April 4th, 2007
Apple releases octo-core Mac Pro
Although it was expected to take a bow at next week's National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas (NAB) Apple took the wraps off the new 8-core Mac Pro a few days early.
Appearing this morning on Apple.com was the refresh of the company's most powerful desktop class computer, the Mac Pro. The new tower comes with either dual quad-core CPUs (for a total of eight cores) or dual, dual-core CPUs (for a total of four):
Opt for the 8-core Mac Pro and you get the power of two Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Clovertown" processors running at 3.0GHz. Or choose a quad-core Mac Pro featuring two Dual-Core Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processors and decide how fast they fly: 2.0GHz, 2.66GHz, or 3.0GHz. At 3.0GHz, the quad-core Mac Pro runs up to 2x faster than the Power Mac G5 Quad.
In addition to the new silicon, the new Mac Pro features:
- Room for up to four drives and 3TB of storage
- Eight DIMM slots to fill with up to 16GB of RAM
- Up to two SuperDrives
- Four PCI Express slots
- Three graphics card options
A quick jaunt to the Apple online store reveals that the new beasts are shipping now. Pricing starts at US$2,499 (two 2.66GHz dual cores) and rockets to US$12,427 fully throttled with two 3.0GHz quad cores, 16GB RAM, 3TB, NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB, dual SuperDrives, Bluetooth, Airport Extreme, Wireless keyboard and Mighty Mouse and AppleCare.
Adding a pair of (newly lowered) 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Displays (for US$1799 a pop) bringing my new dream Mac to a princely US$16,025.
Is anyone else disappointed that they didn't update the enclosure?
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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