When I still have my 2008 Mac Pro, it was adequate in running Photoshop and Lightroom. I just set up PSD to have a separate scratch in another physical HD and continued to perform maintenance on the Mac Pro like fixing the directory with disk warrior and reformatting my boot drive. If I recall, Photoshop quickly launches in about less than 3 seconds in the 2008 Mac Pro using a mechanical HD. It was acceptable for me considering the age of the machine. The apps were running smoothly without any beach balls. Though it's up to you if you prefer the Mac Mini if it jives better with your workflow.
Bumping my old thread because I never had a chance to really option out everything and I got a newer camera and put a 840EVO SSD in the Mac Pro as a temporary measure since then. I know the iMac is the best option but I already have my own monitors so it puts me in a pickle.
Here is dilemma: When I'm using Lightroom, my 36 megapixel Sony A7R (effectively same as Nikon D800) raw files rendering 1:1 previews take about 5-6 seconds to load. Doing any kind of editing is a nightmare. Originally, it had the same problem with my Velociraptor with my Canon 5DII...
option 1: get 32 gigs of ram ($160), new 3.2 cpus ($120, wow prices havent changed in a year), run raid with new 2 samsung 850 evos
option 2: sell mac pro, get used mac mini i7 2012 w/ 16 gigs of ram, run raid with new 2 samsung 850 evos
I kind of wish I could get more than 35fps on counterstrike go too! OR is this a video card issue?
I'm super impressed that my Mac Pro has lasted me this long, but my camera habit kind of ruined things!