Apple's Mac Pro: A Discussion of Specifications

Final Words

In many ways, the fact that Apple didn't change the exterior of the PowerMac G5 chassis symbolizes the upgrade that is the Mac Pro. The focus is entirely on the inside of the chassis, on the Woodcrest based Xeon processors, the FB-DIMMs and the four SATA drive bays, however we'd caution you on spending too much on a brand new Mac Pro right away, despite Apple boasting immediate availability. By the end of this year, Intel will begin shipping Clovertown, which should be a drop-in quad-core replacement to the current dual-core Woodcrest based Xeon CPUs. It should allow Apple to replace its dual 3GHz Xeon 5160 option with a pair of quad-core Clovertown based Xeon CPUs. We're not yet sure what the clock speeds or price points will be, but it may be worth waiting for if you can. If you can't wait, there is always the possibility that you may be able to simply upgrade the CPUs in the Mac Pro later on, in which case you may want to go with the lowest end option now and simply drop in Clovertown later. Over the coming days we will hopefully be able to figure out what will and won't be possible with the new Mac Pro design, but we're hoping that the move to Intel means good things for the cost of upgradability on these systems.

By using Xeon on the high end Mac Pros, Apple also paves the way for a more mid-range offering utilizing Intel's Core 2 Duo processor. While it's inevitable that the iMac will be revamped to use Core 2, we're wondering if Apple will decide to introduce a lower end Mac Pro or simply a vanilla "Mac" desktop offering with a single Core 2 processor.

Honestly however, we did have higher hopes for some aspects of the Mac Pro. Like many Apple users, we were looking forward to a revamped case design; while the internals have changed, the fact of the matter is that the standard configuration of the Mac Pro still weighs in at a hefty 42.5 lbs. The bulky chassis does scream high end workstation, but it would have been nice to see something a bit different, possibly slimmed down. Based on how Apple has handled transitioning all of the previous products to Intel platforms, we shouldn't have expected any different on the chassis side. The revamped Apple designs should really start to surface in 2007, most likely starting with the iMac and MacBook/Pro as those models are still using older Yonah based Core Duo processors.

On the technology side, we wanted to see a bit more from Apple. For a company usually on the forefront of adopting new technologies and standards we were surprised not to see any eSATA ports on the Mac Pro. Given that OS X's GUI performance is sometimes tied to the amount of video memory you have, we would also have expected Apple to opt for one of the 512MB GeForce 7300s as an option on the Mac Pro, although admittedly 256MB is pretty good even at 30" Cinema Display resolutions. We thought we might see more of a focus on RAID, especially with the default system configuration, but alas a 250GB hard drive is all you get.

Maybe we're hoping for too much, and maybe we just need to get our hands on a system for review, but until then hopefully this discussion will help those of you buying today make a better buying decision.