I just installed a brand new mac pro in my home studio ... boy is this machine fast !!!
I was still working on a dual G5 2.5 before that and it really started struggling with the latest plugins like omnisphere and complete 5 .
Now I’ve got an 8 core nehalem mac pro , and these processors use hyperthreading so they actually present themselves as 16 cores to the OS , and I can tell you : every one of those single cores is way faster than a G5 core . I’ve installed 8G of memory (expandable to 32G) , 2 drives of 1TB (with still 2 empty slots to fill) , and a TC electronics powercore card .
This computer will finally enable me to make 3D renders in the background (they can take a looooong time , even on this one) , while still making music with plenty of cpu headroom .

Next project : the recording of the Mitras album