Home > Consumer Reviews > Apple Mac Pro Desktop (Two 3.2 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon Processors, 2 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, 16x SuperDrive)

This machine is ridiculously powerful. My wife works as and Art Director and she uses her Mac every day with Adobe CS3.

She had a dual G5 that was limited in the amount of memory it could support (4Gb max) and to make a long story short, she needed to replace it with a Mac that could open huge files in Photoshop.

This Mac is unbelievable. First of all the design inside the box is brilliant. The way it is designed, it allows the air to go through the entire case (since it has fans in the front and in the back). Adding memory or hard drives has been simplified to the maximum and it is now error proof.

This Mac uses 800MHz RAM and it can support 8 sticks Max. Each stick can be up to 4Gb each for a maximum RAM of 32Gb. Due to the bus they put in this machine, if you can put 8 sticks in it, it is even better as it can now access them in parallel for a bus width of 256 bits.

Don't buy the RAM with Apple as they are obviously gouging. I bought the RAM at Other World Computing and their pricing is much more reasonable.

On top of it, I bought VMWare Fusion to run Windows on this Mac and it simply flies. With its 8 cores, you have more power than most applications will ever need. However, if you need to crunch data for a living, this machine saves a lot of time. Just an example: on her former Mac (the dual G5 with 4GB of RAM) Photoshop 7 took 30 minutes to open a 1.6Gb file and the scrolling through the hi-res image was sluggish. On this machine (8-core with 16Gb of RAM), Photoshop CS3 takes about 1.5 minutes to open the same file and the scrolling is smooth.

I had a look at a comparable Dell PC before buying this one, but as of today, there is still no configuration that directly compares to this Mac. The Precision T5400 or T7400 are probably the closest machines. However, as soon as you add 2 quad core CPU's to the configuration of the Dell, the price explodes and the Mac is much cheaper.

There are other configurations of this Mac (8-core @3.0 GHz and 8-core @3.2 GHz.) I think these other configurations cannot justify the extra cost. So far, with the 8-core @2.8 GHz, I have never been able to max out the CPU's and this looks like there is a bottleneck in the system that is limiting the amount of data the CPU's can crunch. Considering the amount of RAM I have in this box (16Gb) I don't think it was swapping. My hunch is that the bus, even though it is faster than the previous generations, is still limiting what the processors can do. I think this version is the best deal as the faster CPU's in the other versions will be marginally faster than this one.

Bottom line: This is an amazing machine for the price. Most users won't need this kind of power but if you make a living with your machine, having a monster like this is definitely worth it, especially if you add a ton of RAM.

Like many Apple designs, the MacPro is one slick machine. I made the switch last year with a macmini to test out the Mac world. While the mini was impressive, it was underpowered for what I was pushing it to do. No lack of power with the MacPro! I upgraded to 6GRAM (recommend OWC memory), and a 1TB drive and it's taken everything that I throw at it. Encoding a movie on the mini was about four hours and about 40 minutes on the MacPro. WIth that much memory I can keep virtual machines (Vmware) for Windows and Linux up all the time, although suspending and resuming them now only takes a few seconds. BTW, I run Windows mostly for Picasa to manage my photos. I never liked iPhoto plus Picasa running in a virtual machine is still WAY faster than a native running iPhoto session.

One negative but couldn't justify taking a star away is the reboot from sleep issue. If you google it you will see that there are many MacPro customers out there that are complaining about it. I did contact Apple and even though they wouldn't acknowledge it, I am confident that they will fix it, but am disappointed that Apple won't admit the problem and let us know that a fix is coming.

Have used this machine now for about a month. What an incredible job Apple has done to incorporate style and function into a complete package. There are the obvious attributes, like blazing speed and multitasking chores being handled in it's sleep thanks to 8 cores of Xeon power, but what really impressed me was the thought going in by Apple to create, from the ground up, a wonderful MACHINE. The design of the case is awesome, the airflow is remarkably simple, one wonders why no other manufacturer has done it this way. The result is practically noiseless operation, even under demanding conditions. ( I do video and audio rendering ). The ease of upgrading the memory is so simple, again, makes one wonder why no one else does it.
The peripheral connection options are great (look at their spec pages for details) on both back and FRONT.
All in all, a perfect computer for intense video and or audio professionals.
A word about virtual machines......
I did want to install XP Pro, too, as I do have some audio/video programs that are native only to Windows, and after purchasing this, I have no money left over for ProTools, etc. ! Ha!
So I installed Fusion. It works great, even is capable of using the multiprocessors available, except I found that the more intense programs running in Fusion became sluggish. My dual core Windows 64 bit system was quicker running those. That was discouraging. I'm sure it's fine running things like Office and such, but not REAL demanding applications. So I nixed Fusion and went ahead and installed Windows under Apple's own BootCamp. Much better. Windows sees all EIGHT processors and it is running at native speed. Remember, when Windows is running under Fusion (or Parallels, I think) Mac's OS is still running as well, therefore, not all resources are available. Under BootCamp, they are.
The only drawback, if you want to call it that, is that you have to reboot going from one OS to the other, and you can't drag and drop files from one OS to the other. Not a big deal for me!
And I like the ease of use of Leopard, too. Very nice OS.
If you have the money, and are on the fence in any way about what to get for yourself or business. just get it. You will NOT be disappointed.

