Apple Mac Pro (Mid 2010) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 6, 2010 9:26 PM ESTNew GPUs
In one fell swoop Apple pulled NVIDIA out of almost all of its desktop products. With the exception of the Mac mini, every single Apple desktop uses an Intel CPU, an Intel chipset and an AMD GPU. To be fair though, Apple has alternated between NVIDIA and AMD for graphics every year for the past four years.
The GPU of choice in the Mac Pro is the Radeon HD 5770 equipped with 1GB of GDDR5. Clocked and spec'd identically to the PC version, this is the graphics card you get in all three standard models. For an extra $200 you can get a Radeon HD 5870 with 1GB of GDDR5, and for an extra $250 you can have two 5770s instead of one. Don't get too excited, the multi-GPU route is explicitly for more displays there's no concept of CrossFire under OS X at this point.
The Radeon HD 5770 is a huge step up from the GeForce GT 120 that previously came standard in the Mac Pro. The performance difference between the two is staggering! Where the 5770 does disappoint however is in comparison to EVGA's GeForce GTX 285 Mac Edition. It's slower.
I used Half Life 2 Episode 2 under OS X to get a general idea of gaming GPU performance. The improvement is huge compared to the old GeForce GT 120 that shipped in last year’s Mac Pro. Ultra high resolution frame rates improved by over 5x, while even 19x12 performance tripled.
If you’re curious about Starcraft 2 performance of the Radeon HD 5770 at 2560 x 1600, ultra quality settings, I saw an average frame rate of ~21 fps with a minimum at 17 fps and maximum at 27 fps. Note that this is in our CPU intensive battle test, so peak frame rates will be higher but if you’re doing a lot of unit management that’s pretty much what you can expect. In other words it’s not fast enough to play on a 30” at full resolution without feeling a bit choppy at times. To average above 30 fps you have to drop resolution and quality settings.
Display Outputs and Frame Buffer
The 5770 has three outputs in the form of two mini-DP and one dual-link DVI. The mini-DP ports can each drive a 27-inch LED Cinema Display while the DL-DVI port can drive a 30. This is a Radeon HD 5000 series card so you can actually have all three outputs active at the same time. That's right, with a single card you can drive three monitors. And with two, six monitors.
While 1GB of memory is enough to drive a single high resolution panel, it can be a stretch for two or three depending on what you're doing. As I've pointed out in the past you can have around 130 open Safari windows before you'll max out a video card with a 1GB frame buffer at 2560 x 1600. However, fire up Photoshop and open twenty 12MP images and you'll get the same effect. For heavy imaging work you'll still want more than one 5770 if you are going to drive multiple high resolution (2560 pixels wide) displays.
What would've been better is for Apple to offer a 2GB card, at least as an option, for very high end multi-monitor users.
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Zokudu - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
A Mac Pro has been tempting me for years. It seems like such a wonderful machine. Anand would you say getting a Mac Pro over saw a build it your own of the same caliber is worth it? I can understand if your deeply ingrained into the Apple system but for an outsider does it hold a lot of value?brausekopf - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Just buy a 999$ Mac Book or maybe a used one and check it out for yourself!I am just using a Mac Book Pro as a development system targeting the iPhone. And after having used many Windows versions and many Unix flavors I would not put Mac OS on the top of my list. But it is usable.
xype - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Weird, after using OS X, I wouldn't even put Windows or Linux on my list. :Prqle - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
friend recommended i try osx. my day job is all unix, and osx annoy the shit out of me.Flunk - Friday, October 8, 2010 - link
If you're used to Unix, Linux is probably the best bet for a desktop OS.B3an - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
No idea why anyone who is capable of building there own system would buy an over priced Mac. Theres nothing special or magical about them regardless of Apple advertising. They just use PC components. Learn to "Think Different" ... or rather think for yourself.You can not only get faster hardware, but also higher quality hardware for the same sort of price as a Mac Pro. Not to mention a graphics card that's actually good and a fully capable and more advanced OS.
marioyohanes - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
Because I want everything to become simple so I can focus more on my job rather than busy fixing this and that from my computer. Simple thing should remain simple, while complex thing should be simpler than ever.at least that's my opinion...
zero2dash - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
"Because I want everything to become simple so I can focus more on my job rather than busy fixing this and that from my computer. Simple thing should remain simple, while complex thing should be simpler than ever."Sounds like you should spend more than 10 minutes putting one together with shoddy parts or bother stress testing your overclock - then you might not have to fix anything either.
The only computers I have to "fix" these days are prebuilts with the garbage psus that usually crap out in the 2-3 year window. Gateway, Dell, HP etc. doesn't matter, they all use crap psus. If they actually used something decent like a cheaper Antec or Seasonic, they'd run practically forever.
TD912 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
That's kind of what he means. You need to spend the time to build and test and tweak everything instead of having something that is ready to use out of the box.cotak - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
That's because you never opened one up right? Never owned one and used it day to day?If Dell, or any of the built it yourself case vendors do cases like the Mac Pro they'll charge you more then apples does for the same hardware.
It's like saying why buy a BMW 323 over say an accord. the BMW's a basic car, doesn't have a lot of features, doesn't have a lot of power. And no it's not for everyone. But by god it rotates on corners vs feeling like the front's going to fly off. That's why my brother basically drove one for 10 minutes and decided to buy it.
That's what apple brings to the laptop, the desktop and the smart phone.
If you never had the money to buy one or work where they give you one, you'll never know.