Best Value Mac Pro?

[Mr645]

OK, thanks to everyone pointing me in the right direction. Now ask for a little more assistance.

I need to purchase a MAc for a Photoshop Workstation. Does not need to store anything, just be used for design work and processing RAW files.

I have a budget of about $1000 to work with. My first guess would be an 8 core 2.8 machine, but I see newer 4 core Mac Pros with slower processors costing more.

Where is the sweet spot in that range?

I currently have an early Mac Pro, a 4 core 2.66 machine and my new i7 Mac Mini at home is a good bit faster at most things.

What should I look for?

Jon

[C(-)ris]

Your budget gets you nothing better than what you have.

[M A V I C]

The one you build your own.

[decay]

unless you luck into a rare deal where the seller is desperate or doesn't know the value of his/her Mac, or doesn't care.

any schools upgrading near you?

[mattkime]

>>my new i7 Mac Mini at home is a good bit faster at most things.

looks like you found your new mac pro!

[decay]

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC936L...el-core-i7

Refurbished Mac mini with Lion Server 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7

Originally released July 2011
4GB memory
Dual 500GB hard drives
Thunderbolt port with support for up to 2560-by-1600 resolution
HDMI port with support for up to 1920-by-1200 resolution
Intel HD Graphics 3000

$759

+ RAM upgrade and/or SSD boot drive.

[Mr645]

So the 2.8 8 core machine is not really going to be much faster then my 2.66x4 Mac Pro?

I was thinking about another Mini, a 2.6 i7 but most folks said the lack of a real video card was a deal breaker

Just to fill in some more details, this machine is for my studio. I currently use the Mac Pro and I'm adding two more designers, one on Windows (Having a machine built) and one on a Mac. The new designer will get my Mac Pro, early 4 core 2.66 and I wanted to order a new workstation for myself.

I recently bought a Mac Mini Server (2.3 i7 dual drives) for my home to replace my older Power Mac G5 dual 2.5 machine. I do use Photoshop at home, but not a main se for the machine

[Speedy]

http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

[Lew Zealand]

Geekbench suggests the current 2.6 Mac Mini is about as fast the the previous gen 3.4 iMac, which is simply not the case. Amazingly enough, geekbench is actually a worse benchmark than XBench is.

[Mr645]

Thanks, great link. I spent an hour coming over barefeats.com for this type of information