Quesiton answered-iMovie HD is not dual-core aware

MacWorld today published benchmarks for the new 1.9 GHz iMac, comparing it to a 2.0 GHz iMac and a 2.0 GHz dual-core PowerMac G5. In most tests, the 1.9 GHz was slightly faster than the 2.0 GHz iMac; the 2.0GHz iMac beat the 1.9 in a couple. The most interesting thing in the benchmarks was what they showed about iMovie HD rendering, i.e., the dual core 2.0 GHz PowerMac was four seconds slower than the 1.9 GHz iMac and three seconds slower than the 2.0 GHz iMac. (In other tests, the dual-core PowerMac took half the time of the iMacs….in applications that are dual-core aware.)

After looking also at the dual-core and dual-processor G5 PowerMac benchmarks published by MacWorld earlier, I feel it’s fairly safe to say that MHz is not a myth when it comes to iMovie’s performance. iMovie HD seems to render faster as clock speed increases, regardless of whether the computer is single or dual CPU. There are some speed variances not explained by that conclusion, but I’m holding to that as a general rule.

Final Cut Pro is another story (as would be Photoshop, etc). But if you’re just working with iMovie HD and thinking of trading in your 2.0 GHz iMac for a dual-core 2.0 GHz PowerMac, you might want to think again.