“The quad-core Apple Mac Pro has set new records in PC Pro’s benchmarks, in the UK’s first independent speed test of the latest Intel-based Mac,” David Fearon reports for PC Pro.
Fearon reports, “The Mac Pro is fitted with two of the top-end workstation-orientated Xeon CPUs. This effectively makes it a quad-core machine, and it’s fabulously fast for CPU-intensive tasks, as long as the application in question is able to use them all.”
“Immediately abandoning the pre-installed copy of Mac OS X, we popped a copy of Windows XP Professional on the machine using Apple’s Boot Camp beta. The results, in terms of pure performance, speaks volumes for the ability of Intel’s new processors – and Apple’s ability to build systems around them,” Fearon reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In a related article, Car Pro recently tested a Mosler MT900R by immediately abandoning the Mosler-supplied test driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., in favor of one Mr. Sol Goldstein, a 91-year-old retiree who currently resides in an assisted-living community near Boca Vista, Florida. The Mosler MT900R was so fast that even Mr. Goldstein – with left turn signal flashing and despite constantly braking for no known reason – was able to break Car Pro‘s gasoline-powered land speed record.
Related articles:
Computerworld Mac user tries Microsoft’s Windows Vista on Apple MacBook Pro – September 28, 2006
AnandTech upgrades and tests Octo-Core ‘Clovertown’ Apple Mac Pro – September 13, 2006
Wired’s Kahney: Apple’s Mac Pro ‘speaks power’ with ‘a weapon aesthetic, like an expensive handgun’ – September 05, 2006
MSNBC: Apple Mac Pro is the ultimate desktop computer – August 28, 2006
Apple Retail Stores can build-to-order customized Mac Pros on site – August 26, 2006
Computerworld hands on: Apple’s new Mac Pro is ‘one screamer’ – August 18, 2006
Thurrott pits Apple Mac Pro vs. similarly configured Dell, figures out the Mac is less expensive – August 18, 2006
AnandTech: Mac Pro vs. PowerMac G5 – August 16, 2006
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
MS-less MSNBC: NBC acquires majority control of MSNBC from Microsoft – December 23, 2005
Wow – Spyware and Trojans can infect Windows even faster!
I own this baby and I’m loving every minute of it. When I finally receive my ATI card I’ll be even happier. Who would have thought that 2 years ago I’d be praising the Apple/Intel relationship… And would be running windows (every once in awhile) Games on my Mac!
Crazy days!
Excellent MDN take. I was behind Mr. Goldstein this morning and I finally got above twenty miles an hour after he got out of my way by plowing into a farmer’s market.
Very smart to abandon OS X right away, that way they won’t become addicted.
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The Mac should suffer when it comes to memory intensive tasks as the design that lets you use all those slots also introduce latency. It would be interesting to compare two systems identical but for the memory where the memory runs at the same MHz
The MDN take is better than usual.
Joking aside, however, isn’t it great to be able to say that the latest Mac Pro is both extremely high performance (in a directly comparable way using Windows) and very cost competitive (in a directly comparable way using Dell’s web site to price a similarly configured system)?
I remember wishing that I could honestly say that to my Windows-using friends. Now I can say it with great confidence and point out that the Dell costs around $800 more when similarly configured to a base Mac Pro with a graphics card upgrade.
These are good times for Mac users. Very good times, indeed.
My take on MDN’s take: EXACTLY
Give me a freakin break – A world judged by what Windows will or won’t do – How depressing.
Apple turns another PC magazine on its ear.
To “me” who said, “Very smart to abandon OS X right away, that way they won’t become addicted.”
Any you are so right. Can you imagine buying a magazine called “PC” that constantly is talking about how great Macs are???
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N.
Who the fsck is PCpro. I’m glad they like the Mac but sheeesh, where’s the credibility?
What the hell was the song “Ride Captain Ride” really about anyway?
“here at PC PRO we imediately threw away the good bit so that we could compare the machine with all the other crappy boxes in our office”
There we have it if you want to run sh*t fast buy a Mac. Or of course you could run the OS it was optimised to run with.
This and other tests will help sell the Mac hardware and eventually the software. (It’s part of the master plan – sorry Dell.) Let Vista (XP3) speak for itself… patience…
MDN’s take made me pee my pants…..damn you MDN, damn you!
The fact that PC speed freaks are looking at the Mac Pro as a winner and a possible buy is a good thing, even if they are only interested in running Windows – probably games under Windows. This is part of the switcher demographic and their money is as good as anyone else’s. At some point these guys will try OS X and become full switchers. But in the meantime, Apple’s cash register will still go cha-ching.
MW: anyone, as in Apple will gladly sell to anyone.
Sol was last seen floating towards Bermuda while still shaking his fist in the air and cursing under his breath.
Found a great picture of the staff at PC Pro:
bond co. stooge:
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Oops.
bond co. stooge:
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While the MDN Take was enjoyably just a bit over the top, I have to admit that the magazine had a couple of good ideas.
#1. testing in XP-native mode provides a good hardware comparison
#2. abandoning OSX immediately helped insure they would eventually get around to testing in XP
Of course, it might have been good to run similar tests in OSX native mode (where possible) to see how the OSs compared for resource usage. No question in my mind which wins the UI contest, which is why they needed to start right from XP.
By the way, THIS sort of comparison is what we Mac-freaks point to when the ardent sheep proclaim the Mac too expensive. We can now point and say “At least we get what we pay for.”
DLMeyer: If you insist on writing posts that continue to be reasonable and make sense, the whole tone of this site will change.
Who cares if the ignorant reviewers stick with Windows. Their readers might just buy a Mac Pro, and because it’s their money they’ll check out everything they can do with it.
MDN’s take is clever, funny and all too true for those of us who live in Florida. Its humor is especially clear if you live in the St. Pete area or around Miami Beach…or drive anywhere on I-95.
“orientated” — I love it.
The only way to gauge the true performance of the Mac Pro hardware against other hardware is to eliminate any software differences by having the same OS and applications on both machines.
As we are so fond of saying, OS X won’t run on their reference machine. So the only way to eliminate any variables introduced by the OS difference and test only the hardware was to put Windows XP on both of them.
Result: proof that Mac Pro is champ.