Thinking about used Mac Pro - how much slower than my PC?

[FlyPenFly]

I've reached my limit with Windows 8 and my self built PC. Starting a month ago it's been getting more and more unreliable and I'm just done with it.

Current specs on the PC:
Core i7 2600k
16GB DDR3
GTX470

I'm thinking about picking up a friends Mac Pro, 2.93ghz Nehalem with Radeon 4870. I'll be moving over my SSDs and drives.

Questions:

My main heavy lifting on the PC is Lightroom 4 and 5. How much slower will the Mac Pro compared to my PC?

Will I be able to move my Corsair XMS3 DDR3 RAM to the Mac Pro?

What sort of cage will I need for my 2 SSD drives that are 2.5"?

How much faster will XCode be than my Retina 13 2.5ghz?

Is the CPU upgradeable?

 

[Ozfer]

Your i7 will be faster. You may be able to upgrade the cpu but you will have to get another intel server xeon cpu and not an i7. It seems like the ram should work, but I have not upgraded that on many apples. The 4870 wont be extremely fast for today. Also you can get a 3.5 to 2.5 mounting bracket that allows you to install 2 2.5 inch drives from Amazon or Ebay.

 

[TheEasterBunny]

Geek Bench 2 scores on these two processors

Core i7 2600k
http://browser.primatelabs.com/processor-benchmarks
2.93ghz Nehalem
http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

One Pro came with dual 4 core processors and one came with 1 four core. The link is the dual quad.
On this test it comes out the Nehalem is a bit faster.

 

[FlyPenFly]

Would I be better off buying one of the newer iMacs?

The Mac Pro is about $1300.

 

[FlyPenFly]

Looking at these benchmarks

http://www.barefeats.com/minivmp.html

I might just be better off with a newer Mac Mini and I guess a USB3 drive array.

 

[violst]

It all depends on weather its a 4-core or 8-core? The 8-core 2.93ghz Nehalem is still a beast. It has a geekbench score of around 18000. Its the fasted 8 core mac pro apple made.

If its the 4-core its still a capable system, but just ok as far as performance.

 

[Mike Valmike]

Looking at these benchmarks

http://www.barefeats.com/minivmp.html

I might just be better off with a newer Mac Mini and I guess a USB3 drive array.

If you want to do this, I'd look toward the Haswell Mini refresh that is due any month now, because of the significant GPU improvement. In terms of the rest of the equation I think you're spot-on.

 

[GP-SE]

the i7 2600k is faster, I would get a new iMac if I was you.
I have a 2.93Ghz Quad core Nehalem Mac Pro, it scores around 9000 on geek bench, my i7 2600k hackintosh scored around 13000.

 

[FlyPenFly]

The only two things I do that is really CPU heavy are Lightroom 5 and XCode.

It's unclear if Lightroom 5 really benefits from quad core vs dual core.

 

[Tesselator]

LR4.x and 5.x do benefit from more cores - up to about 4 cores and almost completely tapering off flat at 8 cores from my testing. LR however, is the slowest dog in the race - also extensively tested. As far as v5.x having any speed improvements over v4.x the answer is no, not much: http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1220376/0