Could my new Mac Pro be refurbished?

The plastic inside the cover that is supposed to be there when you open it was not there. My Mac is not custom. Could this mean they sent me a refurbished Mac or a return?

I too was a bit confused to find no "protective film" inside the case when I first got my Mac Pro but I ordered it the day it was announced and it arrived quickly so I'm quite confident mine is new. There simply wouldn't have been time for someone to own it.
Anyway, I think you might need to find a different way of determining whether you have a refurbished machine or not. The "protective film" doesn't seem to be a reliable measurement. Has anyone actually found the "protective film" inside a new Mac Pro?

Similar Messages

New Mac Pro 2.8 vs. Refurbished Mac Pro 3.0?

I'm trying to decide between a new Mac Pro 2.8 and a refurbished Mac Pro 3.0. The refurbished 3.0 is roughly $375 less. I'll be using this for a graphic design business, so we'll be routinely using CS3. Help me decide.

I was faced with the same question at the end of 2007. I had even picked up a new Mac Pro 2.66 quad core, but did not open it. I decided to return it, and fortunately the next day, the 2008 Mac Pros came along. I went with the 8 core 2.8. The 3.0 from 2006/2007 is already dated, and there is no way you will make it faster without spending a ton of money. The refurb unit you are looking at is 2 years old in design. It first came out in August 2006. The expansion slots are all PCIe 1.1 if I recall. With the newer machines they have 2 slots that are PCIe 2.0.
You also have to factor in the upgraded graphics card. Barefeats.com did a little comparison of the video cards, and the 2600 XT fared very well against the 1900XT that is what most folks upgraded to with the 2006 3.0 GHz Mac Pro. The 1900 xt is not a bad car, however, there is no guarantee that you will ever be able to put newer cards in that older machine. There is conjecture that the 8800 GT card that was released for the Early 2008 Mac Pros may work in the older units, but that is not a done deal yet. The 2600 XT does fairly well with Motion.
The 3.0 also ships with 1 GB of RAM while the 2.8 8 core ships standard with 2 GB of RAM. Granted, you will want additional RAM, but you still come out ahead with the early 2008 8 core unit. You do not need to overspend on RAM. Otherworld Computing sells great RAM. I have Apple RAM, OWC RAM, and the Techworks RAM (sold by OWC) in my Mac Pro. I cannot tell the difference and I have had no crashes. 4 GB of RAM is about 219 bucks at OWC.
As for any video or graphics work that you may want to do, the 8 core unit is much more robust for crunching the compression. Compressor can take advantage of the multiple cores. Barefeats.com also did some benchmarking of the 2.8 octo core and the 3.0 octo core unit from 2007. The early 2008 unit was just about even because of the improved L2 Cache and the improved front side bus speed. Overall, the early 2008 units are great performers. The 2.8 quad core should be just about even with the 3.0 quad core in terms of speed. The 2.8 octo core is faster yet, and is about even with the older 3.0 octo core MP. The reason for this is that the 2008 Mac Pros have a faster front side bus and a bigger L2 cache.
I think you are wasting your money going with a discontinued unit, that has questionable upgradeability paths in regards to video cards, fewer cores, a slower bus speed, less RAM, slower RAM, and less L2 Cache memory. As an aside, the early 2008 Mac Pro features PCIe 2.0 slots, whereas the 2006 Mac Pro does not.
As for adding a second DVD drive, you can get the drives for about 30 dollars. They are not expensive like they used to be.
In regards to all of the stuff floating around about Leopard, I do a lot of graphics, including Final Cut Studio 1, and Creative Suite 3. I have had few issues. With the latest Leopard upgrade, and the recent updates with the other programs, Leopard runs every bit as good as Tiger did. The only recurring theme I have seen that has not been resolved with the newer systems and hardware has been the drivers for audio gear and recording. Otherwise, the new machines are very stable and speedy.
Other folks have went the refurb way and have been very happy. Some folks went with the newer machine, and they are happy. Only you can decide what makes the deal the best for you. Do not base everything on the higher priced Crucial RAM. Oh, one other thing that you get with the early 2008 Mac Pro is a nifty aluminum keyboard. After using this keyboard you will not want to use anything else.
Good luck with your decision. I know it is difficult.

