1 Lightning port as both 2nd monitor AND storage SSD? - 21" 2011 iMac

Hello!
I am considering picking up my first SSD drive for use as a work horse for streaming video and audio for my prosumer use. My 21" 2011 iMac only has the one lightning port, which I plug my old 19" LCD monitor into for the extra screen real estate. Not wanting to bottleneck the SSD speed by connecting it to USB 2 or even FireWire, does such a throughput device exist that would allow the one lightning port to support both my 19" display as well as a mounted, external SSD drive? I know that the lightning port had an expandable future, but I'm not sure if this is possible. If it IS possible, I would imagine doing so would still be expensive. Thanks a bunch!

Haha, THUNDERBOLT! Sorry, mate. I must have been thinking of the newer iPad/iPhone connector. Goes to show you how much mind I've paid to apples new port. Anyway, that's great news. Thank you. I was pessimistic about their being enough bandwidth to fully support my 2nd monitor in addition to the top notch speeds of an SSD. I was curious to know where there might be any sacrifices one way or another.

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I have this MacBook Pro bought brand-new in January 2010:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,2
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Chris

Wow, you posted this perfectly to coincide with an identical problem, albeit using Logic Pro 9.1.5 rather than FCP.
Last week, I purchased a 23" external monitor to use alongside my "flagship" 2011 15" hi-res, 2.3 i7 Macbook Pro with 8Gb of RAM.
It is connected via a mini-DVI to D-sub analog (not that that should matter?) and all appeared fine.
The first issue I had was with my MBP's fan now running CONSTANTLY, when I have the second monitor attached. Even when the machine is completely idle.
When using the machine to record audio, this is a fairly hefty problem and not something I had anticipated - indeed why would I anticipate such a thing?
What is far, far worse though is that over the last few days I have had repeated problems with performance drop-outs and errors in Logic and I have trying to fathom out why. Realising that the only major system change made, was the above monitor connection, I ran some tests.
I restarted my MBP, no other apps were running and with my new 23" monitor attached acting as main display with MBP built in display on as secondary
I loaded up a fairly demanding Logic project which was hitting 40% to 60% CPU usage when using the built in MBP display last week
I ran activity monitor and had CPU usage history open
The above project now repeatedly overloads and playback halts in a given 8 bar section - with CPU at 80% most of the time
I disconnected the external display, no shut down, I just let the machine switch to the built in 15".
Started the same project, the same 8 bar section and hey presto - CPU usage back down to 40% to 60%
The above was reflected in the CPU usage history with the graph showing CPU use down by about a half, when running this Logic project WITHOUT the external display.
There is a very useful benchmark Logic project that has been used as a test by many users to gauge Logic performance on given Apple hardware.
The project has about 100 tracks pre-configured with CPU intensive plugins, designed to tax the CPU.
The idea is that you load up the project with tracks muted, press play and then unmute the tracks steadily until Logic us unable to play contiunously because of a system performance error.
On my MBP, with the external monitor NOT attached, I can play back around 50 of the audio tracks in this benchmark project.
With the monitor attached, I can get about 22 tracks playing.... which is actually a far worse a performance drop (-50% I think!?) than with the first example!
I did also try with just the external monitor attached and not the MBP display and performance was about 10% better than with dual monitors - so still extremely poor, to say the least.
This machine is the flagship MBP and has a dedicated AMD Radeon HD6750 GPU which should take care of most if not ALL graphics processing - I mean it's capable of running some pretty demanding games!
Putting aside the issue of constant fan noise, there is no reason AT ALL, why using an external monitor should tax the i7 CPU this way - it's not as though Logic is graphically demanding... far from it.
I am on 10.6.8, Logic 9.1.5, all apps up to date via "Software Update".
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Hey guys,
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I tried:
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-using only the 2x2 GB Kingston RAM
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Rick

Hey all,
I wasn't able to fix this yet.
I did everything I can think of. I even tried to wire
one monitor with a VGA cable but it didn't help.
I even have small lags when I am moving the Safari window
between the 2 monitors. Really little lags then but they
definitely are noticeable. I can make a video of that
if that would help someone understanding.
Hope there is someone out there who can help me with this.
Thanks already for any advice!
Cheers,
Rick
Edit: Do you think a new graphics card like the ATI 4870 would
help it? But I really don't want to spend more money just to
have 2 monitors while i have already 2 dvi connections on the
ati 2600XT.
Message was edited by: RickUnique

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