The Mac Pro. If one was to liken a computer to a mythical Phoenix, this would probably be the one. The workhorse of the Macintosh lineup, it incorporates features previously available to only server machines.

This machine is equipped from the factory with 2 Xeon quad core 2.8GHz chips, 2GB of RAM, a SuperDrive, a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT graphics card, Wireless Extreme card, and a 500GB 7200RPM drive. Aftermarket improvements include an extra 6GB of RAM (total of 8GB), a Pioneer SuperDrive, and the removal of the stock Apple HD for the addition of 4 640GB WD 7200RPM drives. Computer baseline price is $2300, as ordered $3050, with aftermarket upgrades ~$4000.

Build & Appearance - Whether you hate or love macs, you cannot deny, some serious thought went into the design of this computer. Everything from the perforation in the front and rear to facilitate case fans and air flow, to the placement of ports and bays, everything has the appearance of design for purpose. The case itself is built out of a 5mm thick aluminum that looks as if it could take a bullet. Despite this choice of light weight material, the computer still weighs in at just over 70lbs. Aside from placement of fans and the number of ports, little has changed from the design of the G5 tower. Seams line up nicely, and overall, the tower looks as if it could just as happily be on display as a art gallery.

Features - Hard Drive – The computer comes standard with a 320GB 7200RPM hard drive, upgradable in both size (500 / 750GB & 1TB) as well as speed (300GB 15,000RPM SAS drive). This particular model was ordered with the 500GB option, which was immediately removed in favor for replacement aftermarket options. My choice of drive was the Western Digital 640GB Caviar 7200RPM drives. As tested by several independent companies, these were among the fastest SATA drives on the market. One good source for comparisons is Bare Feats (http://barefeats.com). The first drive was used as the OS and program disk, leaving the other three to be tied in a RAID 0 array.

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a good way to offer either increase speed or reliability to a drive. RAID 0, known as a “stripped” array, breaks up a file into multiple peaces, and distributes them across multiple drives, taking advantage of the maximum bandwidth of the combination of all drives. RAID 1, known as a “mirrored” array, makes a complete copy of one disk onto another. As I keep dedicated backups of all data, performance more then safety was my interest.

It is a good idea to attack a label to each of the bays with the serial number of each drive in it. If you need to remove a drive, the computer may or may not inform you of which bay it is in, forcing you to remove each drive one by one, to find out. Mounting and removing drives is extreme simple. Each drive is attached by 4 screws to a carriage, which, with some force, slides into and out of its dedicated slot.

Optical Drives – The computer, by default, features one SuperDrive (CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW/DL). The drive is hidden behind an aluminum panel in the front which automatically slides down as needed. I opted to include a second drive, a Pioneer 116D for $30 from Other World Computing (http://www.macsales.com). The Pioneer drives are usually of a higher quality then the Apple included ones, and also far cheaper. Installation was similar to that of the hard drives, including the us of 4 screws into a carriage that, with some force, slides into and out of place. You will have to play around with the jumper cables on the back of your particular drive to achieve the correct setting, for the Pioneer 116D, it was the “Slave” setting. Speed and reliability of both drives are similar, with the Apple supplied one being slightly louder.

Processor (CPU) – The processors selected for this computer are 2 Xeon Quad Core at 2.8GHz each. The baseline model includes only 1 CPU, which can be upgraded for $500 to two. Considering the performance benefit, combined with the fact that the retail for each chip is over $1000, which doesn’t include the price of the heat sink necessary for the CPU, it is well worth the price. The drives can be upgraded to 3.0 and 3.2GHz, for $800 and $1600 respectively. Considering the theoretical speed increase is only 14% (actual is often lower), that is over $114 per percent speed increase. In a real world situation, a 1% speed increase will result in about a 20 second time decrease over a period of 1 hour max CPU load. This is for a max CPU load, meaning that the processor is under full and complete use; not a common event for any duration of time, let alone an hour straight. I recommend to go with the baseline 2.8GHz model, unless you’re getting paid by the second (in which case the slower one may still be better for you).

Graphics Card – Most people think that just because you pay more for a graphics card, it will perform better. This is not necessarily the case. There are two types of graphics rendering: 3D and Core. 3D, as the name implies, is all rendering in three dimensions. This includes CAD (computer aided design), advanced games, and other high end applications. Core graphics is everything on a 2D level, including user interfaces, Photoshop, viewing movies, and similar kinds of applications. A graphics card performance in Core graphics is independent from that of its 3D performance. Certain cards (such as the baseline ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT) actually perform Core graphics superior to that of the “upgraded” NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT (this is due not to the design of the card in this case, but the design of the drivers). The opposite is true for 3D rendering, of which the NVIDIA is superior. The reason for the increase in price is most commonly associated to increased RAM amounts and increased processor speed. While both should theoretically provide a benefit on both Core and 3D graphics, it is important to point out that it isn’t always the case.

