Mac Pro

Latest computer is a Mac Pro. Out with the dual G5 which was a nice machine but could not run 10.6 and was getting a little slow at rendering long video sequences.

The new machine has the same metal case and look but dual 64-bit Xeon dual-core cpu's running at 2.66 Ghz, 6 gig fb-ram, ATI radeon X1900 pci-e video card and a 1 terabyte sata disk. I like the fact it has room for 4 sata hard drives and with 2 free ram slots i could end up with 12 gig of ram. It is also quiet - more so than the G5 which never got loud but could rev up when busy. The single cpu, dual-core XP box runs the fan a lot more and a lot louder and the dell precision 470 is deafening when all 4 cores get busy.

There are a lot of comparisons about apple's prices compared with dell and yes apple does charge a lot for a mac pro. The dell 470 is comparable in specs - less ram, same hard drive, same video, but slightly faster cpus - 3.2ghz vs 2.66 ghz. Since i bought i bare bones, added the cpu's, ram, hard drive, video etc it cost me about $500 to build and it probably runs about the same as the mac pro. Is it the same quality, no. It's cheap plastic and looks it and right now the fans are going full speed as it is rendering a dvd, burning a cd-rom, serving video/audio to upstairs and downloading some stuff. By comparison, the mac pro is made of solid metal, looks classy and is whisper quiet as it goes about it's business. I would say the mac pro is a McIntosh amplifier and the Dell is a NAD. Nothing wrong with a NAD, i've got a 500 watt beast that does the job but it doesn't look or act like a McIntosh.

How fast is it - i've always found dual processor machines so much 'smoother' to use. It's never a question of raw speed but that with 2 cpu's you never have to wait. The video snaps yes, and windows are responsive yes, but the real test is to start up some copying. While i typed this i cloned the original 250 gig drive to the new bigger drive.

The other thing that is noticable is the quality of the video. My setup has the 3 main machines (linux, osx, and windows) on a large L shaped desl so that my chair just turns around to work on a machine. The monitors are all similar sizes and quality and the video cards about the same but the quality of the video rendering of the mac is so much more lifelike. Actually i would rate them as mac 1st, linux 2nd and windows 3rd. As a test i put the same wallpaper (image35.jpg from Vista) on all 3 machines to compare. Same result. In fairness i am using XP and Vista does have a nicer looking screen...shame the rest of it was so bad.

anyway - got it get back and switch drives, set up time machine and then try out some apps...