Read my other review about the G5 for the software advantages of the Mac. And my MacBook review about running Windows on your Mac. Let's talk about the hardware:

First off I don't own one of these machines, but I work with them extensively at work (I'm a PC/Mac Technician). This model in particular. I've probably seen at least 300 of these machines, and the failure rate is about 1 in 300 thus far. So, build quality is great.

Its 2 USB and one Firewire 400 port on the front are very convenient. It has 3 USB, 1 FW400 and 1 FW800 port on the back. The stock video card can drive 2 decent sized DVI monitors. It has a combined Optical/Analog minijack for audio in and one for audio out, as well as SPDIF in and out ports. It also has 2 Ethernet ports. Inside it has 3 open PCIe slots, 4 drive bays and an open removable/optical bay. Aesthetically, it's one of the nicest looking machines I've seen. The case is aluminum, and very solid. (We often take a couple of Macs and sit on the machines without fear of breaking the case. We're even jokingly, made a MacBed out of about 5 or 6 of them. The MacBed gets 1.5 stars.)

It is simply the best designed hardware money can buy PC or Mac. Upgrading parts is as easy as it can get. Installing a drive is child's play. It's so simple my mom could do it. Upgrading RAM is a snap. (Though maybe not mom-proof.) It runs very quiet as everyone has said. I have to look at the light on the power switch often to see if a machine is on when the screen has been powered down, that's how quiet it is. Everything in this machine is as well thought out as the software (OS X) is, if not better. In fact I would almost venture to say that there is nothing I can think of that could have been done better. (See Caveats below for its 2 flaws.)

Even the side door is a snap. If you're a PC user you know how hard it is on some PCs to even close the side door because the panel is flexible and won't line up? So you sit there for 10 minutes trying to get it back on, only to give up and leave it off half the time? Well the MacPro is just ht opposite. You have to TRY to mis-align the thing. To open it you simple pull a latch and the door pops open. To close it you slide the tab into the slot and close it like a door, and there is a satisfying click when it's closed. And that's just the side door.

Let's talk about speed:
Most of the current Macs boot up in less than 30 seconds from button press to logon screen. After you type in (or select) your user name and type in your password (*though you can configure it to automatically logon), the machine is ready to use -- meaning everything is completely loaded and the system is idle in maybe 15-20 seconds in stock configuration. And that's with the stock 320GB HD. So, all told you can be up and running in about a minute from a cold start on this model Mac.

Applications launch very fast as well. Most will bounce in the dock a few times and just come up. Some, like Adobe Photoshop and MS Word take longer, but they're very big programs. I've never taken a stopwatch to them, but I estimate about 5-10 seconds for most app launches. With a few, you literally blink after you click the icon on the dock and they're up and running.

Caveats:
With all these pluses there must be some minuses right? There's 2: First off: The weight. Unless you're used to carrying around 50 pounds of weight, these are pretty cumbersome because of the second design flaw: The handles, they're very uncomfortable to use (after all there's 50 pounds cutting off your circulation at the edge of the handles), but I'm glad they're there. I'm not worried about a system slipping out on my hands when I'm moving one, unlike a lot of PCs where you have to hunt for a stable place to hold on to the plastic most of those boxes are made out of.

A word about 10.5 (Leopard):
My other reviews on the G5 and MacBook cover Mac OS X (the mac's unique operating system) more generally and give the pros and cons vs. Winodws, but they were written before Leopard came out. In short, 10.5 (Leopard) is awesome. So, without further ado, here's the best of what Leopard offers:

Screen sharing/remote control is the best new feature. It works better than Windows RDC too because you don't have to have one person log out.

Time machine is a backup application built into the OS that makes backups painless -- just shell out a hundred bucks for another Hard Drive and you'll be set.

Stacks (where you click one folder icon in the dock and a grid of other icons spring up out of it) is a mixed bag. New users might like it, while older users might not. It's easy enough to switch is back to list view or folder behavior. (Right click the stack icon on the dock -- or click and hold -- and choose View content as "List" and/or Display as "Folder".

iChat 4: about the best and easiest teleconferencing software out there.

Coverflow and page previews in the finder makes it even easier to find just what your looking for. cover flow basically shows document previews of everything from images to Word and PDF files to videos and audio files. Want to see a larger preview? just highlight the document and hit the space bar. This saves you the trouble of launching the application just to look to see if that .tif is the right one.

