About to purchase new Mac Pro - Need Advice

I am about to purchase a new mac pro and have some questions
I am planning to use final cut pro as well as Edius on Boot Camp.
I intend to edit footage in HDV from a sony Z1 and also from the new sony - pmw -ex3 which i will be planning to edit in HD and 24p.
1) the default config for the mac pro is dual 2.8.ghz processors, what advantage gain will i get i upgrade to 3.0 or 3.2, is the extra power worth the money? will this give me more real-time editing
How many layers of HD 1920 x 1080 from the sony pmw-ex3, will i be able to edit in FCP 6.0 without any problems? would you advise more ram
2) i prefer to work from RAID 5 drives and keep system drive separate, this is how i have worked on in PC/Windows environment. Can anyone confirm if i can have one JBOD drive for the system and 3 drives configured as a RAID 5 drive?
Will i be able to use a boot to run windows and also be able to use the RAID 5 drive on windows side?
3) Is anyone using the 3ware RAID 5 side car? what is experienece is this compatible on the windows partition from boot camp
4) How will i be able to preview HD footage?
5) Do i need to invest in a better Graphics
Thanks in advance

Hi,
Here are a few answers.
1. The Mac Pro 2.8 GHz model performs so well that it is difficult to justify paying 28% more for 7% of additional processor power in the case of the Mac Pro 3.0 GHz or 56% more for 14% additional processor power with the Mac Pro 3.2 GHz model. You might see a small 5-10% increase in performance when compressing video with the 3.2GHz model but it certainly would not be worth paying 50% more to me. In addition, Amazon has the 2.8 on sale for $2599 after an easy rebate:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000VR4F2Q/arizomacinusergr
That is a $200 savings off the retail price.
2. If you want to use boot camp I would NOT recommend the Apple RAID card. Boot camp does not work with this card which leaves you wondering why you bought the card and how to get around this HUGE limitation. Instead, I would recommend the Areca ARC-1221x, HighPoint RR 3522 or the ARC-1680x if you want a SAS card. All of these cards have new firmware available that provide awesome performance and boot capability with the Mac Pro 2008. I would also get a SeriTek/2eEN4 4-bay and 1TB Samsung HDs. This gives a solid, quiet 4-bay enclosure that can support RAID 5 with any of the cards and you can add a second enclosure later if you want to use all eight external ports with RAID 6 (for added redundancy and increased volume size). This leaves the internal bays available for Boot Camp, Mac OS X, backups or mirrors and provides RAID 5/6 capability that can be configured to perform almost twice as fast as the Apple RAID card and provide double the redundancy with RAID 6. Links with more information are found here:
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata2een4.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152102
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/3522/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1221x/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1680x/
3. The 3Ware RAID 5 card is not a top pick in the Macintosh market. The options outlined above will provide much better performance and RAID 6 capabilities.
4. You can view the the HD footage on the monitor.
5. You may want a better graphics card but I would try the stock card first. I was surprised how well the ATI radeon HD 2600 XT card performs with Apple applications.
Have fun!

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    Message was edited by: Emile vande Griendt
    Message was edited by: Emile vande Griendt

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