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Apple releases octo-core Mac Pro

Although it was expected to take a bow at next week's National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas (NAB) Apple took the wraps off the new 8-core Mac Pro a few days early.Appearing this morning on Apple.
Written by Jason D. O'Grady, Contributor
Mac Pro Octo Core
Although it was expected to take a bow at next week's National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas (NAB) Apple took the wraps off the new 8-core Mac Pro a few days early.

Appearing this morning on Apple.com was the refresh of the company's most powerful desktop class computer, the Mac Pro. The new tower comes with either dual quad-core CPUs (for a total of eight cores) or dual, dual-core CPUs (for a total of four):

Opt for the 8-core Mac Pro and you get the power of two Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Clovertown" processors running at 3.0GHz. Or choose a quad-core Mac Pro featuring two Dual-Core Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processors and decide how fast they fly: 2.0GHz, 2.66GHz, or 3.0GHz. At 3.0GHz, the quad-core Mac Pro runs up to 2x faster than the Power Mac G5 Quad. 

In addition to the new silicon, the new Mac Pro features:

  • Room for up to four drives and 3TB of storage
  • Eight DIMM slots to fill with up to 16GB of RAM
  • Up to two SuperDrives
  • Four PCI Express slots
  • Three graphics card options

A quick jaunt to the Apple online store reveals that the new beasts are shipping now. Pricing starts at US$2,499 (two 2.66GHz dual cores) and rockets to US$12,427 fully throttled with two 3.0GHz quad cores, 16GB RAM, 3TB, NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB, dual SuperDrives, Bluetooth, Airport Extreme, Wireless keyboard and Mighty Mouse and AppleCare.

Adding a pair of (newly lowered) 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Displays (for US$1799 a pop) bringing my new dream Mac to a princely US$16,025.

Is anyone else disappointed that they didn't update the enclosure? 

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