That said, this computer does feature the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT card. The majority of work this card does is involved with a bioinformatics process known as protein modeling, which involves turning a sequence of chemicals into a three dimensional model, of which a good performing 3D card is important.

Ports – The Mac Pro leaves even the most cable happy person satisfied. Featuring 5 USB 2.0 ports (two front, 3 back) 2 FireWire 400 ports (1 front, 1 back), 2 FireWire 800 ports (1 front, 1 back), an optical sound in, optical sound out, analog sound in, 2 analog sound outs (1 front, 1 back), and 2 Ethernet 10/100/1000 ports. Although not commonly known, it is possible to tie additional ports directly into the board (better then using hub due to increased bandwidth) but the process is difficult and tedious.

RAM (Random-access memory) – The computer shipped with 2GB of RAM (2 1GB chips). Added in by aftermarket parts were 6GB of additional RAM, again, in 1GB chips. It is important to keep in mind that with most high end computers, such as the Mac Pro, RAM must be used in matched pairs. What a matched pair is, is essentially, 2 RAM chips of identical specifications (size, speed, maker, etc). Matched pairs much be installed in certain configurations depending on the amount present. For 8 chips, the configuration is next to directly next to each other on the same riser. A riser is just the physical board that holds the RAM chips, in the case of a Mac Pro, four chips on one riser with two risers. By filling all of the risers on a Mac Pro, you effectively “increase” the speed of the RAM by increasing the overall bandwidth which the computer has to read and write to RAM with.

Aftermarket RAM is significantly cheaper, with 8GB costing as little as $270 from Other World Computer, compared with $1500 from Apple. Apple, like the optical drives, hard drives, and CPU chips, does not manufacture their own RAM either, meaning chances are the brand that you buy, is the brand Apple is using in their own computers. As a general rule of thumb, a computer will use all the RAM allotted to it. If you open up a program and then close it, most computers will remove the program from RAM to make room for other programs and files being opened. If enough RAM is present however, the computer keeps the program in RAM, making starting it up a second time drastically faster. Because of this, and the now low price of RAM, it cannot hurt to go for an extra chip or two.

Performance - Hard Drive - The bottleneck of 99.9% of most computers isn’t the processor, but instead the drives. A current day CPU is able to complete mind boggling amounts of calculations in a blink of an eye, while a drive takes minutes, if not sometimes hours, to provide the CPU with the data for those calculations. By tying three drives into a RAID 0, performance is drastically increased. Xbench v1.3 gives the single OS 640GB drive a score of 96.12, with a sequential read speed of 111.80MB/sec. Compare that to a score of 184.26 for the RAID setup, with a sequential read speed of 240.88MB/sec. Other times are similarly improved. The impact of this improvement really comes into light when duplicating file, one which 1GB in size takes approximately 6 seconds to complete.

Processor (CPU) – I warn you, if you don’t plan on owning this computer, don’t ever use one; it will change your expectations on fast forever. Although most applications cannot take advantage of the increased numbers of cores, those that can really shine. MacOSaiX, a freeware application for creating mosaics, completes a full resolution picture on a 8-core Mac Pro is around 30 minutes. Compare that with a 2.4GHz MacBook Pro, which takes just over 4 hours. Xbench v1.3 gives the CPU a rating of 181.70, with the floating point basic at 3.45Gflop/sec. To give some other real world examples, upresing a 12MP picture 1000% inside Photoshop takes approximately 1:25 on a 8-core Mac Pro, and over 6 minutes on a 2.4GHz MacBook Pro, not including the amount of time the computer hung. Again, the difference is so drastic due to the fact that Photoshop is able to utilize the extra cores. For a task that is limited to using just 1 or 2 cores, there will effectively be little difference between using a Mac Pro and any other computer.

Overall Impressions - This machine isn’t for everyone. It’s big, bulky, expensive, and requires a fair amount of technological know-how to work on. That said, it is THE fastest and most powerful computer you can purchase that doesn’t require a rack mount or a degree in computer science to run. Chances are, if you actually NEEDED this computer, you would have already bought it or one similar. If you just want one for having one, well, I bought one and honestly, if I had to go it again, I would make the same exact choices. I would like to see some additional features on it, such as LOM (lights out management – the ability to start a computer from a complete off state), but those would simply be icing on an already tasty cake.