Apple's Mac Pro Revisited
Anandtech has just posted a follow-up article to their initial preview of Apple's new Mac Pro flagship desktop / workstation. Here, Anand focuses primarily upon the Mac Pro's upgrade path as well as overall performance when running Windows XP. Although there are relatively few GPU options at this time for the system, the Mac Pro still turns in a respectable performance in the latest and greatest titles. Now if Apple would just release a Core2Duo (Conroe) equipped desktop system with NVIDIA and ATI's latest GPU's available as options, we would likely see a healthy volume of users running to jump over the fence from the bland standard" PC.
The upgrade path offered by the Mac Pro is particularly interesting, not because Macs weren't upgradable in the past (since they were) but because upgrades have never been so readily available. And based on our initial testing, it's looking like you'll be able to drop in a pair of Clovertowns and make the move from four to eight cores in the Mac Pro by the year's end. The combination of excellent OS X performance, good Windows XP performance and a more interesting CPU upgrade path than any prior Mac makes the Mac Pro particularly interesting. While many were worried that Apple's move to Intel would make the Mac more generic, it has simply made the Mac Pro more versatile and desirable.
