By AppleInsider Staff

Published: 08:30 AM EST (05:30 AM PST)

The long-awaited update to Apple's Mac Pro desktop was announced Tuesday, with the new tower sporting up to 12 processing cores with Intel Xeon processors, making it up to 50 percent faster than its predecessor. The hardware arrives in August.

The new Mac Pro desktops feature 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 processors run at speeds up to 3.33GHz and use a single die design so they can share up to 12MB L3 cache, improving efficiency while increasing processing speeds.

"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. "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."

The systems include 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.

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 $2,499 (US), 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; and
  
• Apple Keyboard with numerical keypad and Magic Mouse.

The new 8-core Mac Pro, with a suggested retail price of $3,499 (US), 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; and
  
• 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); 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.

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. Complete options and accessories are available at www.apple.com/macpro.