WS2812 thoughts for speed

[RGV250]

Hi,
I got the clock working with the 3 LED rings but it didn't look like I imagined it would so I have decided as Christmas is coming up I would make it into an ornament. Who doesn't like flashing LED's.
My first thought is 3 contra rotating rings with trailing LED's which could make good use of pub time for the calculations.
I would like to drive them as fast as possible, there are 148 LED's (241 in a future order coming), from what I understand if I write the last one I have to write all 148 so I wondered if I would be better off separating to rings and writing to the 60, 48 and 48 rings individually.
I don't think this will save any time though as I cannot write to 3 outputs simultaneous.
The other thought is to go with a PIC24 for more speed. Does anyone have any suggestions to make it faster.

Regards,
Bob