[Cyra Emery]

I would recommend a 12-core MP as well since DaVinci will make full use of those cores while rendering and you are not skimping on any other portion of your budget. 1TB SSD seems like overkill, if you care.

(this is self-promotion) Purchasing a 2.7GHz 12-core Hackintosh with superior GPU power and expandability would be ~$4,000 less than going with Apple.

[Cyra Emery]

I thought all of the Rev. B cards are not supported in 10.8.5? Only in 10.9 with the leaked Nvidia drivers, or (I assume) 10.9.2.

[Cyra Emery]

Custom Build by Iconic Worksations
4.3GHz 6-core, 32GBs RAM,2x GTX 690 on 10.8.5. I saw the same performance in 10.9.2 as well, perhaps even times where it seemed a half frame lower.

Monitors plugged into the top 690 and the box checked to use GUI for renders.

Blur Nodes:
09 24
18 24
30 24
66 12
TNR:
1 24
2 24
4 15
6 9

Sascha,Do you have the box checked to use your GUI for rendering as well? It is Preferences-> I/O. That would certainly explain why you might score half what a duplicate system does.

[Cyra Emery]

I must be doing something wrong as it finishes in 17 seconds on my hackintosh.

2x GTX Titan (EVGA Superclocked), E5-2695 V2 2.5GHz 12-core (5% OC on it), 64GBs 1600Mhz ECC RAM with an external SAS Raid.

mavericks 10.9.2 (1st beta).