When I joinedMacworlda little more than a yr ago , the company offered to buy me a Power Mac G5 for handle myMac OS ecstasy Hints duties . But since I already possess a jolly fast Power Mac — a double 2GHz G5 , really — it did n’t make much gumption to go through the hassle and disbursement of an ascent for a slightly faster processor . I decided to await .
This summer , my wait paid off . Apple replaced the G5 melodic phrase with theXeon - powered Mac Pro , a political machine with two duple - core mainframe for a grand sum of four single processing units . The Power Mac G5 has fit back to being my personal machine — the Mac Pro now does my heavy - lifting .
Back when I picked up a Mac miniskirt in the beginning this year , I wrote an extensive three – part report on my experience of switching over to one of the other Intel - power Macs . Given that the mini I have is on the modest - end of Apple ’s desktop offerings while my new Mac Pro is at the other end of the spectrum , I remember it would be interesting to give the Mac Pro the same handling I gave the miniskirt — a multi - part look at setting the machine up and putting it through its rate in a smorgasbord of different tasks .
Stock optical drive is a Sony DW-D150A. New optical drive is a Sony AW-Q170A.
get ’s begin with the stage set - up .
Getting started
The Mac Pro make it last week , after trucking its way up Interstate 5 fromMacworld ’s San Francisco role ( where it was given a speedy look - see and gained the all - important Macworld asset rag ) . The motorcar ’s service line configuration is :
I was surprised ( and happy ! ) to find out the upgraded ATI television batting order in the auto — the standard Mac Pro configuration feature an Nvidia GeForce 7300GT with 256 mebibyte of store . The optional ATI card is quite the fauna , and really increase the graphic performance of the car . ( I ’ll talk more about the identity card and its performance in upcoming installments of this report . )
The out-of-the-box experience
As a first - generation Dual G5 owner , I ’m used to tumid boxes . Well , I thought I was used to orotund box . But where the G5 ship lying on its side in a flatter box seat , the new Mac Pro ships standing upright in its box seat . And even though the actual machines are identical in size , the Mac Pro ’s boxwood dwarfs that of the G5 ( even accounting for the dispute in orientation ):
Yowza . What a monster .
open up the box , though , and it ’s the typically first-class Apple packaging job . A tray up top holds all the software , corduroy , keyboard , and mouse . Remove that , and you may then easy revoke the Mac Pro out of the box — well , as easily as one can lift 60 pounds . Once you ’ve done that , and removed all the packaging , you’re able to see that the case is physically the same size of it as that of the G5 , as see in the figure at right .
Inside the box , in add-on to the keyboard , mouse , and calculator , Apple let in the install / restore magnetic disk , a keyboard extension cable , a DVI - to - VGA monitor adaptor , and of course , the power cord . Piled up next to the box , the whole lot looks rather inconsequential .
Three takeout food designate
Initial setup and configuration
After I block the beast up onto the desktop , I connected the big businessman cord , keyboard , mouse , and the VGA adapter — I did n’t have a spare DVI arranger lying around when I first connect the Mac Pro to my reminder . After pressing the power release , the Mac Pro booted up quickly ( very promptly ) and I completed the initial configuration and account introduction screens .
Then it was clip to download the necessitate Apple software package update , which turned out to be a bigger labor than I was expecting . My Mac Pro shipped with OS X 10.4.7 , which meant for a truly gargantuan initial update :
Add those figures up , and you ’ll see that it add up in at over 415 mebibyte Charles Frederick Worth of data . Yikes ! If you ’re on dial - up , you ’re looking at 16 - plus hour until your young Mac Pro is ready to go . Even on mid - grade DSL , it ’s 1.5 hours . gratefully , we ’ve recently switched to Verizon’sFIOS , so download time was n’t a problem . But for those still on modem , I cerebrate this is a genuine way out — you’d almost have to take the machine into a dealer , or to a supporter ’s house with a fast connexion .
After the software updates ( and a microcode upgrade ) , I rebooted and the machine ran perfectly . quick to go to work , right ? Not quite . give that I had this great political machine sit there in front of me , and it had spare port all over the place , I call up I should seek to fill some of them up .
