Performance question please

I'm a current PC user and I'm about to place an order for a new Power Mac.

My question is, should I buy the two 3ghz Dual Core or the two 3Ghxz quad core. It's a huge difference in price and the store cant tell me what sort of improvement in speed I'll get. The sales seems to be telling me whatever I want to hear.

I'm a photographer so, I'll regularly do some serious photo shopping by opening 50 or 100 20MB images to edit them while checking email, listening to streaming audio and surfing a bunch of websites simultaneously.

Bottom line, do I need the quad core or will the dual work just fine? What will the difference be?

Many thanks

My guess is that today, you will not see a huge difference in dual core vs. quad core. However, quad core is clearly the way of the future, and we will see more and more software that is correctly threaded, plus enhancements to OS' to take better advantage of this. I would recommend quad core as a future looking stance, assuming you plan to use this new machine for two plus years.

oneword said:

I'm a photographer so, I'll regularly do some serious photo shopping by opening 50 or 100 20MB images to edit them while checking email, listening to streaming audio and surfing a bunch of websites simultaneously.

Bottom line, do I need the quad core or will the dual work just fine? What will the difference be?

Click to expand...

Dude, these machines are awesome first of all. I have a powerbook, which I think is pretty fast. But when I do video editing or 3d modeling I love going to the lab at my school where they have 2 quad core Mac Pros. I get so excited thinking about the because its almost impossible to get the little beach ball with these things. Several times I rendered a 3D model while Browsing the web, listening to streaming music and have had almost no slow down. It's totally ridiculous.

The dual core Mac Pros is a different story. Doing the exact same thing as above I have experience significant slowdown. But i can't tell you if they had the same amount of RAM. Next time I go to the lab I will let you know.

Hope that helps.

I would recommend the 8 core. It has the power you need and will stay current longer.

If you can afford it and are a power user - would get the 8 core.
But here are some current speed tests.
Have to realize that some software cannot currently make use of the additional processors, but that will improve over time.