Final Consensus: Does FCP use all 8 cores?
 

I've been reading for 5 hours and seem no closer to knowing the "truth." Do the current versions of FCP and Color take advantage of all 8 (or 4) cores of the newer Mac Pros?

I'm not talking about rending 8 different projects, but does FCP use all 8 cores to render and work on 1 single project?

No.

If I'm not mistaken, the only program that does that within Final Cut Studio is Compressor, but I'm not completely sure.

Does FCP use all 8 cores to render and work on 1 single project?

No.

My understanding is that FCP can use all four cores of a single physical CPU.

Your performance may vary
 

Actually until the next iteration of FCS is released (that is, assuming Jobs hasn't put a hold on development after firing 40 of it's developers recently) and *hopefully* unleashes all the 64-bit code in Snow Leopard on the suite there probably isn't a "yes or no" answer to anyone's system; it's going to depend on whether or not you have SL and the assets Grand Central Dispatch is allowed to allocate.

If you want to find out *exactly* which CPU cores are being used at any given time, install the Developer Tools available on your OS install disk and run the "Instruments" app. In there is a utility that can monitor all CPU core activity and even make a report on the usage.

NOTE: Instruments and the Developer tools are very deep code-wrangling apps; be careful goofing around with these tools and if you're not sure what they do or how to use them, the general rule is "don't do it". (there are instructions included for every app and operation)