best Mac for Final Cut Pro X?

At this point, I would wait for the new iMacs coming out

a Core i7 Mac would be ideal.
With your usage the new release would not make a huge difference, but apparently Ivy Bridge i7 offers some pretty nice features as far as process rendering goes. and seems to be better at supporting PCIe-3.0 GPUs which not sure if that will make an impact on the iMac line up or not.

But honestly any current i5 or i7 (ideally) Mac would do. I wouldn't really bother with a Mac Pro, specs aren't bad but aren't as up to speed as any of the current Macs are.

I use Final Cut Pro on my dual core i7 13 MBP. I have 8GB of RAM and an intel 520 SSD and I don't ever have a problem using the program. I would say any apple computer can handle it although I would look for an i7 machine. But just for reference it can be ran well on the 13 dual core i7. Any machine you choose I would add in at least 8GB of RAM as its been my experience that FCP likes to use RAM.

6 or 8 core Mac Pro would be good with a Radeon 5870.

Both the GPU and CPU are way better than what's shipping in the iMacs right now.

dwd3885 said:

I've specced out a 3.4 i7 w/ 8gb RAM and 2TB hdd for $2,399. Good?

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excellent.

I use it on my MacBook Pro i5 and it has some trouble rendering. Definitely get i7 machine

dwd3885 said:

thanks for the help guys. The iMac is on order!

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Yikes! you should have waited for the new iMac to come out, expected real soon.

MacDawg said:

At this point, I would wait for the new iMacs coming out

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Amazing Iceman said:

Yikes! you should have waited for the new iMac to come out, expected real soon.

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What they said...

Mandatory SSD

With a budget of $2-2.5K, I would get the lowest-spec 15" MBP (not the 13" - a single fan is NOT enough cooling) for $1359 as a refurb from the Apple store. Drop in an another 4GB of RAM (a MUST), and an SSD. Your choice: 240GB or 480GB.

My budget was $3K. I replaced the stock 750GB HDD on a 2.3GHz 15" MacBookPro with a 480GB SSD (Electra 6G). This makes a huge difference in editing performance, especially tasks like high-speed scrubbing. More CPU/GPU does not make a big difference in editing video; memory bandwidth does. Of course, when it comes rendering time, absolutely more cores and higher clocks matter.

Yesterday, I spun up 17 Quicktime 7 threads to export some .mov as .wmv all at once. That's over a GB of video (from FCPX). This maxed out all 8 cores on the i7, drove both fans to max RPM, and ran the CPU up to 89 deg. C. For over three hours. Apple Store Refurbs are the way to go!

Best MacBook Pro for FCPX

Hi Guys,

Im a new member but wanted to share my experience with my new MBP13" I-7, 2.8,750 HD. I am an avid user of FCPX and thought that the 13" would handle the payload of this program couple with Motion. I very quickly realized that these 2 programs were a bit much for the system to handle. I upgraded the RAM from the stock 4 to 8. Still the system was performing slow.

Having the system for only a few short weeks I took it back into Best Buy and they were fantastic allowing me to upgrade to the 15" base line i-7 quad core. This couple with the 8 mb RAM is running like a dream while both FCPX AND Motion running. Just wanted to share, for those of you trying to figure out which one to get and are running these 2 very intensive programs.