Starting up problems from an old boot drive in a new mac pro

Just purchased a refurb mac pro last weekend through the apple store. I took my old drive my my first mac pro and was trying to usee it for the boot drive, That machine did not come with snow leopard. I did upgrade it to 10.6.6. When I start up from that drive in the new mac pro it was either starting up real slowly or starting up and would not give me a cursor or. On some occasion I would get a translucent blue huge on the screen. Or I could get a clear screen but nothing would happen if I clicked to open anything. I called support and we reinstalled the on the old drive. I seemed stable and was booting properly from the old drive. Then I upgraded to 10.6.6 again. We used the software the new machine came with for this process. I maybe used the new boot drive for maybe 50 seconds. Apple support wishes for me to go through the process of isolating elements. I've been running the new drive since yesterday. Everything is working well. Except after letting it run for a period of time yesterday got s grey screen after it went to sleep. We'll see what happens with that today. I do not know if it's coincidence or not but the old system went hicky after I started up Paralllels desktop.I'm using Parallelsto run Playon. I'm wondering if Parallels or the xp emulation machine I'm running with it is still trying to read the old macpro ? It did work however. I'm just curious that it's altering something in the Mac osx ? Another thing should I subtract other wirleeless choice devices on the old drive's system ? The old macpro had wireless but the module was installed aftermarket by a mac store.
Thanks

Hard to follow your steps and thoughts. Maybe re-read and cut it into actual steps.
Always clone a system so you have a bootable backup image.
Make sure your software and drivers are compatible.
2010s boot into 64-bit kernel mode by default.
Apple still sells 2009s also on Specials page.
Your old Mac Pro wouldn't come with 10.6 unless it came out in Sept 2009 or later.
Is Parallels current? Is it attached to Windows partition or VM only? does it care that it is running on new hardware? that usually is a non-starter.
New Mac is also a good time to do thorough spring house cleaning. Clean install all the applications and drivers.
Pull your old drive out. The only use for it would be to run Setup Assistant to import your home account prefs.
The "new" refurbished hard drive is still in same state it was in when you got it?
Sleep issue. you may have external devices or 3rd party drivers or bad cable somewhere.
Wireless?
At this point I doubt I can read between the lines.
+Break it into compartments and subjects instead of hash stew for us!+

Just bought new Mac Pro, will I be able to install my PPC apps?

Hello,
Just ordered a new Mac Pro Dual 2.0 online today. After reading a lot of posts on here, I'm wondering if I made the right decision and should have bought a Dual G5 Quad instead. Will my PPC apps install at all on the new Mac and will they run? I do a lot of audio work and I'm already noticing that there is a pretty long wait with the UB updates. Not really looking forward toward the hassle of updating everything all over again...Do you think the MP was a better investment than a refurbished G5 Quad? I assume I'll be able to install Logic Pro from my 7.0 DVD's and then upgrade to 7.2 or does it not work this way? I'm hoping that the upgrade to Logic 7.2 is not a paid upgrade. Since I just bought online yesterday, do you think they'd let me cancel before shipping?
Shane

