“After two weeks with one of the new Mac Pro desktops, I’ve got only one word: “Wow. The new Apple Mac Pro desktop is one of the best-designed, highly-performing desktops currently available at any price. Not only does it run Mac OS X and OS X applications at absolutely blazing speeds, but if you install Parallels Desktop for Mac (or Apple’s Boot Camp), the Mac Pro makes a better Windows workstation than almost any other Windows desktop out there,” Richard Hoffman reports for InformationWeek.
“Raw power is what the Mac Pro is all about. Overall XBench numbers were roughly five times higher on the Mac Pro than the Powerbook reference platform (170.64 versus 35.70); that scale of differential is not unexpected, given the Mac Pro’s two dual-core 3 Ghz processors, each with its own independent 1.33 Ghz frontside bus, ATI Radeon X1900 XT card loaded with 512MB of GDDR3 SSDRAM, 4 GB of fast system RAM, and up to four Serial ATA drives, each with its own 3Gb/s channel. Cinebench 9.5 figures were similarly impressive, many multiples above the reference platform,” Hoffman reports.
“But while Apple’s mix of Universal binary professional digital audio, video, graphics and authoring applications (Logic Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Aperture) run at warp speed on the Mac Pro, the many professionals now using Adobe software will have to make do with running under Rosetta until Adobe releases Universal binary versions of their products next spring,” Hoffman reports.
Hoffman reports, “That said, while tests of Adobe’s currently-shipping product versions reveal a significant performance hit for Rosetta, results certainly fall well within the usable range. For example, a series of Photoshop filters that processed in 11.5 seconds on the reference platform took half the time on the Mac Pro (6 seconds), while a second set took 5.5 seconds on the Mac Pro versus 15 seconds on the Powerbook. Much greater speeds can be expected when the Universal versions of the Adobe products appear…”
Hoffman reports, “The Mac Pro, however you look at it, is a very powerful, capable, expandable performer. Its dual OS X/Windows capability and adoption of a range of critical open standards make it worth consideration in any enterprise looking for the best possible machine for high-end use.”
Full article here.
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