Mac Pro Updated – Finally

I was complaining just a few weeks ago about the lack of updates for the Mac Pro. Turns out, I just had to wait a little bit. Now, I could ramble on about how quick these things are, but let me just sample the traditional Apple speak for this one:

he new quad-core Mac Pro, with a suggested retail price of $2,499 (US), includes:

• one 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon W3530 processor with 8MB of fully-shared L3 cache;
• 3GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory, expandable up to 16GB;
• ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory;
• two Mini DisplayPorts and one DVI (dual-link) port (adapters sold separately);
• 1TB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
• 18x SuperDrive® with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• four PCI Express 2.0 slots;
• five USB 2.0 ports and four FireWire® 800 ports;
• AirPort Extreme® 802.11n;
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR; and
• Apple Keyboard with numerical keypad and Magic Mouse.

The new 8-core Mac Pro, with a suggested retail price of $3,499 (US), includes:

• two 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5620 processors with 12MB of fully-shared L3 cache per processor;
• 6GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory, expandable up to 32GB;
• ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory;
• two Mini DisplayPorts and one DVI (dual-link) port (adapters sold separately);
• 1TB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
• 18x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• four PCI Express 2.0 slots;
• five USB 2.0 ports and four FireWire 800 ports;
• AirPort Extreme 802.11n;
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR; and
• Apple Keyboard with numerical keypad and Magic Mouse

The big highlights: Available 6-core Intel Xeon processors, upgraded graphics, and the ability to upgrade to four 512GB SSD drives. You can buy up to a 12-core Mac Pro if you want, making this a blazing fast box. If you need really big processing power – and have a lot of money – this may be the machine for you.