Mac Pro 3.1 eight core FCP 6 shows all 8 cores rendering??

I just got a Mac Pro early 2008 3.1 with eight cores...running Leopard 10.5.8 I've read on this forum at times that FCP does not use more than 4 cores when rendering. But when I render 1080p pro res 442 in FCP 6 all eight cores run up over 90%, and it does indeed render almost three times as fast as my Power Mac g5 Quad. So I'm just curious why FCP is actually using all 8 cores. Any help is appreciated, as always.

Fay Krause wrote:
... I've read on this forum at times that FCP does not use more than 4 cores when rendering....
You are confusing cores with RAM.
FCP is a 32bit app. This means it can not make use of more than 4 GB of Ram (2.5 GB for the program and 1.5 for the frameworks).
FCP will use all the cores in a machine, how MUCH they are used, depends on a lot of factors - including the version of OSX you are runnning.
10.6.8 (snow leop) has a full 64 bit mode that will do a better job of allocating system resources to 32 bit tasks than 10.5. I ran 10.6.8 set to boot into 64 bit mode along with FCP 7 for a long time with great performance. If I hadn't needed 10.8 for other software, I'd still be running 10.6.8.
Best,
x

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