“It’s here, it’s quiet and it’s fast; we got our Mac Pro on Friday and spent every day since taking it apart, using it and benchmarking it,” Anand Lal Shimpi reports for AnandTech.
“The Mac Pro is pretty much everything the PowerMac G5 should have been. It’s cooler, quieter, faster, has more expansion and it gives you more for your value than the older systems ever could,” Lal Shimpi reports.
“If you were happy with your PowerMac G5, then you’ll definitely be happy with the Mac Pro. And if you’re a heavy multitasker, you will quickly be spoiled by the four very high performance cores that have found their way into the familiar looking chassis,” Lal Shimpi reports.
“From a performance standpoint, running OS X, the Mac Pro is truly Apple’s fastest system by a long shot. Some of the performance advantages over the PowerMac G5 aren’t enormous, but then you look at situations like iPhoto, Xcode or Final Cut Pro where the G5 is just put to shame. Rosetta performance is just about as good as it gets, the only real solution to that problem is for Adobe and Microsoft to hurry up and release updated software. Unfortunately since Apple isn’t really a favorite of either company, it’s not like greater than usual amounts of resources are being thrown at releasing new products specifically for the Mac platform,” Lal Shimpi reports.
Very comprehensive, as usual, full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dave” for the heads up.]
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple Mac Pro Quad Xeon 3.0GHz benchmarks – August 16, 2006
Apple Mac Pro dissection photos – August 16, 2006
Ars Technica reviews Apple Mac Pro Quad Xeon 64-bit workstation – August 11, 2006
Apple Mac Pro Quad-core Xeon easily beats Power Mac G5 Quad – August 11, 2006
OWC offers Apple Mac Pro memory upgrades; rebate trade-in of Apple factory memory – August 11, 2006
Benchmark duel: Apple Mac Pro vs. Power Mac G5 – August 10, 2006
Apple unveils new ‘Mac Pro’ featuring quad 64-bit Intel Xeon processors – August 07, 2006
Remember a few years ago when Adobe actually recommended on their website their customers buy a PC as they were better value for money? Disgraceful, and an insult to their admitted 50% of customers.
Well, I wonder if they are now recommending Macs now?
Oh wait, these M$ lackeys don’t really even seem to make software for Macs any more do they!
fsck that, Brad…
who was the smart ass asshole that spoke at the WWDC where I announced we were moving to Intel…? Yeah – Bruce Chizen…
“Its about time, Steve… what took you so long?”
Hey Bruce – buddy – FSCK YOU right back!
So, smartass – where the hell is Photoshop – at the very least, dipwad? What? next year???
Ohhhhh… i get it… WE took so long to make the transition – now, its gonna take you two years to catch up…
eat my shorts, chrome dome.
Adobe is going to be bought out by either Apple or M$ sooner than later anyways…
With almost $10 billion in cash (or will it be $5 billion by the time the back-dating is over and done with?), lying around, and Adobe at a $20 billion market cap, Apple could fairly easily pick up 51% of Adobe, some cash, mostly stock, some borrowed money.
How Apple purchases Adobe without MS getting into the bidding game out out-lasting Apple – that’s the mystery.
Lastly, perhaps my 5-year running thought that purchasing Adobe is a golden-calf goal of Apple isn’t reality after all. Perhaps Apple is content to simply chip away at Adobe with it’s own offerings until mostly irrelevant…
He’s full of crap. Adobe is not dragging their feet. And the people at the MacBU love Apple. It’s pure nonsense and calls into question his understanding of the industry as a whole.
Please spare us the melodramatics that have no basis in reality.
Bozo
S.
Unfortunately since Apple isn’t really a favorite of either company, it’s not like greater than usual amounts of resources are being thrown at releasing new products specifically for the Mac platform,” Lal Shimpi reports.
Now that Intel is here for the Pros, how long before that market share shift causes Adobe to rethink its business priorities.
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Remember a few years ago when Adobe actually recommended on their website their customers buy a PC as they were better value for money? Disgraceful, and an insult to their admitted 50% of customers.
Well, I wonder if they are now recommending Macs now?
====
Well, what has happened in 10 or so years? Apple buys NeXT, switches to Intel…ditches PowerPC and now Macs are a better value for the money.
Except that PC boxes running a Windows OS inherently blow (and only add to the cost of the box over a few years time), how was Adobe wrong?
Adobe made that statement by recommending Microsoft Windows as the preferred operating system; not Intel platform.
I’d like Apple to ramp up Aperture to make it a Photoshop-killer.
I already use iPhoto for storage and low-end editing, but need to transfer images to PS for the heavy drilling.
Apple did it with FCP and FCPE, so go to it guys!
Switch to Gimp and Openoffice.
Back to the topic at hand . . .
The review confirms the WWDC claim that the Mac Pro is considerably cheaper than an equivalent Dell and (once you factor in the cost of case, a power supply and an OS) cheaper than you could build yourself.
MDN magic word: true, as it really is true
YEAH said…
< Except that PC boxes running a Windows OS inherently blow (and only add to the cost of the box over a few years time), how was Adobe wrong? >
I am saying there is something inherently wrong with an “independent” software company stating an opinion on the subject.
