Starting next month the Mac Pro range will get an update (though I see Apple has once again left the exterior pretty well unchanged, I don’t think this line has seen a face-lift since it was still the G5 tower and I was still in college), and there’ll now be an upgrade options for the dual-processor model that’ll push it up to 12 CPU cores. Yes, 12. One dozen.
In any configuration, you’ll be looking at a Xeon series processor, and the base graphics card has been updated to the ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory.
They come with the usual thingers, you know, OSX, keyboard, Magic Mouse. Check out the table below for what the builds will look like, and what options there’ll be. Your base price points are going to be about $2,500 for the quad core, $3,500 for the 8 core, and we’re hearing around $5,000 to play in the 12 core club (but my, what a club to play in).
| 2010 Mac Pro Base Configurations |
| Quad-Core Mac Pro |
- 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.
|
| Upgrade Options |
- one 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon W3565 processor
- one 3.33 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon W3680 processor
- 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
- up to four 512GB solid state drives (SSD); or
- 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; and
- up to two 18x SuperDrives with double-layer support.
|
| 8-Core Mac Pro |
- 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.
|
| Upgrade Options |
- two 2.66 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon X5650 processors (12-cores)
- two 2.93 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon X5670 processors (12-cores)
- two ATI Radeon HD 5770 cards with 1GB of GDDR5 memory;
- one ATI Radeon HD 5870 card with 1GB of GDDR5 memory;
- up to 32GB of DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory
- up to four 512GB solid state drives (SSD); or
- 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; and
- up to two 18x SuperDrives with double-layer support.
|
Our resident web guru, Derek graduated from Ball State with a BFA in Visual Communications. When not in the office slaying CSS dragons, jousting social media windmills, or working on the blog, he's also a fine artist, working in oil paints and photography. Derek Martin+
Starting next month the Mac Pro range will get an update (though I see Apple has once again left the exterior pretty well unchanged, I don’t think this line has seen a face-lift since it was still the G5 tower and I was still in college), and there’ll now be an upgrade options for the dual-processor model that’ll push it up to 12 CPU cores. Yes, 12. One dozen.