Inside the Mac Pro

Macworld.com's Jason Snell gives you a tour of what's new in Apple's new professional desktop, the Mac Pro.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• apple
• macworld
• mac
• pro
• macintosh
• wwdc
• g5

[Minimum754]

Apple took it and ran this time.  It just kills me I can't have the Mac Pro right now. Very well done design, perfect OS, universal OS support, and highest specs I have ever seen in a personal computer. This blows away any other computer. The basic specs beats mine in all areas besides the GPU. Mine can run any game in full settings with no lag. Truely outstanding. I can't wait to get one and use Final Cut Pro on this beast...

[jadamsnz]

1. This is a WORKSTATION not a PC. Workstations get used for real work, often scientific, where that much memory IS required. In this instances it as an alternative to a Unix system (Windows PCs don't even rate).

2. 7300GT is pretty basic but you can stick two ATI 1900s in it (if you have the money - but that statement applies to PCs that can take two of the same cards too).

[jadamsnz]

Yes, if you have the knowledge and skills (I do but still buy Macs and build PCs) but you can't buy a fully made up system of the same spec from a name brand for less than a Mac Pro.

[pulseforce]

I love you Liquidmark, well explained! <3

[Comicdude113]

Okay people, I think the mac is best comp ever. And windows copied mac for vista. But vista looks like a great system 2. So i want to figure out how to get both systems

[Liquidmark]

Apple does elegance.

Other manufacturers do whatever is most convenient. Closest thing is Dell's concept modular PC. Problem is, users can forget about their freedom with something like that. They will have to buy ALL of their components directly from Dell, at Dell's price. I'll bet Dell would have a substantial markup for those parts.

Tho, I'm sure they will hide the fact with a handy-dandy rebate offer.

[Liquidmark]

Building one is out as well. In order to do dual-core-dual-processor configuration, they need a special motherboard. Special is another word for expensive. Dual Xeon motherboards are not widely available, after all.

IF they strech every penny, they MAY come in at just a couple of hundred dollars over Apple's price. I'm just sayin'.

[Liquidmark]

I tried to tell the PC Heads.

In order to mount twin Xeon processors, they would need a special motherboard.

They would have to part with $600 just for the board itself. Even then, it would not support 16 Gb of ram. O_o

Poor PC heads. They are stuck in the 90's.

I pity them.

[StandardsDT]

A PC should be built like this. No cables or anything. PC manufacturers should learn from Apple that we don't like messy towers or even ugly ones at all. Companies like Dell, Gateway and HP should really take the Vista Build Kits seriously and build the towers like MS suggested.

[GFLPraxis]

2400 USD is for a basic system with two dual-core 2.66 GHz Xeon's. It's a quad. 1 GB of really fast, ECC RAM, 250 GB hard drive, and a cheap Geforce 7300 GT. That PC you would build would NOT have four processor cores.

In fact, the system is fully customizable- you can reduce the specs and buy the same system with the same GPU and RAM but with quad 2 GHz cores for $2124- or less than $2000 with education discount. A four-processor machine for less than $2000.