Logic Pro Reverb Instance Benchmarks
I got my figures from
this thread.
One guy got 27 instances of Sculpture on his 2.33ghz C2D (2gb RAM), and another got 23 instances on his 2.16ghz C2D (1gb RAM).
As I stated in the BBL thread, that's a 7% increase in clock speed showing a 17% increase in plugin count. Perhaps I should be thinking that's a 7% increase in each core? (x 2 = 14% increase?). Unfortunately these are the only two benchmarks that have been posted, and they don't follow the convention of the old CD systems, which faster speeds usually only increased plugin counts from say 17 to 19. Granted that's about a 12% increase, but then again it is only 2 more plugins. This is 4, and the 2.33 C2D is besting some Dual G5 2.7ghz figures.
I'm hesitant to guess that the RAM makes a difference -- the song is simply one tone running on a pretty RAM-efficient plugin (almost all Logic plugins are fairly RAM optimized), and my Macbook was giving similar #'s of instances with 512mb RAM as others were with 1-2gb.
If you look on Apple Forums' Logic Pro benchmark
thread, you can see that (oddly) benchmarks vary a good deal between users, even on same or slightly different systems. Also, the overall # of sculpture plugins run were pretty similar across all CD systems (Macbook, MBP, iMac), regardless of processor speed and RAM (most cited 15-19 instances, with low numbers not necessarily coming from slower systems).
So the big difference between the 2.16 C2D and 2.33 C2D is somewhat unusual, but taking into account everybody's varying specs, maybe not quite so.
And to the poster who said it'd be hard to use 240 reverb plugins -- that is true, but it wouldn't be hard to have 16 tracks going, with 4-5 plugins on each, with liberal use of Sculpture and Sound Designer (Logic's advanced plugins).
Regardless, I'm happy at Logic Pro's performance. Under everyday use this Macbook doesn't seem a lot faster (slower even, sometime) than my old 1.67ghz G4 Powerbook, but under Logic this Macbook runs over 4 times the amount of plugins than the PB did. Logic Pro is one of Apple's best-optimized programs =)