PPC applications will run on Intel Macs through the Rosetta emulator. You will see a speed hit, however. Rosetta runs about 30 percent slower than native apps due to the emulation hit. The exception will be Java applications. Java applications that use the JNI libraries need to be converted to universal binaries in order to run on an Intel Mac. The other exception will be applications that require plug-ins and/or startupitems or install special frameworks. These will need to be universal binaries or they simply won't work on an Intel Mac.
If possible you will want to upgrade your PPC apps to their universal binary versions if such versions are available.
A Basic Guide for Migrating to Intel-Macs
If you are migrating a PowerPC system (G3, G4, or G5) to an Intel-Mac be careful what you migrate. Keep in mind that some items that may get transferred will not work on Intel machines and may end up causing your computer's operating system to malfunction.
Rosetta supports "software that runs on the PowerPC G3 or G4 processor that are built for Mac OS X". This excludes the items that are not universal binaries or simply will not work in Rosetta:
Classic Environment, and subsequently any Mac OS 9 or earlier applications
Screensavers written for the PowerPC
System Preference add-ons
All Unsanity Haxies
Browser and other plug-ins
Contextual Menu Items
Applications which specifically require the PowerPC G5
Kernel extensions
Java applications with JNI (PowerPC) libraries
See also What Can Be Translated by Rosetta.
In addition to the above you could also have problems with migrated cache files and/or cache files containing code that is incompatible.
If you migrate a user folder that contains any of these items, you may find that your Intel-Mac is malfunctioning. It would be wise to take care when migrating your systems from a PowerPC platform to an Intel-Mac platform to assure that you do not migrate these incompatible items.
If you have problems with applications not working, then completely uninstall said application and reinstall it from scratch. Take great care with Java applications and Java-based Peer-to-Peer applications. Many Java apps will not work on Intel-Macs as they are currently compiled. As of this time Limewire, Cabos, and Acquisition are available as universal binaries. Do not install browser plug-ins such as Flash or Shockwave from downloaded installers unless they are universal binaries. The version of OS X installed on your Intel-Mac comes with special compatible versions of Flash and Shockwave plug-ins for use with your browser.
The same problem will exist for any hardware drivers such as mouse software unless the drivers have been compiled as universal binaries. For third-party mice the current choices are USB Overdrive or SteerMouse. Contact the developer or manufacturer of your third-party mouse software to find out when a universal binary version will be available.
Also be careful with some backup utilities and third-party disk repair utilities. Disk Warrior (does not work), TechTool Pro (pre-4.5.1 versions do not work), SuperDuper (newest release works), and Drive Genius (untested) may not work properly on Intel-Macs. The same caution may apply to the many "maintenance" utilities that have not yet been converted to universal binaries.
Before migrating or installing software on your Intel-Mac check MacFixit's Rosetta Compatibility Index.
Additional links that will be helpful to new Intel-Mac users:
Intel In Macs
Apple Guide to Universal Applications
MacInTouch List of Compatible Universal Binaries
MacInTouch List of Rosetta Compatible Applications
MacUpdate List of Intel-Compatible Software
Written by Kappy with additional contributions from a brody.

My brand new mac pro always had Internet connection issues at school. WHY is that? I see the school's Internet working perfectly fine on other PC's, but there is never a day where my mac doesn't have Internet connection issues at school. How do I fix it?

I got my mac pro in the middle of August. School started the week after. Internet was working perfectly fine at home. But at school, I never had a good connection. Sometimes on the good days I get a connection when I'm sitting at the exact spot in class I always sit at. It's ridiculous and it's frustrating. I invested my money into this laptop and I'm beginning to regret it. I thought it was the school's Internet, but I don't see Internet issues with other PC users. It's most frustrating on registration days and I'm trying to register for my classes before it gets taken, but again... Internet connection issues. It's random. Majority of the time, it doesn't work at all. I've done Network Diagnosis and turning WiFi off then turning it on again. I've done everything I could. I put my money on this laptop and it was a lot of money. I could have bought an 800 dollars laptop and I would have Internet connection anywhere on campus. So, I don't want to continue everyday to regret on buying this laptop every time I try to connect to the Internet at school or Starbucks or anywhere else. How do I fix this? What's the problem ?
At school, I heard this guy had a problem with Internet connections too and he owned a new mac book pro. He said something like Apple messed up on something, but he fixed it. If I knew mac book pro's had these issues I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. It's freezing on me every other day. It's ridiculous. But what concerns me the most is the Internet connection. So someone please tell me what can I do next to prevent the problem? Am I doing something wrong maybe?