Exposé and Spaces are huge time savers too. Exposé is a way to control all or some of the windows on screen. Just hit a function key (assignable by you) and all the windows on screen or of an app tile on you display so you can find the one buried under 5 other windows. Spaces allows you to have "virtual desktops" that you can quickly switch. Say you're working on music is garage band or reason and oyu have all the windows laid out how you like them and a Friend instant messages you. Instead of having to minimize and juggle windows, you simply switch to another desktop where you only have to see your IM window. When you're done a lcick of garage bad on the dock or a key-combo will switch the desktop and windows right back to where you were. Check out the Spaces and Exposé System Preferences for more cool features and ways to customize it.

There's more but ths rview is getting long. SO buying advice:
You can't go wrong with this machine or the 3.0 model if you have the money to spend.

To PC users considering this or building/buying a PC: I built a PC system on par spec wise with the last rev of this machine about a year and a half ago for about $300-$400 less* (and I still didn't have as nice of a machine hardware design-wise as this one) -- but then I have to run Windows or Linux on it. The OS X will save you time and energy in the first 6 months to justify the added expense.

(*Yes, I probably could have built it cheaper but I was buying parts comparable in quality to Apple Hardware.)

To First Time Mac Purchasers:
Unless you're pretty well off, you have a demanding Application (video/3d rendering/software development) or need the extra 3 PCI slots, (or if you just like to cut to the chase and get the best when you jump into things), you'll probably be better served saving a bit of cash by getting an entry level consumer Mac first to try things out, then step up to the big boy if you need it.

To Mac Users considering this machine:
If you're comning from a non-intel Mac, you'll be blown away by the speed boost. If you're coming form a consumer level Mac, then you'll also be very pleased with the added speed and the quality of the hardware. I'm assuming you're gettin this because you need the speed. If you just surf the web all day and write Word docs, save your money and get an iMac, MacBook or MacBook Pro or even, dare I say, a Mac Mini. This is really a machine for people who need the power and are willing to pay for it.

Summary:
There is yet to be any review under 4 stars for this machine and it's been out for the better half of a year. And this is in a world where you can't please everyone. That right there should tell you how good these systems are. Expect this machine to outlast everything else currently on the market. If you cna afford it, it's a great purchase decision. You won't be disappointed.

Just a few months ago, I was a fed-up Windows user, tired of constant crashes, patches, and malware threats. The Vista fiasco convinced me that Microsoft had put more effort into polishing up the eye candy (and enriching its owners) than in beefing up consumer security or product usability; the time had come to switch to a more robust and less paranoid operating system. The thought had been brewing awhile, but with so many productivity tools written for Windows it seemed cumbersome to transfer financial and client data to the Mac. That is ... until Apple moved to Intel processors, and software like Boot Camp made it reality to run both OS-X and Windows on the same machine. At last, I can manage fancy graphics as well as plain business transactions on one computer.

This is a cutting-edge engineered, handsomely designed, and quality built machine with large efficient fans that run whisper quiet yet keep the components cool. Hardware expansion is incredibly simple: the four drive slots have direct contacts, so you can just slip in an extra hard drive without having to fuss with cables -- RAID configuration is a breeze. Adding more memory is simplicity itself (although the buffered fast DRAM is expensive) with 8 slots holding 1 to 4 GB sticks each. The one beef I have is with the measly 3 USB slots in the rear (plus 2 up front) that just aren't enough nowadays to accommodate all those ubiquitous printers, scanners, cameras, external drives and other gadgets. Four Firewire ports are generous (probably because Apple holds the patent), but aren't all that common yet on external devices to substitute for USB ports.

The ability to run Windows [stay with XP, if you possibly can] turns the MacPro into a truly all-purpose workstation. You can use either the operating system's Boot Camp, or 'virtualize' Windows (with "Fusion" or "Parallels") so that you can run Windows tasks within the Mac environment without rebooting. Great in theory, but a bit of a gamble with Microsoft's obnoxious 'Activation' procedure that detects reinstallation of the OS, yet seems incapable of concluding that you are reinstalling the software on the same machine ... required hours of hassling with distrustful off-shore call centers. Ugh.

I greatly appreciated the professional support team [after years of dealing with foreign accents rotely reciting the same crib sheet that I'd downloaded the week before] that had the decision-making authority to arrange for instant repair. I was stunned when walking out of the 'Genius Bar' with a brand new replacement MacPro (hardware and software transferred) because parts shipments were delayed by back orders. Dell, HP and their lesser brethren might wish to relook their business models - nothing beats satisfied customers, even if you have to add a modest premium. In this instance, you really get what you pay for; top quality product, outstanding service and support.