What difference would these configurations make in FCP?

[Andrei Popa]

It would involve compression and grading.

It might be an odd comparison, because the machines are older models, but although the Mac Pro is older it still looks like there would be a noticeably better performance over the iMac…

[Karel Voners]

Just remember that FCP7 can’t use multiple cores, it is not multithreaded. So the only thing that matters is the base clock speed of the CPU and the turbo mode.

It is also a 32bit application. This means that it can only use 2,5 GB of ram. Regardless of how much ram you put in the machine.

This also applies to older version of Compressor.

It also does not use the GPU for any hardware acceleration. So the newer CUDA enabled nvidia cards won’t do you any good. You will not notice any difference between an old ATI 5750 and a new GTX 780. Sometimes it is even better to stay with an older card just for compatibility issues.

The newer version of compressor is still 32bit but can use the GPU to compress to H264.

Cheers!
K.

[Andrei Popa]

FCPX is 64 bit multithreaded right?

[Karel Voners]

Yes!