Apple today unveiled a new Mac Pro line with up to 12 processing cores and up to 50 percent greater performance than the previous generation. 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.
“The new Mac Pro is the most powerful and configurable Mac we’ve ever made,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, in the press release. “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.
For the first time, Mac Pro customers have the option to order a 512GB SSD for the ultimate in reliability and lightning fast performance. With the ability to install up to four SSD drives in the system’s internal drive bays, the new Mac Pro can provide ultra high-speed disk bandwidth and random disk performance, two times faster than the average performance of a standard disk drive.** Mac Pro also now features two Mini DisplayPorts and one dual-link DVI port. The additional Mini DisplayPort output allows customers to connect two LED Cinema Displays without an additional graphics card or adapter and the dual-link DVI port supports legacy DVI-based displays up to a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels.
Every Mac Pro comes with Apple’s innovative Magic Mouse and customers can also order Apple’s new Magic Trackpad as an option. The Magic Trackpad brings the intuitive Multi-Touch™ gestures of Mac notebook trackpads to the desktop. With its glass surface, the wireless Magic Trackpad allows users to scroll smoothly up and down a page with inertial scrolling, pinch to zoom in and out, rotate an image with their fingertips and swipe three fingers to flip through a collection of web pages or photos. The Magic Trackpad can be configured to support single button or two button commands and supports tap-to-click as well as a physical click. Magic Trackpad is available separately for $69.
Continuing Apple’s commitment to the environment, Apple’s desktop lineup is a leader in green design. The Mac Pro meets stringent Energy Star 5.0 requirements and achieves EPEAT Gold status. The Mac Pro enclosure is made of highly recyclable aluminum and the interior is designed to be more material-efficient. The Mac Pro uses PVC-free internal cables and components and contains no brominated flame retardants. The new Apple Battery Charger provides a convenient and environmentally friendly way to always have a fresh set of batteries for your Magic Trackpad, Magic Mouse and Wireless Keyboard. The Apple Battery Charger is available as an option for $29 and comes with six long shelf life rechargeable batteries.
Every Mac also comes with Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the world’s most advanced operating system, and iLife, Apple’s innovative suite of applications for managing photos, making movies and creating and learning to play music. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange. iLife features iPhoto, with breakthrough ways to organize and manage your photos by who appears in them and where they were taken; iMovie with powerful easy-to-use features such as Precision Editor, video stabilization and advanced drag and drop; and GarageBand which offers a whole new way to help you learn to play piano and guitar.
Optional Apple professional applications include Aperture, Final Cut Express, Final Cut Studio, Logic Express and Logic Studio.
Pricing & Availability
The new Mac Pro will be available in August through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.
The new quad-core Mac Pro, with a suggested retail price of US$2,499, 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
• Apple Keyboard with numerical keypad and Magic Mouse
The new 8-core Mac Pro, with a suggested retail price of $3,499, 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
• Apple Keyboard with numerical keypad and Magic Mouse
Configure-to-order options include:
• one 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon W3565 processor for the quad-core Mac Pro
• one 3.33 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon W3680 processor for the quad-core Mac Pro
• two 2.66 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon X5650 processors (12-cores) for the 8-core Mac Pro
• two 2.93 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon X5670 processors (12-cores) for the 8-core Mac Pro
• two ATI Radeon HD 5770 cards with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
• one ATI Radeon HD 5870 card with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
• up to 16GB of DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory for the quad-core Mac Pro
• up to 32GB of DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory for the 8-core Mac Pro
• up to four 512GB solid state drives (SSD)
• up to four 1TB or 2TB Serial ATA hard drives running at 7200 rpm
• Mac Pro RAID card
• dual-channel or quad-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel card
• up to two 18x SuperDrives with double-layer support
Accessories include: Magic Trackpad, Apple Battery Charger, wired Apple Mouse, wireless Apple Keyboard, Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter, Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter (for 30-inch DVI display), Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter, the AppleCare Protection Plan; and pre-installed copies of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server; iWork, Logic Express 9, Final Cut Express 4 and Aperture 3.
*Testing conducted by Apple in July 2010 using preproduction Mac Pro 12-core 2.93 GHz units and shipping Mac Pro 8-core 2.93 GHz units, all configured with 6GB of RAM. Based on render performance of Maxwell Render 2.0.3 using Benchwell’s sculpture.mxs. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Mac Pro.
**Testing conducted by Apple in July 2010 using preproduction Mac Pro 12-core 2.93 GHz units configured with 6GB of RAM, 1TB 7200-rpm hard disk drive and 512GB solid-state drive. Testing conducted using Iometer 2006.07.27 with a 30-second ramp-up, 5-minute run duration, 128KB request size, 8 outstanding IOs, and 150GB test file. Average rotational media performance calculated by creating the test file on the outer, middle and inner sectors of the drive and averaging the results from all three measurements. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Mac Pro.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s 12-core Mac Pro. For when you absolutely, positively have to render Toy Story 3 before lunch. In 3D.
