'Harpertown' Mac Pro review

Ars Technica has reviewed the new workstation from Apple, the Mac Pro, now based on new Xeon "Harpertown" 45nm quad-core CPU - an upgrade from the previous dual-core based Xeons.
Apple sells the MacPro with 2GB of DDR2-800, in FB-DIMM shape, two 2.8GHz E5642 Xeons, a 320GB HDD and a Radeon HD 2600XT with 256MB.
The system reviewed was the standard one, but used two 3GHz E5472 Xeons.

Tags: Mac Pro 8 core Harpertown 3GHz review
Since Apple is charging $800 more for the upgrade to 2x3GHz, from 2x2.8GHz, the system reviewed by Ars is by no means a cheap one.
So, do those $800 also pay for an upgrade to a 1600MHz FSB from the standard 1333MHz for Xeons? Nope. The good thing about these 2.8GHz Xeons is they also run on the same FSB as the high-end ones, making them an even better deal.
The stock machine also features some paltry 2GiB of RAM, specially when taking into account the price tag of $2799 for the base, dual cpu machine.
Apple charges $500 more for the more significant 4GiB option; overcharging is saying the least, since, at the time of writing, even the not so cheap Crucial online store sells you the extra 2GiB for $320.


On the plus side, though, since you get four FB-DIMMs, you also get quad-channel, unavailable in the stock configuration - the upgrade to 4GB is definitely recommended.
The stock graphics card is not up to standard for some gaming or more graphics dependent tasks, Apple should have included the 512MiB 8800GT as the stock card - like Eric Bangeman also points out. At this price range it is possible to squeeze in a $250 graphics card with no problems.

As I see it, the Mac Pro is not a good purchase per se; it is if you want Mac OS X and a more powerful machine than the iMac. It is obviously faster than the old Mac Pro, specially in video and audio applications, even more if they make use of SSE4 in the near future. Some other applications, that are not so well multithreaded, see meager performance improvements.
The option of purchasing the Mac Pro with only a 2.8GHz Xeon saves you $500 and is a sensible option if you want a quad-core and Mac OS X.

Going for it is the traditional quiet operation of the machine, but if you don't mind that you can get the same kind of machine built for considerably less, probably also with some better components, mainly the RAM.

The full review is available here