Re: New Mac choice for FCPX?
 

Apple says that the HD 4000 card will work so if you can get the proper Thunderbolt accessories you need then go ahead with the MacMini. Add some memory to it and use a good external drive to store the video files. There hasn't been a comparison review of FCPX on different Mac models that I know of but it's probably wise to figure that you will have longer render times with a MacMini than a MacPro with an OpenCL video card.

Update - I was wrong, here is a comparison: http://barefeats.com/fcpx01.html

Re: New Mac choice for FCPX?
 

thanks for the link awesome read

Re: New Mac choice for FCPX?
 

That comparison is between a single 6-core CPU Mac Pro & a quad core iMac & quad core MBP so unsurprisingly there isn't a great deal of difference in render times.. What would be more interesting is to know how much better a dual 6-core CPU Mac Pro performs.

Re: New Mac choice for FCPX?
 

One thing to note is that test is from Sept 2011.
Given the iMac has just been bumped to Ivy Bridge chips (Dec for 27" Quad i7) and the MacPro has only had a minor speed bump, one might suspect that the iMacs have moved up a notch yet again compared to the aging MacPro.

Yes, it would be interesting to see how a speed bumped 2010 12 Core MP would perform but I have a hunch that relative cost value would make one wonder whether it's worth the expense even for most professionals.

Next year's MacPro replacement is going to be interesting. I wonder if it'll be Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge Xeons (as Xeon chips tend to be a generation name behind)

Re: New Mac choice for FCPX?
 

Barefeats just posted 13" vs 15" MPBr tests which include FCPX and Motion (as well as Photoshop).
13" versus 15" Retina MacBook Pro

I'd thought I'd add this given that the 2011 test didn't include Retina model(s).

Re: New Mac choice for FCPX?
 

Apparently the new version of FCPX has had a rewriting of the rendering engine which speeds up rendering significantly. As I rarely render before a final export, I didn't notice but other people have: http://fcp.co/final-cut-pro/news/954...pro-x-timeline
I did notice that FCPX can now export in the background and still give you plenty of CPU power to continue to edit other projects.

The Bare Feats tests are now unrepresentative of the software as well as the hardware but still can give an idea of the differences between the Mac product lines.

Re: New Mac choice for FCPX?
 

Hmmm. The Quad-Core 15" Retina MacBook Pro is twice as fast as the Dual-Core 13" Retina MacBook Pro so no surprise there.

It would be really good to see some benchmarks of FCP X on a dual CPU Mac Pro not least because FCP 7 can only use one CPU & it would be nice to have confirmation that they like Adobe with Premiere Pro that Apple have actually written it to properly use multiple CPUs with multiple cores.

Re: New Mac choice for FCPX?
 

I can tell you from experience that FCPX on my 2009 dual 8 core MacPro was initially only modestly faster than my 2010 17" MacBookPro when the program first came out. Of course Compressor was much, much faster with the QuickCluster enabled on the MacPro which isn't possible on a quad-core. What really pulled the MacPro ahead was replacing the video card from the basic card it came with. I didn't go with the most expensive card but the change in real-time effect responsiveness and rendering was noticeable. All MacPros come with FCPX friendly cards now. Right now I am not sure how the new software will change this but it seems substantial. Just as a note, while Adobe has put a lot of effort into CPU optimization making real-time editing with Premier much easier than FCP7, you still have to render out. And Compressor with QuickCluster beats out the Adobe Media Encoder on many of the same type of renders, at least on my computer.