2007 Dual Quad Core --> upgrade or not?

[Garamond]

Current setup: MP 2007 3GHz Dual Cuad-Core, 9 GB RAM, 30" ACD

I use my Mac Pro for making large magazines and books, and recently I got my largest project ever which will be over 1000 pages. Since the current MP is getting older and I'm starting to notice lagging when working in InDesign CS4, I was thinking of upgrading to the top-of-the-line 12-core 2.93GHz with 16GB RAM.

Now, I have been pondering this question over and over. Is it too early? Will I see a speed increase which would make the investment reasonable? Or should I just stick to my current setup?

I got his result when running it through Geekbench:

Any thoughts would be highly appreciated!

 

[eponym]

If you make a living off your Mac Pro and you even start to question its capabilities, it's probably time to upgrade.

You'll probably see a significant difference with any of the new models. Especially in practical use. Geekbench and other synthetic tests are good at showing theoretical capabilities but they don't always paint a clear picture.

If you bought it in 2007, then you have the 2006 "Clovertown" gear, which is using Core architecture, the much slower front side bus, the smaller caches etc. These little things make a big difference. For example, you have an 8-core 3 GHz system and scored 11.5K on Geekbench. I have the new 8-core at 2.4GHz with less RAM and score nearly 15K.

I'm not sure what to tell you in terms of model to get. The 12-core will be rock-solid for years to come. But it's expensive. I think the 6-core would do you very well for speed. But 4 slots for RAM is a bummer since you should probably be using more than 16 if you're heavily into large printed documents (PS, AI and In Design—all memory hogs). You can go higher than 16 in the quad/hex, but 8 GB DIMMs are $$$.

I'd go with either the hex or the octo and then dump the difference from the 12-core into upgrades for RAM, SSD and moving to CS5.

 

[Garamond]

Thanks for the insight, eponym. I have yet to place the order, but it seems it will be RAM from macsales.com (4 x 8GB), that way I can afford the 12-core and be on the safe side if I want to expand all the way to 64GB at a later date.

 

[jav6454]

Try getting a decent SSD to boot off from and have critical applications in. An SSD is much more of a performance jumper than RAM.

 

[Macinposh]

Why dont you do like the other gazillion other gfxers, manage you projects so they fit your hardware better? Split it in,say,5 parts and be done with it.
CS4 sucks and the performance gain would be miniscule anyway.

Get the said ssd for scratch if you want (maybe small speedboost), get a bit more memory (albeit the CS4 is constrained in that departmen,but if you are running indesign,ps and illustrator,then the 16Gb might make sense).

And use the rest 3000$ for buying calvados, getting a nipple pearcing or giving your significant other a real by treat flying to Bilbao ,going to guggenheim museaum and eating yourself round?

 

[Macinposh]

If you bought it in 2007, then you have the 2006 "Clovertown" gear, which is using Core architecture, the much slower front side bus, the smaller caches etc. These little things make a big difference.

No he has not.

06 was woodcrest and the 07 was clovertown.
And the xbench scores are worth a ***** with real world applications like CS4,wich is as multi core aware as a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is politically correct.

 

[Garamond]

Try getting a decent SSD to boot off from and have critical applications in. An SSD is much more of a performance jumper than RAM.

Yeah, I didn't mention that - but SSD is on the list. Going for a 512GB startup and app disk.

But as is mentioned here, maybe just buying extra RAM and an SSD for my current setup would make a satisfying jump in performance?

I will be installing CS5 when the investment is done. Hopefully it's more multi core aware.

Final decision tomorrow.