“The standard configuration of the Mac Pro outperforms its PowerPC-based G5 predecessors by a wide margin, helping to justify Apple’s 2005 decision to switch to processors from Intel. What’s more, the system powered by two dual-core 2.66GHz Xeon chips narrowly missed becoming the first machine to ever record a Speedmark score of over 300,” James Galbraith reports for Macworld.

Galbraith reports, “We’ve ordered Mac Pros in a few different configurations and will test them as they arrive. The first machine to come in was the standard configuration—the $2,499 Dual-Core Mac Pro with two 2.66GHz Xeon processors, 1GB of Fully-Buffered DDR2 RAM, a 250GB hard drive, a 16X SuperDrive with double-layer support, and an Nvidia GeForce 7300GT graphics card. This out-of-the-box Mac Pro configuration earned the highest Speedmark score ever recorded in our tests.”

Benchmarks here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Island Girl" for the heads up.]

Related MacDailyNews article:
Benchmark duel: Apple Mac Pro vs. Power Mac G5 – August 10, 2006