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Literally billions. Really.

I always had bad luck with ATI cards overheating in my MacPros. I've replaced my 2nd ATI already. I hope the new MacPros don't suffer that problem.

These benchmarks are useless if you do not include the previous models.
The Mac Pro has only had 2 upgrades in the last 2.5 years. You need to compare the new models to the old so that people can justify the cost of upgrading!!!!

This is a useless article without that info.

One thing that is woefully inadequate with the MacPro line is the WiFi. Unlike the G5, with had an external antenna connector, the MacPros have the antenna buried inside the aluminum housing. While wireless is not the common (much less the preferred) means of networking the machine, if you have no choice but to use Wifi, all I can say is good luck.

While my MacBook never has any issues with WiFi, my MacPro, which is three feet father away, constantly drops the signal. The business of emptying the cache and relaunching Safari (or doing a complete reset) is a process that I have to go through around sixty times a day. I sometimes have to repeat this cycle as many as six times just to load a single web page. The dropouts are clearly seen in Activity Monitor. (One of the nearby Apple Geniuses has the same problem with her MacPro.)

If Apple is going to include WiFi, how 'bout offering WiFi that actually funcions?

I really have to chime in here with must sound like an old complaint. The cost of the Mac Pros is just way beyond what a lot of people and organizations can pay. Entry level at $2500 for the only configurable Mac? With Apple slowly deserting firewire many media professionals and students are worried that Apple will abandon serious computer users for "appliance" computer users. Most media professionals don't need dual quad core processors. If they're sound people they most definitely don't and video people use software that relies more and more on the graphics processor. We need a single, multicore processor tower with one or two available slots for eSATA or additional firewire or graphics and that's about it. We've built a couple of Hackintosh's and they've been fine. I would rather buy a $1200 (almost twice what we spent on each Hackintosh) mac mini tower and get the warranty and support.

So look it up.

BB

VG3TV, on 02 September 2010 - 03:22 PM, said:

You have a typo on the frame rate column.

MattUnruhswmf, on 02 September 2010 - 04:00 PM, said:

Fixed. Thanks
JG

I am impressed by the iMac power. And MW is not even using the top of the line i7 configuration.
They seem to be definitely way more a bang for the buck if you do not need the expansion of MacPro.
I do my work mostly on Photoshop and always used MacPro/towers but I am seriously looking into the iMac for my next computer and connect to my 30" panel and use the iMac screen for secondary screen due the reflective nature of it.

Another key advantage of the Mac Pro over the iMac is that only the Mac Pro and Xserve offer enterprise class hard drives. The consumer class hard drives in the iMacs cannot sustain read/writes from multiple users 24/7/365 but a Mac Pro and Xserve can.

The purchase cost difference between the Mac Pro and Xserve v. an iMac is trivial compared to the labor cost and the cost of the lost production time when we have an iMac drive fail and have to restore the data from clones and backups. With a Mac Pro or Xserve and a RAID array there is no downtime. We can simply swap out the defective drive while the server remains live. Labor costs much more than computer hardware!

Can anyone suggest a search query to identify PCI cards available for the Mac. I don't remember seeing reviews here. What do you put into those PCI slots?

This review omits a test and comments on perhaps the sweet spot in the Mac Pro lineup: 2010 Mac Pro Hexacore 3.33GHz “Westmere". I would suspect this model has the best bang for the buck and should be looked at.

I was hoping to see the iMac 27" Quad Core i7 in that comparison.