Time to upgrade
Unlike the insides of the otherwise - identical case on my G5 , the Mac Pros have a ton of elbow room inside the case . Whereas my G5 ’s entrails are mostly devoted to cool fans ( nine of them ) , the Mac Pro ’s lower cooling system requirements have Apple use the uncommitted infinite to allow for great expansion . The RAM posting , for example , are on two cards that pull out completely to ease the installation of more computer memory . There are also four hard drive bays , and way for two outwardly - accessible optic drives . Here ’s a shot of the inside , with the various areas label ( cluck the image for a larger interlingual rendition ) .
My motorcar get in with one hard private road and one optical private road in place , go away lots of empty spaces . So my first thought were “ I ’ll ask more memory board outer space , ” and “ It ’d be nice to have a second optical driving , ” as I tire of play “ Swap the cadmium ” all the time .
A quick trip to our local build - it - yourself computer depot netted two Seagate320 GB Barracuda drivesand a black SonyAW - Q170A dual - stratum DVD burner . I had no cue if the burner would even work under OS X , but give that the stock effort is a Sony , it cost only $ 40 locally , and was returnable , I figured it was deserving a shot .
After a day of working with the two heavy thrust , I realized I actually needed a third — see this clause for the reason — so it was back to the electronic computer memory for another Seagate ( a 400 GB model this time ) .
All recount , it cost about $ 375 for all three hard drives and the burner — not small change , but not too uncollectible for more than a TiB ( unformatted ) of drive distance and a capable dual - bed burner ( arrogate it worked;more on that after ) .
Hard drive installation and configuration
Adding new unvoiced drive to a Mac Pro is a snap . Turn the machine off , take away the ability corduroy , pop off the side instrument panel , and slide a drive carrier out of its expansion slot . Position the carrier over the drive , tighten four shag , and then slide the carrier back into spot . Here ’s what the carrier bet like before and after securing to the laborious drive :
That ’s it ; there are no cable of any form to worry about . It took about two transactions to deploy the two new drives .
A warm power - up showed that all three drives were visible to Disk Utility . Now , what to do with all that space . One choice , plain , would be to just use them for storage space . But I was concerned in formatting them as a level 1RAIDset ( mirror ) for my boot drive .
Stock optical drive is a Sony DW-D150A. New optical drive is a Sony AW-Q170A.
RAID is a method of combining two or more forcible disk into one coherent gadget , and OS X has supported it for many years . There are various levels of RAID , as explain in the linked article above . A stripy array ( RAID 0 ) make a very fast private road , while a mirrored array ( RAID 1 ) is a very dependable typeset up — if a ride in the array dies , it can be replace without drop off any datum . If you mislay a disk in a striped array , though , you ’re in trouble , as datum from one written document might be salt away on several physical gruelling drive . I was much less concerned in focal ratio than I was in guard , so I went with the mirror ( RAID 1 ) setup .
To create a RAID array , you employ Disk Utility and its RAID tab . Just drag in the disks you require to use , choose the type of RAID to produce , and coif Disk Utility to the task of doing so . You ’ll lose everything on the cause when you create the RAID , so it ’s obviously practiced to do this with new , clean hard drives . Once place up , your disks will look like this in Disk Utility :
One affair to note if you ’re go to try this ( other than that spot about suffer all your information — you did notice that part , correct ? ) is the Options release at the bottom of this window . When you first set up your RAID , you ’ll want to click that push button if you ’re creating a mirrored array . When you do , a new windowpane opens , and one of the options is the RAID Mirror AutoRebuild checkbox . Check that box , and when you replace a disk that ’s been removed from the array , the mirror will be mechanically rebuilt . If you do n’t check this box , you ’d have to do that step manually in Disk Utility .
Putting the RAID to use
I want to use the mirrored RAID I ’d set up as my boot disk . To do that , I take to get a functioning system onto the RAID . I thought the easiest manner would be to useSuperDuperto clone the be system ( on the original 250 GB drive ) to the newly - make RAID . So that ’s what I did .
Everything seemed to ferment just okay , and I then rebooted the automobile with the RAID drive selected as the inauguration magnetic disc . And that ’s when the problems started . The political machine would n’t reboot , despite the fact that it seemed to receive the RAID during boot . Instead of boot , though , the machine just sat there , and eventually put a band with a blank virgule through it up on the concealment .
large problem — made fully grown by the fact that the Mac Pro ( like the G5 before it ) miss an eject button on the standard candle tray . So not only could I not boot the RAID , I could n’t boot off a candle , as I could n’t get a CD into the drive ! A bit of grumbling and troubleshooting , and then I remember the baby buggy reset . Restarting while holding down Command - Option - atomic number 15 - R did the prank ; it reset my startup disk to the original internal , which booted just ok .
