OK it looks like the CPUs are Core 2 so any Nehalem or Magny-Cours Opteron would be a lot faster.
If you go with a PC, assuming you need $500 for the OS, peripherals, CS4 software and other stuff you don't get when you build that leaves $1000 for the components.
Therefore I don't want to spend upwards of $300 on the CPU. That rules out servers, so the i7 860 is it unless you're willing to wait for AMD's $300 6-cores to see how they compare.
CS4 benefits from GPU acceleration so a midrange GPU is a good idea. That's a weakness of the Mac Pro: the 7300GT will not accelerate Photoshop etc. much so you're better off with a PC.
AMD is better value but I'm not certain that Photoshop's acceleration works with AMD cards. So I'll temporarily recommend a $70 GT 240 from Nvidia.
$100 motherboard, $50 case and PSU, $30 optical drive, $200 for 8GB of RAM and $150 for hard-drives should do it. So it may come out under the $1000.
Plus points of this over the Mac are: much faster CPU and GPU acceleration. Downsides: you have to build it.
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