A friend of mine is giving thought to buying this: http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC560LL/A
She's primarily going to use it for running the Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard apps. These apps are primarily what she will be doing with this machine. She's not married to the Mac platform; she's very much a dual-platformer; she can and will switch to Windows and build a PC that has similar performance but is cheaper. That being said, I know that the Xeon in this machine is a few years old. Would this refurbished Mac Pro be slower, faster, or on par to...let's say, an Ivy Bridge Core i7 desktop? If using modern day parts, how much money would I need to spend to match the speed of this refurbished Mac Pro?
She's primarily going to use it for running the Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard apps. These apps are primarily what she will be doing with this machine. She's not married to the Mac platform; she's very much a dual-platformer; she can and will switch to Windows and build a PC that has similar performance but is cheaper. That being said, I know that the Xeon in this machine is a few years old. Would this refurbished Mac Pro be slower, faster, or on par to...let's say, an Ivy Bridge Core i7 desktop? If using modern day parts, how much money would I need to spend to match the speed of this refurbished Mac Pro?