Hi Kevin,
I'm using an XLR input mic which is connected to the phantom power enabled XLR mic socket on a USB M-Audio M-Track. The M-Track is connected by USB to the Mac Pro - so effectively I've got an M-Audio USB soundcard with a mic input. I've also tried a microphone that is a straight XLR to USB cable (guessing with some soundcard chip buried in the usb plug) but that also yields the same effect of bad latency, intermittent quality, stuttering and repeating and echoing (without the speakers on during record so its not feedback).
The mic works absolutely fine with other recording applications I have on the mac at the moment - albeit non-adobe ones (tested it on the EasyAudioRecorder - and it lives up to its name. it's easy)
I will try with Audition and report back, but sitting here right now I can imagine it would work fine with audition too - it just seems to be the way premiere is set up for recording into the timeline is a bit sketchy. I'm willing to accept it might well be a quirk with the new Mac Pro trashcan - I'm not weighting all the woes on premiere.
Any thoughts or am I out of luck to sit with my fingers crossed for a fix in the next round of updates?
Nathan.

I want to Connect my Mac Mini as a Slave to a Mac pro Server while at the same time using the Mac mini's thunderbolt ports peripherals ( ie monitor, Sound Card, Hard drives) Creating a poor man's new mac Pro. Can this be Done?

I want to Connect my Mac Mini as a Slave to a Mac pro Server while at the same time using the Mac mini's thunderbolt ports peripherals ( ie monitor, Sound Card, Hard drives) Creating a poor man's new mac Pro. Can this be Done?

Well, I really would love the new unreleased mac pro however , I'm not sure of the expected cost , Everyone speculates from $3,000 to $8,000, in which I may have to wait a while to purchase.
To the point .... I want fully functional thunderbolt ports to be on the current mac pro's .... wonder if anyone had workarounds yet?... or could I chain the the current mac pro to a mac mini to make that happen?

How can I migrate data to new Mac Pro with only 1 monitor

I am ready to set up my new Mac Pro. I know how to migrate my files from my G5 using Firewire and making the new computer a target disk. My problem is, I have only 1 monitor. Is there an easy way around this, OR of not, can I use my Macbook Pro just a monitor and if so how?

If you make the new computer a FireWire Hard drive, the only thing on its monitor will be the firewire symbol. You don't need a monitor to see that.
But if you did, you could start the new computer up first, look at the firewire symbol, get a warm fuzzy feeling, disconnect the monitor and plug it into the old computer to make the transfers.

Questions about buying a new Mac Pro for 4k video editing.

Hi everyone,
I'm currently looking into buying a new mac pro and I have a few questions. I'm a filmmaker/freelance editor looking to get a system that can handle any/at least most 4k formats that I might throw at it, and will hopefully last me around 7 years or so, like my last mac pro has. I've saved up about $5,300 and am becoming more obsessed with getting it asap, but am willing to wait a bit and save up more if necessary. I also play the occasional elder scrolls or civilization game, and might run windows on the new system as well. So here are my questions:
1. I've read rumors that a newer build could be released this year, with newer processors and graphics cards. Is there anything to point to when? I tend to buy things a month before a newer version is released, and I'd like to prevent myself from doing it this time around..
Here's the Build I'm looking at:
6 core
2 D700s
base ram to be upgraded myself to 32Gb (2x16Gb cards leaving 2 slots empty to expand to 64Gb later)
512Gb-1Tb internal hd
2. Should I be considering the 8 core? I'm not too excited about the additional $1500, but I want a system that will last.
3. Is getting the two 16Gb chips of ram and leaving two slots empty a bad idea?
4. I currently work with FCP studio 2 and love it. Not sure whether to go with FCP X, or adobe. Any thoughts?
5. I'm not finding many deals for cheaper ram and hard drives. OWC's prices seem to be comparable to Mac's. I want to do the ram so I have room to upgrade to 64Gb later, but are there any hard drives out there that would make it worth upgrading it myself?
I appreciate any insights you might have. I plan on getting a decent raid and 4k monitor in the next year or so, but for now just want a base system that will keep me editing and will be ready for 4k when I take that next step.

