At long last , Apple ’s high - destruction Intel - free-base Mac desktop is out in the man . In its standard configuration , the Mac Pro come tamp with a circumstances of might and costs a pretty penny — $ 2,499 — but it ’s certainly a dance step in the direction many Mac game partizan were hop for . Here ’s how it rounds up from a gamer ’s perspective .
On the outside , the Mac Pro is physically similar to the Power Mac G5 that it replaces . More porthole on the front , dual optical driving force tray , and altogether new catgut within , but it ’s a Mac , no question . What ’s unpaired is that I ’ve been reckon copycat guinea pig vendors with very similar - looking PC clone cases latterly — so there ’s clearly some crossover appealingness to PC gamers looking for a muscular aspect .
Under the hood of the Mac Pro is a inwardness of Intel Xeon microprocessing power — two double core “ Woodcrest ” microprocessors each running at 2.66GHz ( again , in the standard configuration ) . You also get 1.33GHz dual independent frontside buses and 1 GB of RAM , not bad , along with received Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT graphics card equip with 256 MB RAM .
That ’s a decent rig , though countenance me be absolved : The Xeon has n’t precisely distinguished itself as the ultimate play microprocessor . Many personal computer gamers have preferred AMD ’s offerings because they give rise better benchmarks for game and have gain from a shorter processing pipeline than Intel chip . But that ’s not to say the Mac Pro is short on horsepower — with two dual - heart and soul flake inside and quicker clock fastness than we ’ve see to it on the platform before ( optionally at up to 3GHz ) , there ’s a ton of brawniness under the hood .
How much of that raw muscle will be tapped by games is still a question that awaits an answer . After all , multicore machines are still a novelty for consumer who utilize PCs , and we ’re only now set out to see a dribble of game sustain multiple processors and multiple cores .
Then again , anyone buy a Mac Pro on its own virtue just for games is n’t thinking clearly . What the Mac Pro is , in fact , is a hellaciously firm desktop system that ’s work up for speed for a lot of applications , and can at long last run game jolly well , too .
The Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT card that Apple includes in the “ stock ” Mac Pro configuration is competent enough , but the good cost benefit for gamers seems to be the ATI Radeon X1900 XT wag you may add on to the organisation for an additional $ 350 . Apple ’s own benchmark running Doom 3 and Quake 4 produce frame charge per unit more than double as gamy with the ATI Radeon X1900 card than with the GeForce 7300 . That should n’t be a Brobdingnagian surprise — the memory board bandwidth , number of vertices per second the cards can process , and fill rate make the Radeon X1900 XT a much better primed for gamers .
The X1900 XT requires the 16 - lane bivalent - wide PCI Express ( PCIe ) interface that the Mac Pro uses for game , by the way — not only is it quite fast , but it ’s also physically larger to accommodate the massive fans that these cards require for cooling . The Mac Pro also provides 300 watts of full power to all PCIe slots — necessary to make trusted that these titan get enough juice to run .
If you require another grounds to upgrade to the Radeon X1900 , count this : It has two dual - link Digital Visual Interface ( DVI ) port wine on its back , so you could accost up two 30 - inch Apple Cinema HD displays . The GeForce 7300 GT has one dual - connectedness DVI and one unmarried - link DVI larboard , so the most you may do with that is a 23 - inch Cinema HD Display and a 30 - column inch in tandem . That many pixels in artwork memory is irrelevant for gambling , but it could be a selling point if you are go to be using your Mac Pro for professional video redaction or other work where having more CRT screen substantial estate really aid .
What ’s truly exciting is that the Mac Pro political machine is as much , if not more , for the future as it is for today . With Leopard come next leaping , Universal Binary game here today and Cider - wrapped games come within the next couple of months , Mac gaming is on the upswing , and the Mac Pro is a rig that should really be able-bodied to take advantage of everything that ’s extend .
