Apple Mac Pro (Mid 2010) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 6, 2010 9:26 PM ESTPower Consumption
The big advantage of Westmere is power consumption. If we compare last year’s Mac Pro with the GeForce GT 120 idle power consumption is actually lower than the new Westmere system thanks to the Radeon HD 5770 drawing more power at idle. If you look at the 2009 Mac Pro with a GeForce GTX 285 however, the 5770/2010 Mac Pro has a significant idle power advantage.
The same is true under load, although the GPU plays less of a role in our Cinebench render test for load power. The Mac Pro we’re testing here is clocked much lower than our 2009 Mac Pro, which explains some of the power advantage but not all of it.
We’ve been tracking Mac power consumption in OS X vs. Windows for quite a while now. I decided to see how power consumption changed under Boot Camp. As expected, idle power was a bit higher while load power consumption was identical:
| Power Consumption Comparison | ||||
| Mac Pro (Mid-2010) | Mac OS X 10.6.4 | Windows 7 x64 | ||
| Idle | 144W | 159W | ||
| Load (Cinebench 11.5) | 256W | 253W | ||
The 15W difference in idle power usage is significant, but honestly it matters a lot less in a system like the Mac Pro than a mini or MacBook Pro. The Cinebench scores are identical under both OSes in case you were wondering. This wasn't always true, Apple has significantly improved OS X performance with 10.6.x vs Leopard.
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Macdesign - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
The motherboard of the 2006 is only 32bit and only the processor is 64bit. The 2008 and 2009 Models are full 64bit on both motherboard and processor so W7 can run on them.standar29 - Thursday, November 18, 2010 - link
Seems like people want to consider the other aspects of business costs so we might as well add in the fact that VOLUME DISCOUNTS on hardware weren't mentioned in this article and probably more than take care of all of these additional costs. Apple's profit margin is well known.Chuck_Darwin - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link
Anand, before I bought my Mac Pro last fall I priced an equivalent system on Newegg. I was reluctant to rely on any manufacturer after 10 years of building my own. I found Newegg's prices to be within $300 of Apple, except for one thing: you really can't buy an equivalent case at Newegg. That $249 Antec you used to compare isn't even close to the same class as Apple's. You can find one on Amazon, though, and it runs around $400. Similarly, the Dell uses shoddy parts, like the case, to hit that price point. Wish you would've posted every component you used to compare so we can judge for ourselves.Conniesimmons - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
Thanks for the comparison. I have a MAc Pro 2,1 dual quad core 3 GHz with a new 480 SSD boot up drive in my optical bay, 4 750 TB internal drives, and 16 Ggs of memory. I am an editor using HD footage, but I don't do a lot of 3-D work. I keep looking at the new 12 core machines, but based on your review it still seems like I wouldn't see a really huge difference in FCP, compression programs, that would justify buying a new machine now instead of later. Any other improvements you might suggest?Do you have a consulting business?
Best, Connie