The late 2013 Mc Pro uses Intel Xeon ECC processors (error correction), and as far as I know Intel has not announced any newer Intel Xeon processors than those in the late 2013 Mac Pro. I would not expect to see an update to the 2013 Mac Pro until the end of 2015 at the earliest and probably later than that.
If time is not an issue, then you should be quite happy with the 6 core 2013 Mac Pro. It will do an excellent job with 4K video footage. And, yes, I would suggest getting the best raid system you can afford. That is actually more important than processor speed since I/O is frequently the bottleneck when doing multi camera video or 4K video.
I have the latest version of Adobe's Premiere Pro 2014 CC installed on my late 2013 Mac Pro and i have used it a bit without problems. However, I find it much much slower to edit with than FCP X. Also be advised that if you Google you will find several individuals on the Adobe Forums who purchased the late 2013 Mac Pro and have not been able to use it with Premiere Pro CC because of either a hardware incompatibility or software issues between Premiere Pro CC and BMD's Resolve. It is quite possible that I have not experienced these problems because I have not made very demanding projects with Premiere Pro CC on my 2013 Mac Pro.
I strongly recommend FCP X. Apple released FCP X before it was ready, and many early users were unwilling to take the time to learn how to use this very different NLE which is not track based. Apple has over the last 3 years since FCP X was released, issued more than 10 updates (all free), and the program is stable and blazingly fast. I urge you to check out the FCP X training offered by Ripple Training and/or Larry Jordan. Both are inexpensive, and worth every cent. Watch their training videos and you will be up to speed in FCP X in no time at all, and you will wish you had switched a long time ago.
If you can afford the 1 TB of PCie internal flash storage on your Mac Pro, then by all means get it. For me 1TB is well worth the cost.
As far as editing 4K video, the format of the video will be important to the ease of editing. For example, I am able to edit in its native format (XVAC S) several streams of 4K video form my Sony FDR-AX100 with no problems. If I were editing Sony's XVAC format used in their professional 4K cameras, that might pose a problem that would require transcoding. Similarly for other 4K formats. XVAC S is an easy format to edit natively because it is essentially a high bit rate h.264 format.
Best of luck on whatever you decide to do, and happy editing.
Tom

I bought a new Mac Pro from an Apple store, it was sold as factory sealed, but it's reconditioned - it has some strangers entire photo,library from 2003 to 2011 in the trash bin.

. I bought a new Mac Pro from an Apple store 2 days ok, it was sold as factory sealed, but it's reconditioned - it has some strangers entire photo,library from 2003 to 2011 in the trash bin.
I was bought a Mac book pro as a birthday gift from the Apple Store in Leicester, after completing the initial set up procedure, I noticed that the trash bin was full of some one's entire photo collection from 2003 to 2011.
This is entirely unacceptable for Apple: How long have Apple been fobbing of consumers who believe they were genuinely purchasing a 'new' Mac book?
How is it that I have someones entire photo collection on my 'branch new Mac Book Pro' - these photos included wedding photo's, birthday celebrations, family celebrations and children. Its a serious breach of data protection, it's an invasion of some poor persons privacy and private photo collection. What concerns me the most, is what could have happened if those photo's had fallen into the wrong hands. We managed to trace, locate and contact the person who the photo's belong to within 10 mins using information taken from their wedding album.
Understandably these people are also very distressed that their personal photos are on my brand new Mac Book pro.
I would like details of who to contact in regards this incident.

Katdee22 wrote:
. I bought a new Mac Pro from an Apple store 2 days ok, it was sold as factory sealed, but it's reconditioned - it has some strangers entire photo,library from 2003 to 2011 in the trash bin.
Return to Place of Purchase.
Katdee22 wrote:
I would like details of who to contact in regards this incident.
Contact AppleCare.
Apple Contact USA > http://www.apple.com/contact/

What is the best way to set up my new Mac Pro?