Comparing the Mac Pro to the PowerMac is great for the Apple faithful, but it doesn’t give switchers any information.
Showing that Windows is faster on a Mac than on a Dell might motivate some people to buy Apple hardware, but most people have noticed that the latest model is usually the fastest model and will just wait for Dell to catch up.
Okay, so the hardware is fast. What about the platform?
What I would like to see is a comparison of OS X and Windows on the same hardware (now possible), using applications that are native to both. If someone demonstrates that OS X is faster than Windows, all other factors being equal, that would really command some attention. It would increase Apple’s market share.
JUST LIKE I EXPECTED!!
Where the heck is the PowerMac G5 Quad in the charts against the Mac Pro Quad?
Why isn’t the machines tested equally to give the charts a accurate representation?
With only two cores, the CineBench results between the PowerMac G5 2.5GHz and the Mac Pro 2.66GHz are reasonably close, with the Mac Pro only holding a < 6% advantage
You see, the Xeons only just slightly exceed the G5 processor if you match them evenly.
It’s just like the early days of dual core CPUs; just wait until Apple throws two quad core Clovertowns in the Mac Pro, then we’ll really start running out of things to do with them.
This first version of Mac Pro is a DUD in performance gains really.
Wait for the eight core beast.
I too would like to see quad vs quad performance.
So far the Intel advantage is cooler chips and Windows running natively.
Show us that a quad core Intel box is faster than a quad core PPC box.
You want to help show the world the power of the Mac? Install and run a grid computing project on your computer. Especially the quad core Macs – those have a massive amount of computational power. Here is a link to one such grid computing project:
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/viewJoinNow.do
The project organizers keep all sorts of statistics on which platforms is contributing the most and how fast they are on average.
anand is such a pro Intel site, I knew going in this would be a skewed comparison. Yet the performance numbers here vs the stated “conclusion” about what they mean is even more biased then normal for them.
Obvious Question Time: Where is the Quad G5??? where, in fact, were ANY of the more recent PowerMacs? Every single unit anand used were the old single core units with half the cache. Not only were the next gen PMs equipped with better CPUs, there were a few mobo tweaks to reduce memory latency too (an area where these tired PMs STILL outperformed the MacPro).
Which brings us to the next head slapper: Guess what guys … FBDIMM is the next RAMBUS! Again we have a superior technological starting point (a serial vs parallel data pathway) being of absolutely no value at all thanks to poor design and implimentation. I think grafting DDR chips on a serial bus is the root problem – a totally clean sheet tech would have been the better way to go, and it’s a head scratcher why that didn’t happen. But regardless, this hybrid monster hogs 3X as much power while delivering 2/3 the performance, and costs twice as much as DDR2 alternatives (and God help Apple & Intel if DDR3 comes online anytime soon). Won’t Intel EVER f**king learn? And it’s hard to imagine what Apple is thinking – any cheaper Conroe Core2Duo product w/regular DDR2 memory (like, oh, say an upgraded iMac) is going to have Apple’s Professional Workstation’s lunch on any memory intensive task … which would be damn near ALL of them!
Once AMD debuts the K8L running DDR2, the magnitude of this memory problem is going to be obvious. And the quadcore competiton between Opteron & Woodcrest is already over. There’s no way Intel’s lousy FSB & glued together 4 core CPUs are going to be able to compete against AMD’s more integrated (and power efficient) design. You heard it here first folks.
I just can’t get over this – I wanted SO BAD for Woodcrest to finally put my concerns about this switch to rest. I stopped posting here for awhile, just so that I could spend more time at my Apple Shrine praying for such a thing to come to pass. Well, consider my faith shaken. Every new MacPro review (once you get past the rah-rah BS) reveals a VERY mediocre machine, considering what it’s supposed to be. The internal rerouting of components and additonal ports are the only reasons to buy this turkey, and even those could have been done without Intel. If Apple had ever taken delivery of the low power (FX style) 970MP CPUs, we would have even had dual core XServes long before now.
I know the fanbois are gonna ‘flame on’ here … well, go the hell ahead. I stand by what I’m saying. If Apple wasn’t getting the kind of price breaks on Woodcrest that DELL used to be able to count on, this new MacPro would be the capstone to a Switch that looks more and more ridiculous with every new product launch. Being able to run Windows on an Apple computer, and the privilege of having a TPM ‘spy’ chip on the mobo, are not worth the money Apple’s spent on this trip.
Thanks for nothin Steve.
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“… this new MacPro would be the capstone to a Switch that looks more and more ridiculous with every new product launch.”
I’ll make an exception for the MacBook, but only b/c of the formfactor improvment over the iBook. Even though there’s no reason that couldn’t have happpened with a (much cheaper) dual core G4 and a dedicated GPU, a design homerun was hit.
That black MacBook is sweet.
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You want to help show the world the power of the Mac? Install and run a grid computing project on your computer. Especially the quad core Macs – those have a massive amount of computational power. Here is a link to choose one of several different projects:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php
The project organizers keep all sorts of statistics on which platforms is contributing the most and how fast they are on average. Show them the speed of the Macs, both PPC and Intel…