So I finally bought a Mac Pro. Machine is a 2.8GHz with 12MB RAm and three 1TB drives.

Having trouble finding out how to maximize the 8 core processor speed. Anyone have a link to a tutorial?

Compressor and Shake can be optimized. Open Qmaster in the system preferences.

Here's an article on how to set it up

Making Compressor Multi-processor Aware (http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_compressor_multi-processor.html)

Great to know I was also not set on 4 thanks Nate.

I've seen conflicting reports that suggest you do not need or want to choose just 50% of your cores but should use them all
http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/apple/story/compressor_3_a_virtual_cluster_makes_an_impressive_speed_boost/
http://www.barefeats.com/octopro5.html

... and other reports that suggest you choose 1 less than the maximum (though darned if I recall where I read that).

Anyway, I would strongly suggest you experiment and see what settings provides the best performance for your system rather than accept any single decree no matter how well respected the source