Mac Pro?

Hard to say given that you didn't provide any clues regarding what you'll be using it for.

Keep in mind the new ones will launch soon so that'll push prices down a bit.

 

I assume the Mac Pro is a 2008. Those are the earliest Mac Pros I would even consider as they will be officially supported with Mt Lion set to release this summer/fall. With that said, Memory is much more expensive in the 2008's and then 2009's so it will cost you quite a bit more to upgrade (although used memory on Ebay can help that cost).

Powermacs can't run anything but 10.5 (leopard) or earlier. I would not recommend them at all.

 

I've got one of these and they are great workhorses - mine hasn't caused me any processor or other effort related problems despite being moderately old. I run Lion sans problem and am about to upgrade the system disk to SSD and the graphics card to a Radeon 6870 which should make it really motor. I can't really do more to it than that (it works fine anyway).

I use it for very demanding pro music projects without problems and won't upgrade until there is a stellar leap in hardware/a proven need to/it dies.

The only problem for you is that the RAM is expensive and you are being sold the absolute lowest spec - the one I bought too.

J

 

Regarding the price - these have good resale because of the reasons I said in my post - they are powerful machines and cope with most things you throw at them.

The benchmarks of the new machines don't tell the whole story - I suspect I would not see enough difference between my machine and a current gen Macpro to upgrade even if it were just a matter of a few hundred quid, let alone the prohibitive cost of the current models - ca. £2000 (Gasp! My base model cost £1500 three years ago!).

I had an almost final model G5 before it and it wasn't up to doing anything serious by the time I let it go. Forget that idea.

 

Seems to be about the going rate.

I'm still unsure why you're looking at two computers with such a massive difference in performance though. Personally I would have paid £20 more to grab the C2D mini going on ebay at the moment.