After a long wait and many rumors, Apple today presented its new line of Macs Pro reaching up to 12 processing cores, which will provide a performance about 50% higher than the previous generation.
Apple's new professional towers come with Intel Xeon chips quad-core and hexa-core, new graphics from ATI and, optionally, up to four 512GB solid state drives (SSD) (totaling 2TB of internal capacity). As always, the machine offers several expansion options for advanced and professional consumers.
"The new Mac Pro is the most powerful and configurable Mac we've ever created," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing. “With up to 12 cores, the new Mac Pro surpasses the top-of-the-line system of the past generation by up to 50% and, with more than a billion configurations possible, our consumers can create exactly the machine they want.”
Xeon processors hexa-core from Intel offer speeds of up to 3.33GHz, with L3 cache of up to 12MB. Macs Pro also come with an integrated memory controller, providing faster memory bandwidth and minimal latency. The technology Turbo Boost increases the speed of the chips dynamically to up to 3.6GHz, while the Hyper-Threading can create up to 24 virtual cores. The towers use ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics chipsets with 1GB of VRAM, which can be upgraded to the ATI Radeon HD 5870 also with 1GB of memory.
At the rear, the new Mac Pro has two Mini DisplayPorts and a DVI port dual-link. The extra Mini DP output allows consumers to connect two LED Cinema Displays without the need for an additional graphics card or adapter, while the DVI port supports old DVI monitors with a resolution of up to 2560 Ă— 1600 pixels.
As with all of its recent product lines, Apple has taken great care to make the new Macs Pro as “green” as possible. The entire line meets Energy Star 5.0 requirements, earning the EPEAT Gold seal. The materials used in its construction are all highly recyclable.
The new Macs Pro were announced today, but will not hit the market until August. They will start at $ 2,500 in the United States, with a second, stiffer second model, pre-configured, for $ 3,500. However, the magic of the machine is the numerous options offered by Apple in its online store as we said, are more than a billion combinations possible.
