Filed under: Hardware, Software, Mac Pro
Mac Pro benchmark roundup

Other sites are already getting their hands on Mac Pros and putting them through the benchmark ringer, and since we aren't done checking the couch for change yet, I figured a benchmark roundup would be the best way to let you sink your teeth into some cold, hard numbers. If you've been waiting to see how well these things perform in real world tests, your wait just might be over:
- Macworld pits a 2.66 Quad Core Ghz Mac Pro against 2.5 Quad and Dual 2.7 G5 Power Macs - G5s run crying to mama in everything but Adobe Photoshop tests (hint: that will be a benchmark theme across the board)
- MacInTouch posts some initial impressions as well as a wide variety of benchmarks, including some real low-level geek stuff like "multi-threaded scalar." Until now, I thought a 'scalar' was just a monster in Unreal
- Bare Feats posts their own set of tests, including the only After Effects test I've found so far (AE still isn't a UB either; I guess Adobe misunderstood the phrase 'fashionably late to the party')
- Geek Patrol, as you might glean from the name, also posts some extensive low-level tests in categories such as memory performance, floating point, integer and more
- Apple's product page also seem to think pretty highly of their own new Mac Pros

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
andy said 12:13PM on 8-11-2006
these results show how far ahead of the competition IBM were with the G5 performance wise. the xenon only edges ahead, and it is a few mhz more powerful, so they are probably nearly equal mhz for mhz. for a year old machine and even older arcitecture the G5 is still very relevant, i dont have a quad, just a dual 2.7, but i wont even consider upgrading just yet, ill wait for my cs3 and maya UB and see what is out or on the horizon next spring, 8 cpu mac pro ? sli ? with leopard mmmmmmm, role on spring!!!!!!
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ryan said 1:11PM on 8-11-2006
the problem with the g5 that the new intel chips don't have is that the quad g5 was like a p4 in an oven
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Gordon Werner said 1:11PM on 8-11-2006
I wonder how much better the performance will be once Photoshop et al go Universal and not txld through Rosetta
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andy said 1:54PM on 8-11-2006
once boot camp mac pro drivers are released we can do windows phtotoshop bencmarks, which will be an indication to cs3 native
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Jon H said 2:56PM on 8-11-2006
What's the price differential on the quad G5 vs the Mac Pro in this test?
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Majestic said 7:03AM on 8-13-2006
to answer the price comparison:
The new Xeons are MUCH MUCH cheaper than the old quads, which, if my memory serves me, were something like 4-5 grand.
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David said 4:44PM on 8-18-2006
The quads were NOT 4-5 thousand. They were $3300 retail -- exactly the same price as the quad 3.0 Ghz Xeon config. (I compare the price of the 3.0 Ghz Xeon version to the quad G5 because they're both the top configurations.) There is some savings in the midrange (2.66 GHz) tower.
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