Setting up a new Mac Pro

For the last three years I have been using a 24" iMac with 4 gigs of Ram and I know it wasn't the best machine available for Photoshop but it just about did the job until recently when it started to develop some serious screen defects, which I gather are quite common on the iMac and a local Apple repair specialist told me they tend to suffer from heat build up, which eventually leads to these kinds of problems. Due to these burn marks and yellowing I just can't use the iMac any longer for work, so I've just ordered a new 8 Core Mac Pro that should be delivered tomorrow and I'm starting to think about how best to configure it for Photoshop and other work.
I know there are some excellent guides online and I need to study these but I just wondered what other users are doing in terms of configuration nowadays on a Mac Pro? I can stick in a huge amount of Ram and according to OWC my machine can take 96 gigs but I am not sure how useful it will be in practice unless I am dealing with enormous files. How much Ram do we really need to work smoothly without spinning ball or slow performance? I want to allow for a degree of future proofing as well. 
Most of my work involves high res Raw files processed in Lightroom and then opened as 16 Bit Tifs in Photoshop. At the moment I still have CS4 but given the extra Ram I'll be able to add in the new machine I guess a move to CS5.5 makes sense, though I had been hoping to wait for CS6. I read somehwere that scratch disks are no longer as important if you are using CS5 and have a good amount of Ram. Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

ashley karyl wrote:
One slight concern I have is with the iminent arrival of 10.7 and I hope Adobe are on top of this in terms of possible bugs with both Lightroom and Photoshop.
Well, I wouldn't jump on that ship the first day it sails...also note that as far as I've heard, 10.7 Lion won't support Rosetta so older PPC apps will be effected. I don't know this for a fact (Apple is a bit secret ya know) but if true it may delay for a while my migration to 10.7. But 10.6.7 is now finally stable and Photoshop/Lightroom are fine (at least for me).
If ya got the bucks, you might look into an SSD drive for the main boot drive. It's not too expensive. Then put image files and Lightroom catalogs on larger traditional internal drives.
I kinda when all in when I set my MacPro last year. I put in a Apple RAID card and 4 SAS 15K drives. My Photoshop scratch disk is a 2 drive striped array. I run an external ESATA 6 drive striped array for images and projects (well backed up of course). MacGurus.com has some good info even if you won't be buying from them. I use their Burly 6 drive bays.

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