Guild Wars 2

I’m planning on ordering a nMP – the new cylinder Mac Pro sometime this month, but just not sure what processor to choose.

I actually recently bought a late 2013 iMac (top spec) earlier this year, and it runs GW2 great, and now I’m just looking to get another system for another room.

At the moment, I’m pretty much set on:
Dual FirePro D700 GPUs
1 TB SSD
16 GB RAM

But I’m just stuck on whether I want to go with the quad core 3.7 ghz or the six core 3.5 ghz for the xeon CPU?

I am not a gamer by any means – GW2 is the only game I play. It’s more for general use and photoshop/lightroom and light video editing. Cost isn’t a factor and I am not looking at PCs, so don’t suggest it; I am still keeping my iMac as well.

I read somewhere that the single core performance for both the quad and hex core ends up being the same?

Hey Calpurnia, can you elaborate a bit on what light video editing is for you? And how big a file size do you get in photoshop?

I create and print 80×32 on a regular basis, thats between 60-200ish megapixel 16 bit tiff, the new mac pro should handle anything single frame pretty well since I do this on a macbook pro

So if you don’t plan on shooting some kind of video raw format in 4k or the likes, you can probably go with the cheaper option.

however, since money isn’t and issue, just go with the faster option, I mean seriously, it’s your disposable income so it’s up to you to decide. The more expensive option will be faster but knowing apple it wont be as much faster as it is more expensive

The hex core has a slightly larger cache, and it boosts to the same clock speed as the quad core. Therefore, it should perform just as well on apps that run mostly on one core, like GW2.
You’re paying a lot more for it though, and performance likely won’t be better for most apps, only ‘as good’ as the cheaper quad core model.
So unless you’re doing video editing where slightly faster performance translates directly into more income, I’d go with the more affordable version