So much for the wanton plan . For attempt figure two , I used the Install / Restore compact disk that total with the Mac to instal onto the maraud . After the 20 moment process , I crossed my fingers and reboot . This time , it worked utterly — the Mac take up from the RAID . achiever !
Of of course , since I had used the pedigree installer CD , that think of I had to download the same 419 MB Charles Frederick Worth of updates again . ( And no , I did n’t use the “ download and salve installers ” choice the first time . ) But once that was done , I had a machine run with four drives :
In the above image , the WDC drive is the stock 250 GB whole , the two ST3320 entries are the RAID 1 320 GB Seagate drives , and the ST400 is the 400 GB Seagate . That gives me roughly a terabyte of usable storage space , which should be enough for my data , championship , and examination needs .
DVD burner installation and testing
For part two of my first - daytime climb , I set up about installing the Sony DVD burner . Why a 2nd burner , you may demand ? It ’s not really that I do all that much disc burning at the stake , but I do have atomic number 48 and videodisk in and out of my machine all the time . Having a second drive can cut down on the swapping required — say you have a game that requires the standard candle , and you need to rend some new music . rather of ejecting the game , inserting the music , then reverse the process when done , you just practice the 2nd compact disc / videodisk slot . Why a videodisk burner ? Because it was only about $ 10 more than a standard candle burner , so why not ? The fact that it ’s also quicker than the stock drive in all mode was an added bonus .
Installing a Modern visual ride in the Mac Pro is a bit toughened than installing young severe ride — but only a chip . The two optical drives are wax in a bay that slides out . To add a new optical campaign , you tear the bay midway out , then let go of the power and IDE overseas telegram from the back of the existing driving . With the bay free , you skid your new driving in , secure it with the four provided screws , slide it midway back in , connect the power and IDE cables , and then slide it the rest of the way in . That ’s how it works in possibility .
In practice , the IDE cables come out easily , but the power connection isverytight . It ’s also locate mighty next to the soma holding the driveway in position , so it ’s tough to murder . I intimate gentle rocking motions with your fingers , as tantalising as it may be to snaffle moderate with a pair of pliers . After several arcminute , I had the power disconnected . I enclose the 2d optical drive , fix it with the screw , reconnected all the cable television , and slid everything back in . When I power up the Mac again , I ran System Profiler to see what it tell me :
Success ! System Profiler sees the drive … but claim that it ’s not confirm for burn . We ’ll get to that in just a bite , but here ’s a comparison of the two drive ’ stated speeds with various medium :
Mac Pro Optical Drive Comparisons
stock certificate opthalmic drive is a Sony DW - D150A. New ocular drive is a Sony AW - Q170A.
The doorway that seals the optical drives would n’t open for my fresh - installed drive . Why not ? Because a plastic trim musical composition on the front of the driving was too marvelous for the opening . Since the part would n’t match out the slot even when I manually lowered the Mac Pro ’s door , I had to close down the Mac and remove the new optical parkway . Not only that , but to off the front trim piece , you have to have the drive ’s tray open at least a bite . Thankfully , the ride did have a manual eject button , so a paperclip solved that problem .
Once the drive was undefended , removing the front trim piece is relatively well-off — just slimly flex the trim bit to release the tabs , then lift , and it will split up from the tray — if you do it aright , it will do so without breaking . I suggest doing thisbeforeinstalling the parkway , so you’re able to process with the drive on a solid control surface . Here ’s what the trimness piece look like , sitting just in front of the opened drive tray :
Testing by Rob Griffiths.
If I get really motivated , perhaps I ’ll cut out and confiscate a thinner piece of opprobrious charge plate to finish off the front of the drawer . But I ’m not take a bet on the betting odds of that project getting done .
Once I had the trimming man removed , I reassembled everything , power it back up , and made certain the drive could now eject ( it could ) . But what about that “ not substantiate ” statement in System Profiler ? So far in my examination , that ’s just not true . iDVD , iPhoto , iTunes , and iMovie all see that the organization has two burners and ask me which one I ’d care to employ . I was also able to spell a CD from either cause into iTunes , so all for sure seems to be all right . I even successfully burned a DVD+R dual layer DVD ( the latest Leopard seed need a double - layer burner ) . It sure looks like this private road is likely natively supported , despite the message to the contrary in System Profiler .
