I have heard that photoshop cannot make use of 8 processors at this stage, and I am wondering if there is much point in getting the dual 2.8mhz 4 core and instead get the single 2.8mhz 4 core processor model and then putting the savings into extra RAM if that is where the applications that photographers use need the grunt?
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The first part of the statement is wrong. Photoshop DOES make use of all cores you may have for certain image processing routines. The question is, how efficient Photoshop can use more cores. At this point, with the way motherboards are designed, each core in multi core setups is ram starved, meaning that the limiting factor is not the core but addressable ram. That's not so much Photoshop's problem as it is the way systems can address ram in a 32bit address (which Photoshop still is on either platform). So, at this point, Photoshop can't make as much use of multiple cores as it could if the individual cores had more ram access.
As to whether on not it's worth getting a 4 core VS and 8 core, that's not an easy answer. While adding more cores WILL allow Photoshop to split the processing across the cores for some things, it won't be as big of a boost as addressing other issues such as overall system ram and speed of the scratch disk.
You may want to read Scott Byer's article [a href=\"http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/2007/09/photoshop_world.html]Heavy Lifting[/url]
As far as other apps making use of multiple cores, Apple and Adobe apps are pretty good about that sort of thing. Smaller 3rd party developers less good. But don't forget, the OS itself _WILL_ take advantage of all cores so while the apps themselves may not, the OS will. I have a dual quad core MacPro tower with 16 gigs of ram and a 3 drive internal array (a partition of which is set to the Photoshop scratch disk). It's fast...but it has a lot of ram and really fast scratch. Change any of the above and YMMV.
