Apple Mac Pro (Intel Xeon Quad Core, 2006) Expert Reviews

Professional designers, digital media hobbyists, and those simply into great design: meet your new lust object. Apple's new Mac Pro ($2,499 for the base model) is a winner on multiple levels. From the outside, it looks great--far more put together ...

Attractive exterior, innovative interior ; great value for the baseline configuration ; strong multicore CPU performance

Configuration options are not as comprehensive as Dell's ; weak support plan

Apple's Mac Pro has design innovations that we hope will cross over to other systems. Its performance is as strong as you'd expect for a system in its class, and it's priced right, too. You might need more flexibility in your config options, ...

The Apple Mac Pro (8-Core), priced at $3,499 direct, is an aluminum behemoth made for artists and designers who depend on being able to turn around their graphics-based projects before you can say "WYSIWIG." It looks like a typical professional Mac, ...

Easy expansion. Eight-core power. High-end graphics. Looks like the old Mac Pros, so co-workers won't get jealous

Performance boost isn't as impressive on day-to-day tasks as you'd think. Big and bulky. Windows performance outpaces Mac OS X performance on the same task. Only 90 days of phone tech support

The Apple Mac Pro (8-Core) is the performance dream PC of the creative professional. If you get one, just make sure you have programs that will take advantage of the extra power.

If you simply want the fastest Mac you've ever used, the base-model Mac Pro Eight-Core 2.8GHz won't disappoint. If, however, you don't need the maximum Mac, stick to an iMac-they're plenty powerful for the rest of us.

Dual enhanced quad-core processors ; faster memory and frontside bus ; doubled PCI Express specifications ; faster video cards ; strong storage options

Limited storage and RAM on default model

And one of the base model's most attractive features is that it's just that: a great base upon which to build a truly fearsome-fast machine. If you're a multimedia pro-videographer, professional photographer, or audio pro-the Mac Pro is the machine ...

Fastest Mac ever with eight processor cores.

**Testing conducted by Apple in December 2007 using a preproduction 2.8 GHz 8-core Mac Pro with a 2.66 GHz quad-core Mac Pro. All systems were configured with 4GB of RAM. Results are based on the STREAM v. 5.6 benchmark (www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/ref ...

If time is money, upgrading to a Mac Pro from the last generation of PowerPC-based Mac towers probably makes good financial sense. But the eight-core 3GHz Mac Pro showed only very modest improvements in the majority of our testing over a standard ...

Highly configurable and expandable ; excellent performance in 3-D rendering

Little to no improvement in many tests ; expensive

While it's true that processor speeds continue to make modest gains, these days most manufacturers are touting multiple processors on their chips, a change from the past, when processor vendors enjoyed frequent, remarkable leaps in individual ...

Revolutionary Workstation Mac

Apple's new Mac Pro ($7,578 direct, $8,577 with a 23-inch widescreen LCD monitor), the latest professional Macintosh desktop to emerge from the company's Cupertino, California, stables, sure is a workhorse. All Mac Pros are now "quad core," with two ...

Microsoft Windows- and Mac OS X-compatible (with Boot Camp). Quad-core performance. Approaches Native PPC performance, even with older apps. Ordering system simplified. PCIe slots galore support multiple monitors with extra graphics cards. Easy to ...

Windows support isn't quite there yet (still beta). Stratospheric pricing as configured. ECC DDR2 memory is expensive

Mac-using professionals who've been holding their breath for 9 months can finally exhale. The new Intel Xeon-powered Apple Mac Pro is a worthy successor to the Power Mac G5 and its variants.

In our final part of our Mac Pro coverage we look at its upgradability and performance under Windows XP.

With the Mac Pro performance issues resolved and some more time with the system under our belts, we're able to bring you the final part in our Mac Pro coverage. This time we're focusing on upgrading the memory and CPUs in the Mac Pro, as well as ...

The Mac Pro gives professional Mac users more processor power, storage options, and external ports than the previous Power Mac line. But these new systems aren't for everyone. If you don't run high-end professional applications and don't truly need a ...

Fast processors ; good game frame-rate performance ; huge memory capacity ; additional ports on front and back

Pricey, rare RAM format ; limited performance gains in software not optimized for multi-core systems ; non-native software (notably Adobe Creative Suite) must be translated via Rosetta ; lack of a sub-$2,000 entry-level model

The Power Mac G5's internal design was dictated by the need to cool the super-hot G5 processors. As a result, even though the G5's internal volume was much larger than the Power Mac G4's, it was a step back when it came to storage, offering space for ...