Not wanting to screw up in a process I've not done with a brand new machine before, I'm looking for feedback on my plan for setting my new Mac Pro next week...
The physical plan is this:
For RAM, I have four 2GB SDRAM's plus the supplied six 1GB modules. My plan here is to install the 2GB rams into the first four slots and install four of the 1GB modules into the remaining four slots for a total of 12GB's.
When the cost for 4GB modules gets down to reasonable, I'll buy four of them and bump the current rams down the line which will then give me a total of 24 gigs where I'll stay.
For my hard drives, I'm installing a 160GB Intel X25-M into the first drive bay
http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/mainstream/index.htm
using one of MaxUpgrades' 'MaxConnects' kits. I will use this drive for the operating system software and my applications and their libraries.
Next, into the remaining three drive bays, I am installing three 300GB WD Velociraptors. Mine are the pre-'backplane ready' versions:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=459
so I have bought these sleds for them...
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_i d=180
I own one of Sonnet's Tempo SATA E4P cards
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposatae4p.html
which, thanks to this forum, I now understand, with the correct firmware installed, function well so I will install it and be able to establish hardware RAID. I will create a RAID 0 set with the three Velociraptors and use it to store all of my data files.
Backup will happen on a 1TB WD 'Caviar Black' external drive connected through one of the Sonnet card's external eSATA ports and using the OS 'Time Machine' software.
And that's the physical plan. My question is about setting things up. The physical installation part is straight forward and I don't expect any difficulties but I'm wondering what is the best way to install the operating system.
Do I take a first step keeping the supplied hard drive installed, install the solid state drive into the next drive bay and then transfer the contents from the supplied drive onto the SSD or do I do the complete physical installation process and do a 'C' drive start up and install the OS that way?
And, do you have any tips/suggestions on setting up the RAID 0 set?
thanks for the help. I want to do this right.
JQ

oh mighty Hatter, I knew you'd have helpful guidance to offer! And thank you. You've confirmed my anxieties about the Sonnet card; kind of a 'too much, too quickly' sort of thing. And it's not that Sonnet's not a good company. Just everything to do with new technologies and the growth curve we all, manufacturers and users, go through when they come out. And, for sure, the new Mac Pro's are new technology; the single biggest forward leap in Apple's top-of-the-line machines for some time far as I can tell. Just reading at Intel's website about the Nehalem's is a joy!
So, I will proceed now with everything except for the controller card, leaving that 'til later. In the meantime, I think I'll just happily run with the four hard drives all running independently. No software RAID. I know just those, the SSD boot drive plus Velociraptor trio's going inside of a 2.66ghz 8-core Nehalem Mac Pro is going to be a working pleasure. Heck, this way, I'll get settled in and used to the machine's speed, have a great time doing so and then, in however many months, I can jump into spending another chunk of money on an excellent RAID card, RAID card's dear Barefeats will have tested and reviewed for us, set up my RAID 0 set and head of to those new races watching my computer leap for joy! Could be that, by then, the cost of Intel 160GB X25-M's will have dropped enough that I can afford to go for a second and have a two SSD RAID 0 boot drive... Yummy!
Thanks for the help. Like I say, I knew there was useful guidance hanging on some limb within your personal kit, (otherwise referred to as your mind)!
Interesting to read about the problems people have had with Sonnet's 2.17 update in PPC's... In this computer, my PowerMac G5 dual 2.7ghz, I have a Sonnet 'Tempo Sata X4P' controller card. I downloaded and installed 2.17 and got the same troubles; no cut, no paste, no 'drag and drop' etc. It was miserable.
Mine, fortunately, magically corrected after running the 'permissions verify and correct' process in Disc Utility and, after a restart, all was back to almost normal but for one exception; the Sonnet card was no longer present or functioning including the four eSATA ports out the back. (I ran Tech Tools Pro 5's repair suites first but, and who knows why, it didn't correct the problem...) This one was absolutely in the 'who knows what the f_'s going on and why it disappeared but did' class.
Oh, the other remnant is that, when the computer goes into sleep, after about five minutes, the fans rev up, and up, and the computer's frozen; only access is to do a forced shutdown pressing and holding the power button, so I've had to adopt a 'shut down whenever leaving it for more than fifteen minutes' approach to this dear friend. Once I've fully moved into and established my new one (which should arrive today, by the way... Yippeee!!! Can't wait!), I'll do a complete restoration on this one including taking out the Sonnet card. Usually, I sell my old Pro's but, this time, I'm going to keep this one as a back up and just general second computer for times I might need it. It has been such a great and dependable machine. Keeping it seems the right thing to do.
thanks Hatter. I'll let you know how things go, including what happens with the SSD. I don't have speed test software so I won't be able to track it's performance like that guy in the post you gave me did...
JQ
ps- Gotta love that ILLogic fellow eh? Talk about not getting the essence!

