Apple Mac Pro: quad-core @ 3.33GHz or 8-core @ 2.93GHz?

I’ll soon be publishing a fascinating new research article on which is faster for many photographic tasks: an 8-core 2.93GHz Mac Pro with 48GB memory, or a quad-core 3.33GHz Mac Pro with 24GB memory.

Both are high-end machines, but the 8-core 2.93GHz costs $2200 more than the 3.33Ghz quad-core, making the decision “interesting” from a financial standpoint as well.

Which one should you get? A salient question, since that $2200 savings outfits a quad-core Mac Pro with 32GB of memory and a 100GB Mercury Extreme SSD (for a system drive). Or 24GB memory and 8TB of internal storage (those links are purely for your convenience, no commission there).

Except there’s a catch: it’s going out to the mailing list first, specifically the “MPG Mac Performance Guide” interest list. Publication in Mac Performance Guide will follow sometime later. The mailing list is low-volume and opt-in. Use any email address you like.

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