Performance of the 2012 Macs & building a new DP rig

[Foo]

It's time to upgrade my main home studio system, and I was hoping to get some real-world DP performance experiences from my fellow motunation folks.

I'm trying to form an accurate(ish) comparison between a new Quad core 3.4GHz 27" and an 8-core 2.4GHz Mac Pro. In terms of raw audio processing performance, do folks think the Mac Pro would be worth the extra cash?

I recently worked in a studio running DP7 on a mid-2011 27", quad core i7, with 16GB RAM, external disks for Mach 5, etc. Running complex mixes still occasionally spiked the CPU and stopped playback, which worries me. In raw cycles, the 8 core Pro sounds like it could handle more plugins, but it's hard to find apples-to-apples comparisons.

The iMac offers an internal SSD option, but that's about it. The Pro has more cores, drive slots, could hold more RAM, etc., which means more room to grow, and improve performance through separation of drives and better sample/track caching. Ack! I can't decide! The Mac Pro is like another grand, which could buy lots of other toys.

[Dwetmaster]

My advice is this:
Get the best computer you can afford. You won't regret it in the long run...

I personally never regret having chosen the MacPro Route.

[Foo]

Yep, that's the route I took. Even though they're two years old at this point, the 8 core Pro is light years ahead of the 2011 i7 iMac I was using before. I got another 16GB of RAM (only like $150 on Amazon!), and it makes a HUGE difference. As more and more plugins add "true" 64 bit support (esp. MachFive and BFD), I don't see any of the the stalled playback problems I used to get.