Can I migrate/copy my iTunes configuration to a new Mac Pro?

I have been able to copy over the sparse-bundle backups and restore. But what I need to know is if I can copy over the entire configuration of iTunes (not just the music) such that my sync settings are retained (ie: sync only checked songs). I have a considerably large collection of music and there's no way I want to go through selection again. I just had my iPhone replaced, have a new cylinder Mac Pro to which I want to migrate this data.
I did perform an rsync of the Music directory structure to my new Mac Pro, but it appears to be missing settings (as I mention above). I imagine that's stored elsewhere.
Could someone elaborate?
Thanks!

Found out how to address plist conversion from this page:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050430105126392
But I think iTunes has sorted this out. As my $HOME is actually /Users/username and not /Volumes/Home/username on the new Mac. We'll see... I'm sync'ing now

In need of a new Mac Pro, which one?

In the market for a new Mac Pro, mainly for CS5 apps, an ocassional Final Cut project and some Modo rendering (simple work). My Mac is an early 2008 2.8 GHz 8 core with 10 gigs of RAM, rock solid performance and trouble free and I'm looking to buy a new one within the next week. The 4 core 2.8 appeals to me for the lower price, but inclined for the 8 core, is the $1,000 difference between 4 and 8 core woth it? The 4 core has a faster processor, so I would assume that the difference in speed is basically a non-issue for the work I do, am I right? On the other hand, I rather get the 4 core with at least 12 gigs of ram, since most apps don't take advantage of 8 cores.
Need opinions and suggestions and if someone has a link for performance comparisons test between the two, would be appreciated, can't find any.

Not everyone, but more than a few, swear by SSD making their Mac run smooth and faster all around.
You are rather low on RAM for any real strong CS5 use.
Your Mac can boot into 64-bit kernel, too. Read up on that on MPG and along with 24GB pays 15% dividends.
And you can take advantage of 5870 or 5770 as well as Quadro 4000 ($789 PNY Quadro for Mac on Amazon, versus $1195 on Apple Store). 5770 + 4000 is $1050 investment.
You 'should' be using say 3 x 2-3TB enterprise version drives. And 120-240GB SSD $600.
Intel 3.2GHz Harpertown (Penryn) 5400s are probably not cost effective and seems the highest MHz you can go.
I go with coffee can, create an account to go towards the next system. Put X-amount aside each month and only buy on cash or your business pays for itself in six months.
The real hard part comes when a new model comes out, knowing the first 3 months are often rough and best to hold off, wait, read the reviews and reports. And know that buying that while today you could 'down grade' to Snow Leopard, the next time you can't and it takes time to optimize all the drivers and software that a workstation is more likely to need.
If you have $3.5K burning a hole, then the ref'd 2.8 and optimize "the heck" out of it, with W3680 and everything else, and then sell yours later too for $1500 probably.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC560LL/A
Your 8-core 2,8 is not yet ready to retire!

How do I speed up Lightroom on my new Mac Pro (2013)?

