“The $3,000 entry-level configuration of Apple’s new Mac Pro is nothing to sneeze at — but if you want more horsepower, the price goes up rapidly as high as $9,600,” Stephen Shankland reports for CNET.
“The basic model of the distinctive workstation includes a 3.7 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with a 10MB memory cache, 12GB of 1866MHz DDR3 error-correcting memory, dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics chips with 2GB of video memory each, and a 256GB SSD whose flash memory is connected via the PCI Express bus for faster performance than ordinary SATA-connected SSDs,” Shankland reports. “It’s also got four USB 3.0 ports, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, an HDMI 1.4 port, two gigabit Ethernet ports, 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless networking, a headphone jack, a digital or analog audio output jack, and a built-in speaker.”
Shankland reports, “If you want to go beyond the basics, the sticker shock really kicks in.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Unless you want one in red.
Not too bad for a supercomputer.
The Lisa sold for ten grand, and that was 1983 dollars. That’s $24,400 accounting for inflation.
-jcr
An extra 1MB of memory was $1000 an a Pascal development environment another $1000. I bought one site unseen. Subsequent to that I bought several more. One of the best decisions I ever made.
My first Apple ][ came with 4 KB of RAM. Upgrading it to 16 KB cost $800. Upgrading the RAM on the new Mac Pro is a screaming bargain. 😉
Shankland needs to go back to Maxing-Out-Computers School. I just went throughout he same exercise, and came out with $13,561.00:
12-core 2.7GHz processor
64GB RAM
1TB flash storage
Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs
Sharp 32″ 4K Ultra HD display
Apple Magic Mouse
Apple Keyboard
AppleCare
No software or accessories, and it still comes out over $13K.
@philbert
We’re talking about the CPU only. Not a brand new monitor, no mouse, no keyboard, no apple care…
…, no 20 TB RAID, …
$14,000 for the IIfx… it may have come with 256k of ram
Selling the Mac Pro without any internal expansion space or the ability to upgrade components is like Porsche selling you the 911 without any internal fuel tanks and you had to attach a fuel bowser with it to go anywhere. Yes, the engine has 9000 HP but you aren’t going anywhere fast.
If you need internal cargo space you should get a Van instead of a Porsche 911
Or, if you can afford it, buy a PCIe expansion chassis for additional hardware peripherals like microscopes, telescopes, radio scopes, xRay, and myriad analyzers.
You can upgrade if you want to.
Memory = yup
Replace the video cards = yup
Larger SSD = yup
Could replace the main board for a different CPU, but that would be pricey.
boo hoo hoo – Mr Porsche
don’t get one then
Keep on thinking inside the box… an oversized, ugly, non-expandable tower of a gray box.
No, no, they’re not gray or beige anymore, they’re black or dark gray, with tons of garish blue blinking lights and shit on them, these days. Vastly improved from what you assert.
Perhaps your knowledge of either product requires a fuel browser; that way you’ll know when you come up short of answers.
Are you familiar with the aviation term, Bingo? Try it. If it looks like you’re about to run out of knowledge half way through your comment, you’ll at least know when to turn around.
Oh yes,
And no mouse, keyboard, or STICKERS!
Pfft, it used to cost $15,000 to fully max out a MacPro. And that machine wouldn’t hold a candle to the base model MacPro.
Heck, the MMD G4 fully decked out was $19,500 and my Macintosh IIfx baselined at $10,000. (40MHz of pure power!)
Add 10K for the three 4K monitors.
As always Apple is bragging us into the future kicking and screaming. “OMG! nooooo! I can’t fill my machine with hard drives? What is to become of poor unimaginative do things only one way me? Thunderbolt 2? What’s that? There was a thunderbolt 1?”
Dragging!
Some kicking and screaming.
“Poor unimaginative do things only one way me” — Lord, I wish I had your way with words. I’d be in marble with Emily Dickinson, or maybe P. G. Wodehouse. Seriously.
Ohhhhhhh I want it!!!
Did some pricing on my own. Mac Pro vs. buying a PC with same specs:
The 12 core processor costs on average 2,500.
The 4×16 memory costs on average 700 bucks
the 1TB of PCI-e memory costs on average 1,000 bucks
the 2 AMD Firepro D700’s cost each 3,000 (and i am being generous on that number). Now, you cannot buy a d700, so what has been said is that it is equivalent to the FirePro w9000. All the stats appear to be the same.
This totals out to 10,200..without buying a chassis, motherboard that supports it all with USB 3.0 and thunderbolt 2, wifi-AC, bluetooth. I have been reading posts everywhere saying the Apple is over-pricing the top end. Unless if you guys can find different, this is probably 1000 cheaper than building your own PC. I can only imagine that Apple somehow talked with AMD about the w9000 and build it the same, but cheaper, and call it the D700.
That is exactly what happened, a sweet deal was struck and the overall price point dropped into the green zone for purchasing agents with any tech savvy whatever. Someone in Apple pulled this off and should get a bonus.
Is that all? I’ll take 2.
My 9600 DP wasn’t as expensive but it’s pretty close when you factor in my investments like the RAM (1 GB). The 19-inch monitor was the second most expensive thing, followed by the LW IIg.
The 9600 was the heart of my business in 1997 but Apple stopped producing it a year later. It was also the last time I bought top o’ da line. The 9600 was replaced by G3s.
For me, Apple’s top of the line product has always existed in rarified air. But not because of its price, but because the sheer expansion of all of its features will never be realized in my hands. Sort of like owning a fine horse but never taking the time to learn to ride it because you’re afraid of them.
These days, I would love to have a quad-core iMac with more than 4GBs of RAM. These days price matters.
Sounds cheap. I paid $7000 for a **used** Mac II back in 1989. At the time, that was workstation performance with a 24-bit graphics card. Today my iPhone could run circles around that guy (it’s still in my garage).
Considering that the Macintosh Iici intro’d for $6269, I’d say this is a pretty good deal. Lest we forget, that was a 25Mhz 68030, included built-in color display support at thousands of colors (640×480), did not include CD/DVD/SuperDrive, USB, Ethernet, FireWire, ThunderBolt, HDMI, etc.
$11,783.14 in today’s dollars. What a screaming machine that was!
Since HDMI 2.0 has been announced, why is Apple shipping a “Pro” computer than cannot be internally expanded with an HDMI 1.4 jack, or will the HW support an update later?
That is a huge question since Apple does not see fit to make internally expandable computers anymore.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/04/hdmi-2-0-official-4k-60fps-32-channel-audio/
Because being “announced” doesn’t mean available for mass adoption.
Still does not address the can it be updated with software or will early adopters be saddled with an out of date HDMI connector in the not distant future.
I want a red one!
The specs read almost like the 12 Days of Christmas…
…
Six Thunderbolt 2 ports
Five (something something)
Four USB 3.0 ports
3.7 GHz
Two graphics chips
And a partridge in a pear tree!
——RM