New Mac Pro's at last

Apple, IT, Team Digital

Apple unveiled a new Mac ® Pro line with up to 12 processing cores and up to 50 percent greater performance than the previous generation (according to a pre-release rendering test performed by Apple). Featuring the latest quad-core and 6-core Intel Xeon processors, all-new ATI graphics and the option for up to four 512GB solid state drives (SSD), the new Mac Pro continues to deliver amazing performance and expandability for the most demanding consumers and professionals.

(URL for Apple release and testing details) http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/27macpro.html

€œThe new Mac Pro is the most powerful and configurable Mac ever made, with up to 12 cores, the new Mac Pro outperforms our previous top-of-the-line system by up to 50 percent, and with over a billion possible configurations, our customers can create exactly the system they want. €

At the heart of the new Mac Pro’s performance are next generation quad-core and 6-core Intel Xeon processors running at speeds up to 3.33 GHz. These multi-core processors use a single die design so each core can share up to 12MB L3 cache to improve efficiency while increasing processing speed. These systems feature an integrated memory controller for faster memory bandwidth and reduced memory latency; Turbo Boost to dynamically boost processor speeds up to 3.6 GHz; and Hyper-Threading to create up to 24 virtual cores. The Mac Pro now comes with the ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics processor with 1GB of memory and customers can configure-to-order the even faster ATI Radeon HD 5870 with 1GB of memory.

Pricing & Availability
The new Mac Pro will be available from August through Team Digital. Pricing and Specifications according to the Apple Australia website (28/7/2010) are as follows:

The new quad-core Mac Pro

Starts from $3,499 (A$ inc GST), and 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

Starts from $4,899 (A$ inc GST), and 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.

Team Digital