IMAC's Top graphics card frustration - Cheap and no support for Adobe Mercury Playpack Engine GPU Acceleration?

Question

If anyone has a solution for getting the Mecury Playpack Engine GPU acceleration to work with Premiere Pro CS6 on an iMAC 2011, please let me know. Like I wonder if you could Thunderbolt an External graphics card somehow? Or is an upgrade possible? Ahh...not worth the risk.
Please, if you have a solution for me, let me know. Otherwise I find it pretty frustrating that I purchased a top-end iMAC, fully maxed-out in every way possible, and that the iMac doesn't support Adobe Premiere's Mercury Playback Engine GPU acceleration. Also, an old USB 2.0 Hub and thus the built-in SD card reader is slow. If you have SD cards with 95MB/s Transfer, Read and Write speeds, the iMAC will only transfer at around 30MB/s if you're lucky. Technically 480Mbs which is around 50MB/s but I haven't seen those speeds.
I figured this could at least be circumvented with a Thunderbolt SD card reader or a Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 adapter but of course no such thing exists.
Well, nothing with a reasonable price tag. This all might seem trivial to some but when you're uploading 24 hours of HD video footage from a 128GB SDXC card, the speed makes a big difference.
And come on, no BluRay support? Ridiculous. I get the politics of why but still, just ridiculous. It would be nice to be able to burn a BluRay to watch in my home theater system. There are other methods but BluRay is convenient and great for backing up large Video Files. Unfortunately BluRay looks like it's not going to make it.  Maybe cable distribution companies will increase their Internet upload speeds one day and I can just store everything in the cloud and watch full length movies(that I've created) on Vimeo.
Anyways, I went and took a look at the hardware Apple stuffed inside my fancy (3.4 Ghz i7, 16GB 1333 DDR3, 2GB AMD 6970M, 256 GB SSD Internal and 2TB 7200 Internal) machine and it appears to be pretty middle of the range stuff. It's an iMAC, not a Mac Pro so why am I griping? Because my 2009 PC(which I tricked out over the last two years) is faster and does support the Mercury Playback Engine. I spent $2100 total on this PC which includes all my upgrades. I spent around $3300 on the iMAC. I feel ripped off.
Yes, I do love my iMAC on multiple levels but had I known my dated 2009 PC would render video projects faster, I would have gone with a MAC Pro or just a new PC. It seems that Mac is moving completely away from making high-end computers for niche markets(video editing) and focusing on their tiny laptops, IPADS and IPhones for the masses. Obviously smart from a capitalistic perspective(at present at least) but very frustrating for some.
I was actually told to purchase a MAC for video editing. I've been a PC guy for 15 years. I went with the iMAC because I had read many good things about it(probably just Apple propaganda)  and also the MAC PRO was to be discontinued. Also the MAC Pro would have been triple the cost for what didn't seem like a whole lot more.
It's one's thing to prepackage a computer with inferior hardware(the iMAC I have is fast for most things and more than enough for 99% of the population) but to not allow us to pop open the computer and make a quit upgrade to the machine is what really makes me feel like I'm using a computer built for Grannies. I mean there is a reason my mother loves iMacs and Iphones. Amazing that I was able to upgrade my memory from 4 to 16GB  but I've heard Apple has even done away with that. I get why they do it. Apple Warranty, Apple Care issues, Profit and World Domination: Apple wants a monopoly on everything.
Was great to see Adobe bounce back after the whole Flash/HTML5 thing and knock Final Cut Pro off the face of the Earth for good. People are still buying it b/c of the brand name but Final Cut is done. David Fincher used Adobe's Workflow for everything when he made The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. Hollywood is making the shift and the world will follow. The Adobe Workflow has finally come together and there is just no way Apple can compete with Adobe Creative Cloud and an Engine that can just swap from Premiere to After Effects to Prelude to SpeedGrade to Photoshop to Story with speed for $29 bucks a month(or $49 for some). Apple better start supporting Adobe's Mercury Engine or they may have a problem. And if you're using Final Cut X, you're severely handicapping yourself. Problem is that people don't want to take the time to learn Adobe's products(steep learning curve for sure) which is where Apple's Granny software, and perhaps computers, comes in to play. Arnold Schwarzenegger once said "Milk is for babies, Real Men Drink Beer".  I'm beginning to think that "Mac's are for Grannies, Real Men Use Adobe and PCs".
The major problem with Apple is you're forced to use Apple. Not sure but history has proven that people don't like to be forced into anything. Autocracies don't work. These systems eventually topple, even in the corporate world.
Amazon.com, now that's the company to emulate. What an amazing machine!
I've read that Apple may even discontinue the iMAC after 2013. Who knows?
If anyone has a solution for getting the Mecury Playpack Engine GPU acceleration to work with Premiere Pro CS6 on an iMAC 2011, please let me know. Like I wonder if you could Thunderbolt an External graphics card somehow? Or is an upgrade possible? Ahh...not worth the risk.
1) Graphcis Card  - AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB (6990 would have been better or something from NVIDIA.
2) USB 2.0 Hub with only 480 Mb/sec
3) Seagate Baracude SATA I 7200 RPM drive with 3GB/s transfer rate and only a 32 GB Cach. It's ok. I would have expected at least a Western Digital Caviar Black 2 TB SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB  or the Velociraptor at 10,000RPM.
4)APPLE SSD TS256C  Flash Drive. As you can see, it doesn't stack up so well against other SSD Drive.
Just average. http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_lookup.phphdd=APPLE+SSD+TS256C