I have tried everything suggested in the forums like running imports in parallel, etc., and all my data is on the super fast built-in PCI-Express SSD of the Mac Pro. However, I have numerous speed problems with Lightroom 5.3 (latest version) when importing and working with photos.
Right now, here is what I am doing
* Performing three parallel imports for maximum speed as suggested in September, 2013 (to supposedly boost input from 25% CPU to 60% on a multi-core machine).
* Buildling 1:1 previews and all the other suggested official Lightroom Performance tips
And what I am getting:
* Between 11 to 15% CPU utilization, even when running imports and building previews in parallel.
* Data being read at only 2.5 to 6.5 MB per second.
* When I look at images even after the previews have been built, I see a sharp image for about 1/100th of a second, then it blurs for about 3/4 of a second, then it sharpens up again in about one second, as if Lightroom is redeveloping it again despite having a 1:1 preview fully built.
To my workflow, this is horrifically slow. I am tasked to go through about 5,300 sports photography images in an hour if possible, many taken at over 10 frames per second with a 1D X. To do this efficiently requires being able to INSTANTLY see the exact sharpness of a photograph, not being blurred for a full second, so that I can pick out the sharpest image from a burst of many images of each top play.
I love the features of being able to flag/unflag with P and U, star with 1-5, go full screen with F, zoom with Z, crop with R, etc., but the productivity potential that those fantastic keyboards shortcuts have is being utterly defeated by the fact that Lightroom is going SUPER slow even on this brand new 6-core Mac Pro. It literally is much slower than using Picasa or FastStone on a cheap Core i3 laptop with a regular HDD.
How can I configure Lightroom to use all six cores and more of the hard drive speed to speed up my workflow?
Obviously, Lightroom should be able to do much better if it were using more than 15% of the CPU and more than 1% of the SSD capability.
For me this is a SERIOUS problem and is preventing my new Mac Pro purchase from being any use to me. I am having to use other software right now to meet my production deadlines, and then go back through it later on Lightroom at a glacially slow pace. After a couple weeks of this duplicated workflow, I am just getting tired of it.

Maybe you could help us help you by providing your systen details in full the location of your files.
Thank you...

I have a new Mac Pro. I want to use my old Mac Pro as a storage drive for photos and old documents, linked to my new Mac Pro. How do I set up the old computer?

I have a new Mac Pro. I want to use my old Mac Pro as a storage drive for photos and old documents, linked to my new Mac Pro. How do I set up the old computer? Both computers have OS X10.9.3. Currently they are connected by a Firewire 800 cable.

You certainly could keep the old Mac Pro in Firewire mode (hold down the T key on its keyboard as you boot) to show its drives on the new MP. This is basically as fast as putting the drives into a Firewire enclosure.
Or you could boot it normally and share its files over the network using the Sharing panel of System Preferences. If you turn on both File and Screen Sharing, you don't even need to have a monitor attached - you can do all administration using screen sharing. However, this method requires that you open all files over the network, which will be slower than the direct-connect method above, and may also not work with all applications.
Matt

Boot Camp on new Mac Pro (Late 2013)

I am stuck with a Boot Camp installation on a new Mac Pro.
I have tried Windows 8.1 Pro, Windows 8.1 Enterprise, and Windows Server 2012 R2. (Can't try Windows 7, obviously.)
All three give me this at the end of setup:
Windows could not update the computer's boot configuration. Installation cannot proceed.
I've tried letting the Boot Camp Assistant do everything, I've also followed the advice in several posts that suggest interrupting the process by booting back into Mac and using Disk Utility to format the Boot Camp partition as FAT, ExFAT, etc. All lead to the same error after rebooting to the USB drive and commencing with Windows setup.
Windows finishes the installation, seemingly, but it just doesn't seem to be able to update the boot data.
So, what's the trick? How did other MacPro6,1 users get Boot Camp paved? Is this a firmware update I'm going to need to wait for?
I tried support, it was a joke. Apple couldn't pass me off to Microsoft quick enough; and Microsoft couldn't pass me back to Apple quick enough. I think that's the most I've ever identified with a tennis ball.

What happened to the body of my question? Can everyone else see it, just not me?
Oh wait, I see. This entire site is completely broken in Chrome:

Could my new Mac Pro be refurbished?

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