Base 2.66GHz Quad Mac Pro--How Fast Is It?

2004–09August 10, 2006Bill FoxReviews
We haven't decided yet whether we will get a Mac Pro to replace our Power Mac G5 Quad. We sold our G5 Quad when we got our 2.16GHz MacBook Pro and surprisingly discovered that it fast enough to do everything we need to do as fast as we need to do it--even our favorite 3D games. Well, nothing is ever really as fast as we think we need but for right now we are satisfied. This is partly because the graphics card that we want, the ATI Radeon X1900, is still 3-5 weeks away from shipping. We could order the X1900 as an aftermarket kit from the Apple Store, we were pleasantly surprised to find, but that means shelling out an additional $150.

To help us consider the matter, we compared some published speed marks for a base 2.66GHz Quad Mac Pro posted by MacInTouch.com with those from our former 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 Quad. Our G5 Quad had the standard Nvidia GeForce 6600 XT graphics card. Much to our chagrin, Apple never made the graphics card we wanted available as an aftermarket kit, the Nvidia GeForce 7800. MacInTouch's Mac Pro also has the now standard Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT graphics.

Here are the speed tests:

2.66GHz Mac Pro vs 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 Quad
Test
2.5GHz Power Mac G5 Quad*
2.66GHz Quad Mac Pro**
10.4.6
10.4.7
Chg. %
.
Cinebench 2003 (9.5) - Rendering
1194
1425
+19
- OpenGL Hardware Lighting
2219
4461
+101
Xbench 1.2 - CPU
124
139
+12
- Threading
243
532
+119
- Memory
132
112
-15
- Quartz Graphics
149
101
-33
- OpenGL Graphics
136
178
+31
*Average of 3 runs. **MacInTouch.com.Red is much faster. Blue is much slower.

The Mac Pro is clearly the faster machine but not as much faster on these tests as we had expected. The 2.66GHz Mac Pro even tested slower on Quartz graphics and memory tests, despite having faster memory and a faster memory bus. If we got the 3GHz Mac Pro with ATI Radeon X1900 graphics card that we have our eye on, it would probably be much faster on all tests but one never really knows for sure.

So for now, we'll sit on the fence. After all, Apple will upgrade the MacBook Pros in the near future and in the mean time we're actually enjoying not having to keep two Macs in perfect sync. [Bill Fox]

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