Answer 1

Whining and ranting about how iMacs can't do this or iMacs/orMacs can't do that is not going to get you a lot of help here.
Your "I love my MAC" is typical of the ever ubiquitous PC whiner.
If your video work needs were that computer intensive and critical , you should've done some online research and you should have budgeted for a Mac Pro.
Mac Pros are completely expandable and upgradeable unlike the iMac.
Mac Pros have much more faster and more CPU cores than the iMac line.
iMac line is limited to CPUs with 8 cores. The Mac Pros, I believe, are up to 16 core CPUs, now.
The Mac Pros can have their GPU upgraded and you even add/expand to use specialty audio/video cards.
Mac Pros are the defacto standard for real video work.
iMacs, even the high end model, is not really designed to do really heavy and intensive video work.
iMacs do do video creation and editing. Just not on the level that is needed from a more "Pro" computer.
It seems to me you are asking your iMac to do more than it was originally designed for, in terms of professional video editing.
You get a lot more out of a Mac Pro than an iMac for any real serious video, CGI or animation work.
You just didn't want to spend that much cash on one.
iMacs are not user upgradeable or friendly to user upgrades at all!!!
If you purchased a Mac Pro, you could've had that better, faster HD, better faster SSDs.
That said, I can offer no real help to but because of the nature of your post and the fact you just simply annoyed me, I feel some advice and explanations are in order
First off, you picked Adobe video editing software suite as your video creation software on the Mac.  It's no secret to long-time video content creators on the Mac that Adobe products, especially those for video creation and editing are very user unfriendly on the Mac. Even though Macs are supported from Adobe, Adobe for a long time has treated the Mac and Mac users as second class citizens.
Before purchasing and installing Adobe Premiere, did you even check Adobe's site for the preferred system hardware and software requirements? Hmmm?
This is why you should KNOW what software you are going to be running on a computer first then research what computer make and model will run said software.
That's why Apple has its own apps like Aoerture, Logic and Final Cut.
Despite your ignorance in this matter, Final Cut Pro X is alive and doing well, thank you, and using this software on your iMac would kick Adobe Premier in the you know whats.
Final Cut Pro X is a complete video solution for and completely designed around the Mac.
Why are you using USB 2.0 connections for video work when you have a perfectly good FireWire 800 connection.
In case you are not aware, FireWire 800 is called so because it has a max throughput of 800 Mbps.
Your 2011 iMac can take up to 32 GBs of RAM. Not just 16 GBs.
This changed when the 2010 model iMacs came out.
Blu-ray? I believe you can buy external Blu-ray writers that work with Mac using said FW800 connection.
So you cite one movie and one videographer using Adobe Premier for your premise that Final Cut is dead in Hollywood?
Your argument that Apple locks you into everything in their world can be countered by saying Windows and Windows PCs lock you into the Windows world. What's your point?
Apple is not discontinuing their computers platforms any time soon.
All you are regurgitating is rumor. Probably from all of the PC crowd.
iMacs and professional desktop Macs are not going anywhere.
Currently, Apple is the only desktop/laptop computer maker that is still making a profit on their Macs and increasing their market share percentages for the last 5 years during which the PC market has continually slumped/dropped in its market share.