Here's a Portal 'appetizer' for the 4-core 2010 Mac Pro with Radeon HD 5870 versus other Macs:
http://barefeats.com/wst10g.html
I'm going to be adding other game results including X-Plane, WoW, ETQW, CoD4, Team Fortress 2, Starcraft, Bioshock, etc. And I'll be posting results for the 5870 on previous generation Mac Pros.
So, along this video card tangent, is anyone familiar with this? :
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 for Mac by PNY / Part number: TW386LL/A $1800
1.5GB GDDR3 GPU memory, 192 cuda
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TW386LL/A?mco=MTQxMTc4NDg
I found that the fx 4800 above has, besides 50% more ram:
# 384-bit memory interface (higher than the 256 of the 5870)
# 76.8 GB/sec memory bandwidth (1/2 the 5870)
Is this any better than the "new" 5870, or not as good? It's certainly more expensive.
I noticed on some software, like After Effects, that "open gl 2.0" is a requirement - how does one be sure which cards have that feature?
Further about cards, and actual FCP type video work, would the 6 core 3.33 be "enough for now" or is the 12 core "substantially" faster? I am not too concerned about a couple seconds here or there but rather real appreciable speed difference.
From the sounds of this thread info, photoshop work is "faster" on the fastest ghz not so much number of cores, but is that even so much different to worry about? My idea is if the 12 core is better for some things, and will be better for more rewritten software in the years to come, what's the point of going 6 core except for cost?
If video work will be "plenty fast enough" on a 6 core, then it seems that is a fine route to go. I suppose I'd rather invest $2500 to become more money in a few years, than spend it unnecessarily on a 12 core if it's not really all that much better.
Lastly, what the heck was the 12 core really designed for is the 6 is so close?
-more lastly

is the 12 core inherently "better" because long term, for ram intensive uses, you can get a lot more inside which outweighs the ghz aspect?
I have to read up, does cs5 finally "use" more ram thus functioning faster and not needing scratch disk? On my old g5 the functions I see super slow are saving the layered file as a psd (1gb+ most often) but also complex lasso with max feather and huge brush size mask painting. I realize some of these may be the old dual 2.0 and it's agp video card ? nvidia gforce 6800 w/ 256mb ram. machine has 6.5 gb running cs3.