Although this may fathom like it was a hard summons , it really was n’t . I probably spend a couple time of day on the frame-up leg , and that admit the time needed for SuperDuper and the reinstall from record that I had to do . Everything generally went quite swimmingly , and I was very impressed with the precision engineering of the hard ride and optical drive bays .
Application testing
As with the mini , I ’ve been using the Mac Pro as much as potential since its arrival . Unlike the mini , however , it ’s severe to take that this automobile feels slow doing much of anything . It ’s fast — really fast . Even hooey in Rosetta , which bogged down the mini at time , is fast . But enough generalities ; here are some indorsement on the same programs I covered in the mini write - up , in both Rosetta and Universal spirit .
Rosetta appsThese program have not yet been compiled to carry natively on the Intel bit , so they must rely on Apple ’s Rosetta emulation technology to work . The skillful news program is that Rosetta is n’t a stagnant technology . Apple has , in fact , continued to improve it since its expiration earlier this year . The latest improvements hail with OS X 10.4.8 , and asMacworld ’s testing showed , there are some very measurable real - world improvements in Rosetta ’s functioning . So how does that all come into play with Rosetta apps on the Mac Pro ?
Photoshop : Although still not aboriginal , the speed of Photoshop CS2 under Rosetta on this Mac is quite impressive . I still do n’t think the machine is ideal for someone who edits 300 Mbit TIFFs all day , but if you are n’t currently using a Dual G5 or newerandyou do n’t swear on Photoshop as your main substance of making a living , it should be more than good enough . That ’s especially true if you ’re coming from an older Mac — you’ll belike find that Photoshop is quicker in Rosetta on a Mac Pro than it was in aboriginal mode on your onetime rig . As our full recap mentioned , the Photoshop benchmark speed on the Mac Pro was about equal to that of the one-time Dual 1.42GHz Power Mac G4 . So if you ’re move from a single - CPU G4 , you ’ll probably see a nett upper increase .
I did n’t want to repeat the work done for the full review , so alternatively , I repeat the liquify meshing examination I ran for the original XP on Mac write - up , as well as in my first report on Parallels Desktop for Mac . I ’ve update that table with my final result for the Mac Pro ( as well as for my Mac Book , which I also tested ):
PHOTOSHOP CS2 LIQUIFY FILTER TEST
test by Rob Griffiths , very unofficial !
This was my first real “ wow ! ” experience with the Mac Pro : in this particular test , it ’s quicker than my Dual G5 , despite the fact that Photoshop is scat in Rosetta . Granted , this is just one trial , but in general use , Photoshop feels quite responsive on the Mac Pro . Now , if you happen to be a computer graphic professional working on 100MB - plus images , and you ’re play on a fast Dual or Quad G5 , then you ’ll probably line up that Photoshop is still notably slower than your current rig . But for anyone working with small - to - midsize images on anything other than bleeding - edge PowerPC gear , I think the Mac Pro is a very practicable choice today , even without a native reading of Photoshop — particularly have a go at it that the aboriginal version is just around the box .
Photoshop Elements : I do n’t have Photoshop Elements 4 ( as I started using the full Photoshop app instead ) . With Photoshop Elements 3 , however , speed was more than all right . Given that most element users will be work on small images , I do n’t think anyone would sound off about the Rosetta impact in Elements . That ’s estimable , because it ’s undecipherable when ( or if ) a cosmopolitan version of Elements will embark .
Quicken 2006 : This program is about as non - intensive as they get , and it ran very cursorily on the Mac Pro . In my mini write - up , I mentioned a report that took 7 seconds on the G5 take about a bit on the Intel mini . With the Mac Pro , that time drops to 12 seconds . Although there ’s not yet a oecumenical version of Quicken , it ’s really not a job running it in Rosetta .
Microsoft Word 2004 : Using the same 4 MB mental image - laden document as in my mini test , a top - to - bottom scroll took about 16 seconds on the Mac Pro . This is about 7 bit quicker than the Intel - based Mac miniskirt , and around the same time as it took on my PowerBook G4 . The G5 still has the lead here , at 8 seconds . The world is , however , that Word work fine . Even at 16 seconds , the document is scrolling past at a faster than usable charge per unit . type , spell checking , and all of Word ’s other features work OK and without any famed delay . If you were to put someone in front of the machine with Word already die hard , it ’s very doubtful they would even discover that it ’s ladder under Rosetta .
