Thanks. Most of my work is in Photoshop and Illustrator, and a dual-core would be sufficient for those projects. I also do a fair amount of 3D rendering and video encoding (FCE, QT, MPEG Streamclip), where the additional cores/speed come in handy.
How much time do you spend doing each though?
If you time is mostly spent doing 2D work, the Hex core would be a notable improvement in performance due to the clock speed increase it offers. As you shift more into 3D as the primary usage, the Octad can offer benefits in terms of cheaper RAM, as you've 2x the DIMM slot count, which can allow for smaller capacity DIMM's to be used (I do expect it to be a little slower, but not significantly). But the upgrades may make the Octad more attractive.
Other upgrades, such as solving the HDD bottleneck for example, would be the same.
This is what you have to work out.
Price will be the deciding factor. At identical price ($3500), I think the 6-core will serve me better. But at $3900, it'll be a much harder decision.
They won't be identical. The best you can hope for, is $3699 for the Hex core system, but that's not much of a gap between it and the Octad (would further affect the Octad sales IMO, as you get quite a bit of performance increase for that $200 in single threaded applications). The lower memory capacity in the Hex system will have a negative influence for SMP performance, such as rendering, for the base system however. So to really get the Hex to perform, it would need additional RAM for SMP work (3GB is too little for this). $3899 is more realistic IMO, as it offers additional price separation. Keep in mind, this is just the base system cost, no upgrades from the base configurations.
I don't know what your budget is (if you've set funds asside for upgrades or not), but if it's fixed at $3500 max, you're going to have a hard time of it anyway IMO (nothing left for uprades in the Octad). It wouldn't even cover shipping, let alone Extended Apple Care, which is more of a necessity IMO, given the out of pocket costs if something should go wrong past the basic warranty period.
Nor do I know what you're using currently, as upgrades may make it a sufficient system for awhile yet, while you can continue to put funds away for a system (sufficient funds for the system and upgrades).
Oh, it sounded like you were an amateur right now but were intending to work at a professional level in the near future. If this isn't the case you won't need anything more than an iMac.
There's been no mention of whether or not he's an indpendent, student, enthusiast,... Or specialty hardware that requires PCIe slots that may already be in use.
Just not enough information to really go on yet.
(should be fun!)
