Honestly, I don't know much about Macs but I would definitely say that the 8-core is overkill. My wife makes a living using Macs and her firm is doing fine on the older dual cores with tons of RAM. Of course they'd love the latest and greatest and they'll be upgrading soon but they handle major graphics files all day long and don't have problems with their setup. She uses a quad Mac Pro at home and loves it. Again, handling huge graphics files and apps without issues.

I say save your money, forgo the 8 and get a quad. Those Mac Pros are gorgeous and so well built too!

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