Apple"s four-core Intel-based Mac Pro desktop has been named the UK"s fastest PC after it was lined up against a top-of-the-line Windows machine by British magazine PC Pro.
According to the publication"s upcoming November issue, out in two weeks" time, the 3GHz Mac Pro was run alongside a Pentium D-based machine. The Mac Pro has two dual-core Xeon 5160 CPUs, 4GB of DDR 2 memory mounted on FB-DIMMs, a Quadro FX 4500 graphics card and 1.75TB of hard disk capacity. Windows XP was installed on the Mac using Apple"s Boot Camp utility.
Pro said it ran a suite of tests based "demanding tasks" performed simultaneously by Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop and a music decoding application. The result was a benchmark score almost three times that of the reference Pentium D-based machine.
Testing the Mac Pro"s 3D performance with 3d studio max, the magazine"s rendering benchmark was completed in 34s - up til then, the fastest score achieved had been almost 1m.