The definitive Mac Pro 2013 review is finally here. Anand Lal Shimpi has once again published an excellent review of the Mac Pro 2013. The review is quite in-depth, covering areas such as hardware, pricing, configuration, 4k support and experience, CPU performance, gaming performance etc.
One the biggest criticism of the Mac Pro 2013 was the high price. However, Anand Lal Shimpi compared the entry level Mac Pro with simialr workstation PCs on the market and found that the Mac Pro 2013 was actually cheaper:
There are other imbalances between the comparison (HP supports more displays, Apple features more Thunderbolt 2 ports, FirePro W7000 features ECC GDDR5, etc…), but the point here is to see if Apple’s pricing is out of touch with reality. It’s not.
| Mac Pro vs. HP Z420 vs Lenovo S30 Pricing Comparison | |||||||
| Entry Level Mac Pro | HP Z420 | Lenovo ThinkStation S30 | |||||
| CPU | Intel Xeon E5-1620 v2 | Intel Xeon E5-1620 v2 | Intel Xeon E5-1620 v2 | ||||
| Memory | 12GB ECC DDR3-1866 (3 x 4GB) | 12GB ECC DDR3-1866 (3 x 4GB) | 12GB ECC DDR3-1600 (3 x 4GB) | ||||
| SSD | 256GB PCIe SSD | 256GB SATA SSD | 128GB SATA SSD | ||||
| GPU | Dual AMD FirePro D300 | Dual AMD FirePro W7000* | Dual NVIDIA Quadro K4000 | ||||
| GPU Memory | 2GB GDDR5 per card | 4GB GDDR5 per card | 3GB GDDR5 per card | ||||
| Network | Dual Gigabit LAN + 3-stream 802.11ac | Dual Gigabit LAN | Dual Gigabit LAN | ||||
| Thunderbolt 2 | 6 x Thunderbolt 2 Ports | 1 x Thunderbolt 2 Port | – | ||||
| USB 3.0 | 4 x USB 3.0 Ports | 4 x USB 3.0 Ports + 5 x USB 2.0 Ports | 2 x USB 3.0 Ports + 10 x USB 2.0 Ports | ||||
| Dimensions (D x W x H) |
6.6 x 6.6 x 9.9″ | 17.5 x 7.0 x 17.63″ | 19.0 x 6.89 x 18.8″ | ||||
| Weight | 11 lbs | ? | 38.5 lbs | ||||
| Warranty | 3 Year Limited (w/ AppleCare) | 3 Year Limited | 3 Year Limited | ||||
| Price | $3248 | $3695 + $795 for second W7000 GPU | $4373 | ||||
Anand Lal Shimpi concluded that, “If you have a workload that justifies it and prefer OS X, the Mac Pro is thankfully no longer just your only solution, it’s a great solution.”
Image Credit: Apple
