The latest Apple Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) ($3,499 list) is an internal component update of Apple's timeless high-end desktop. Nominally a workstation-class PC, the Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) is the most versatile tool in the graphics artist or scientific worker's tool chest. It has plenty of easy-to-service expansion room, two quad-core Xeon "Westmere" processors, and a 3D graphics card that puts others' high-end graphics cards to shame. It might be overkill compared with some of its workstation rivals and all-in-one alternatives, but it's a worthy addition to your art/scientific/entertainment company's arsenal of number-crunching weapons.

Design
Like Apple's other designs, the Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) remains both iconic and a minimalist ideal. Its chassis hasn't changed too much since the time Apple's finest was the Power Mac G5. It retains the same basic design that was revolutionary in 2003 (and 2006), but still it works as a piece of functional art. The exterior is made of brushed aluminum with grab handles on top. The perforated front and back panels allow cooling air to flow through the case. One of the Mac Pro (Xeon E5620)'s best intangible features is that it looks just like the Mac Pros you bought two years ago. Therefore your newly hired graphic artists' Mac Pro will look just like the Mac Pro under your veteran art director's desk. If you don't think this is a concern, you haven't seen office politics in action.

The Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) is easy on your IT pro as well. Crack open the case door with a simple lever, and the interior is neatly set up, and can be serviced completely tool-free. You won't need a screwdriver to install hard drives (up to four), two PCIe x4 cards, add memory (2 slots free), or swap out the PCIe x16 graphics card. The Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) carries over a neat feature of last year's Mac Pro (8-Core) ($3,499, ): the RAM DIMM slots slide out along with the processors on a daughtercard, which makes it easier to upgrade the memory while the system stands upright. External expansion is just as easy: four FireWire 800 ports, five USB 2.0 ports, and digital audio SPDIF ports are easy to hook up. The system also has two independent Gigabit Ethernet ports, Bluetooth 2.1, and 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi for wired and wireless connections. The only glaring omission is eSATA, which some professionals use for fast portable hard drives. Apple is standardized on USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 for drive connectors, but it would be nice to see eSATA on board instead of having to resort to a PCIe expansion card.

Features
The system includes two 2.4GHz Intel Xeon E5620 quad-core processors, 6GB of DDR3 memory, a 1TB hard drive, DVD burner, and an ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card. You can equip the desktop with up to four drives from the following types: 1TB 7,200 rpm SATA hard drive, a 1TB 7,200rpm hard drive, and a 512GB solid-state drive (SSD). SSDs are potentially the fastest drives of the lot, but they also cost $1,400 each, so you likely won't see too many of them. The Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) comes with the usual Apple standard software: Mac OS X 10.6, iLife, and Mac OS X 10.6's built-in utilities. This is great, since you don't have to worry about any bloatware or extraneous trial software.

Performance
The Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) is a workstation-class desktop PC, and as such you should expect top-notch performance. In addition to one of the highest scores on the CineBench R10 test (21,268 points in the Mac OS; 24,057 points ini Windows 7), other scores are in line with the recently reviewed high-end workstations and multimedia PCs. Under Mac OS X, the Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) completed the Photoshop CS4 test in a quick 1 minute 31 seconds, which is significantly faster than the 1:47 scored by the Apple iMac 27-inch (Core i5) ($1,999, ). I loaded Boot Camp and Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit, and the Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) excelled there too. The Mac Pro was able to meet or exceed most of the benchmark scores set by the HP Z200 ($2,496, ) and the Editors' Choice for Workstations, the Lenovo ThinkStation E20 ($1,199, ). While it is a great performer, we should point out that the Apple iMac 27-inch (Core i5) was able to meet or exceed the Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) on a few of the Windows-based tests, particularly CS4 and WME. Also, the Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) was only a few seconds behind the Lenovo E20 on the WME and CS4 multimedia tests.

Compared with the competition, the Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) excels on the ease of expandability, looks, 3D rendering (CineBench R10), and some performance tests. If you have a task that will exercise the Mac Pro's multi-threaded, multi-core power, then it's a worthy addition to your artist or engineer's life. However, if you're buying for the average content worker or number cruncher, less expensive options like the Lenovo E20 and Apple iMac 27-inch (Core i5) start to make more sense. Let's put it this way: If you have a need for a workstation with 6.5-8TB of hard drive space and need to render a lot of data with the CPU for scientific calculations or CGI movie making, then the Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) should be your first choice. However, for more generalized high-end computing, the workstation Editors' Choice Lenovo E20 and high-end multimedia all-in-one EC Apple iMac 27-inch (Core i5) make more sense, and are less expensive to boot.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
Check out the test scores for the Apple Mac Pro (Xeon E5620)

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Apple Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) with several other desktops side by side.