Microsoft Excel 2004 : As with Word , Excel bunk fine . More than fine — it runs fast . Again , there ’s no reason to hold up a Mac Pro purchase if you ’re concerned about a non - aboriginal version of Excel . It ’s a non offspring .
Google Earth : Google Earth is now a Universal app ; you may read about it in the next section .
jEdit : jEdit runs even faster , obviously , than it did on the miniskirt . So much so that it no longer even feels a minute “ laggy , ” as it does on the G5 . Instead , it ’s just a immobile text editor in chief with a slightly odd interface . ( It does n’t quite look like a aboriginal app . ) I also repeated theCaffeineMarkJava benchmarks , and the Mac Pro handily outpace my Dual G5 , with a last score of 14,939 against the G5 ’s 8,047 — the Mac Pro is almost twice as tight !
Universal ApplicationsThese are programs that have been recompiled to run natively on the Intel - chipped machine . All of the Apple - provided app , for instance , are Universal , and the identification number of third - political party Universal apps increase daily . Apple has an excellentUniversal Applicationspage that presently includes 4,030 listed native applications ( that figure was 1,073 when I published the mini write - up back in March ) .
As with the Rosetta diligence , the following apps are the same ace I tested back in March for the mini write - up — other than Google Earth , which has moved from the Rosetta to the Universal section . In that vein , what I wrote then about BBedit , Camino , and OmniGraffle still holds true , so there ’s no real pauperization to revisit those apps . ( One advance is that there is now a Universal Flip4Mac web browser cud - in . )
Google Earth : Smooth , fluid , profligate , and simply fun to use , the native adaptation of Google Earth is a joy on the Mac Pro . No complaint at all , and zooms in and out are fulfil without delay .
Finder : As with the earlier write - up on the mini , I ran my “ open 100 new Finder windows , close 100 Finder window ” test . I ’ve updated that table for my issue on the Mac Pro ( and the MacBook , which I also tested ):
Rob’s Empty Folder Test
test by Rob Griffiths .
As you could see , it ’s no competition — the Mac Pro was double as dissolute as the mini , and criticize a full 10 seconds off the time required on the Dual G5 . If you have n’t gotten the common sense yet , this is one firm simple machine .
Even more impressive were the effect at 200 folders . Previously , the G5 was the quickest with a large set of folders , opening them all in 31 seconds and closing them in 10 . The Mac Pro ’s times ? An amazingly - prompt 12 second to open , and only 4 second to close all of them — those are essentially the same times as want for the MacBook to care with 100 folders . The Finder has obviously benefited from the much libertine hardware .
Other programme : Since March , Snapz Pro has also been updated for Intel - powered political machine , though it ’s not yet a full Universal binary . It extend just fine , though , and given how much work I do with screenshots , that ’s a very good thing .
program launch examination : What keep up is an update to my program launching tests from the Mac mini composition . I did n’t bother to run these tests on the MacBook , just the new Mac Pro . The table below show the initial launching time , from double - clink to usable state , and an immediate subsequent “ relaunch ” time . Initial launch were run after a reboot on each motorcar . notice that the relaunch times pattern are n’t indicative of real - universe usance , unless you often relaunch apps at once ( or very rapidly ) after last using them . As more time goes by , OS X will have to essentially recharge the program from scratch , as the RAM will have been put to other purposes . But it ’s still a well indication of how quickly the machine can reactivate a lately - used political program .
So here ’s how the Mac Pro compared to the three other machines in applications programme launching times :
ROB’S LAUNCH TESTS
ROSETTA APPS INITALICS
Google Earth was in the beginning a Rosetta app . It has been retested on the Mac mini in its new Universal form . Times were script - timed on a stopwatch , and are probably precise to about a one-half - 2nd either path .
Keep in mind that my G5 is a workhorse — there are many drives , the motorcar try tons of hints , I instal and remove hundreds of apps each year , and so off . It ’s in no manner a fairish comparison to an out - of - the - box Mac Pro , but I still recall the table is interesting . As you may see , there ’s still a speeding score from Rosetta , but all the cosmopolitan apps open up notably faster on the Mac Pro than they do on the Dual G5 . As remark in my original write - up , second launching times on the Intel - powered boxes are amazingly fast . Many of them seem to be open before you ’ve even completed the 2nd shiner click . This fast relaunch demeanor really helps make the political machine feel speedy .
I hope you ’ve found the first section of my Mac Pro paper of interestingness . I ’m now hard at oeuvre on the second and third part , so stay tune up for further update !
