
I haven't been able to find a passmark for this machine. CPUbenchmark looks kind of PC-centric and Google tells me nothing. I ran verbose logging while someone was watching a movie earlier tonight. The speed listings orbited around 20, sometimes as high as 40, occasionally as low as 3 and - fleetingly - 8145. (!)
Right now, I have the server set to 720p/4mbps for remote connections, but I'm wondering if I have the headroom to do 1080p at 8mbps. Any guidance greatly appreciated.
best,
FBC