Source: Apple Inc.
Pro graphics and audio production just got warp speed performance. Add the new cinema display and it’s and orgasm.
Ok. Now we need somebody here to cry that Apple has totally forgoten the Macs. Oh wait… it was Ars Technica.. sorry wrong site…
When I grip my new Mac Pro a certain way, my garage door opens…
… so does my neighbor’s!
Customazable to your heart’s content, seXy, warp speed performance that is unrivaled in the industry, reasonably priced, includes magic Pad, speakers, this and the new Cinema Display are the ultimate production beast – Not a competitor in sight for class performance and functionality anywhere.
Now, what antenna bitching or FUD can you stick on this whineeees?
When will we see 1GB VRAM in MacBook Pros?
This news just proves that R2 is sooooooo right about the Mac being dead and all.
FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Will the ATI 5770 Card work in the previous gen MacPro & and how big a difference for how much?
@ Work & can’t check til later.
12-core, hyperthreading, 24 hardware threads is lovely. These are fantastic new Mac models.
Two things let these otherwise beasts down:
DVD drives: WTF, this is the 21st century, how about Blu-ray burners?
GPU support: ATI 5870 as top card is OK, but how about some Crossfire or SLI support so I can ramp up cards for OpenCL parallel processing?
Shouldn’t those be “sex-core” processors? I suppose that doesn’t sound too good in the marketing.
Hmmm…maybe I could have gone with something a little dirtier than that? Something like:
Sex-cores really perk up my floppy disk..
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
I CAN HAZ COMPLETE PACKAGE?
The Steve doesn’t think you need to have a Blu-Ray, so you obviously don’t need one. ;-p
I can’t see this on my work computer. I can only see the 8-core Mac Pro…perhaps, it’s IE that’s causing this. Can anyone help.
Back in ’99 I wanted a Mac that was fairly “future-proof” and ordered a G3 tower. I wasn’t a video or music pro; I just wanted a powerful machine. Just at that time, the G4 towers were announced, and Apple gave me the upgrade at no extra charge. I thought it would be a decade before I needed a new computer, but the Mac laptop I bought five years later was much more powerful.
Now my iPhone has more processing power and hard disk space than that tower had.
Having said that, these beasts really do go waaaaaay beyond what ordinary mortals will need for computing. These things really are in a different class than iMacs, which were actually catching up in terms of processing power.
These and the new displays are not on the Apple store yet?
@silverwarloc:
Configure-to-order options include:
• two 2.66 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon X5650 processors (12-cores) for the 8-core Mac Pro
• two 2.93 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon X5670 processors (12-cores) for the 8-core Mac Pro
Do I buy a house in Malibu or for about the same price, a Pro with four 512 GB SSDs? Decisions, decisions.
This looks like Tock just kicked Tick out of the room big time. As many of you know, even years are the Tock part of Intel’s 2 year processing development cycles. IE Odd years (Tick) being the beginning of new generations of chips while Even years (Tock) are when the maturation of each generation comes to market. I would say this is probably the largest leap in power from one model to the next available on the Mac ever. The creative industry is going crazy with joy right now at how more productive they will be able to be with these new powerhouses in their shops. Oh Happy Day!
Until Steve gets off his high horse about Blu-Ray, I’m not buying one of his new Macs. I want to produce high quality DVDs and if Steve doesn’t support my needs, I’ll look elsewhere.
His irrational belief that the world can get everything it needs from the Internet is stupid. The Internet is high risk environment – full of thieves, fraud, uncertainty, and is totally unreliable. If Steve could control the Internet, that would be a different thing. But he can’t in spite of his belief that he should. Sorry, Steve – this time you lose.
I’m sick and tired of lord Jobs deciding for me. I’ll decide for myself. The arrogance has become completely intolerant.
@No Sale
If your special need is Blue-Ray, then buy one for a hundred bucks and plug it in beside your external floppy.
Wait! my mac antennagate is taking a dump! Oh, sorry, it was my PC taking a dump!
@No Sale
I do share your frustration, but it’s not like Blu-Ray isn’t supported, it just isn’t available directly from Apple. I’d wager if you’re able to spend this much on a computer, you can spend just a little more on an external drive.
@ no sale
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relax buddy, buy a bluray burner from OWC for less than Apple would charge, and you’re done! It won’t play or rip blurays, but you can use Parallels for that. Steve sells downloads, selling you a bluray is not in his best interest – and he didnt get rich or smart – by being dumb.
Only 1.3X faster running Final Cut Pro?
I think I’ll pass until a new version of FCP comes out to take advantage of all this power.
(On a sour note… I do wish could have bought stock in just the video adapters that Apple has made us buy over the years.)