There have been some posts about hardware optimization and X. Here's a little comparison I just ran.
:65 ProRes 1920x1080p/23.98 media clip. Same timeline. I applied a MB Looks "blockbuster" preset. This internally uses diffusion+vignette+4 color correction filters. This was left unrendered and then exported, so rendering occurred on export. Exported (Share - Media Export) as current setting.
1. 2009 MacPro 8-core (2.26GHz), 16GB RAM, ATI 5870 (1GB VRAM) GPU, 2 internal RAID-0 media drives.
8 min. export
2. 2011 MacPro 12-core (2.93GHz), 12GB RAM, ATI 5870 (1GB VRAM) GPU, Fibre Channel SAN media drives.
6 min. export
3. 2012 iMac 4-core i7 (3.4GHz), 16GB RAM, HD 6970M (2GB VRAM) GPU, internal SSD, Thunderbolt Promise media drives.
4 min. export
Also unrendered playback was reasonably close to real-time (or at worst it looked like around about 15fps) on the iMac, yet rather "stuttery" on the two MacPros.
Clearly it looks like: a) X is optimized for the i7 processor, b) actual processor speed is more important than the number of cores, c) the more VRAM the better.
- Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
