I put this together as a helpful reference for processing times. It seem this is paramount where time is such a valuable commodity these days. I cant tell you how many times Ive heard lately ” What is the possibility of getting a low res. jpeg by the end of the shoot?”

I was amazed at how Photoshop CS3 stacked up against Phase. I would guess that CS4 is probably at least a sec per file faster still.

Note: these test were performed while untethered on my 2007 Mac Pro Dual 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, OS 10.5.6 , and 5GB of Ram. Speeds will differ from machine to machine… ie: The newest Imac 3.06 GHz Core Duo could possibly outperform my quad core. I recently saw a benchmark test where the new single 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro (using newer processing technology) are actually outperforming last years Octa-cores while using most software. It is worth noting that Capture One Pro does make more use of the multi-core machines because it is a “multithreaded” application.

http://macperformanceguide.com/Optimizing-Grades.html
http://www.macworld.com/article/139919/2009/04/cto_macpro.html