Here at Last-The New Mac Pro Line
The Mac Pro Line was definitely long overdue for an upgrade from Apple. The new Mac Pro is here for you at last, if you can afford it. The new Mac Pro features Intel’s latest quad-core and 6-core Xeon processors, actually giving you up to 12 cores and offering 50 percent greater performance over the preceding Mac Pro. Clock speeds on the quad-core model are up to 2.8 GHz, while the 8-core model gets bumped to 2.4 GHz for each processor.
The Mac Pro also features new ATI graphics delivered via ATI Radeon HD 5770 or HD 5870 graphics processors. Want improved Memory with that? No problem. Buyers now have the option of maxing out RAM to 32GB and HDD space to 4TB and configuring it with up to four 512GB SSDs.
“But at what cost” you query ? The baseline quad-core model costs $2499,the 8-core model costs $3499, and the 12-core $4999. Add a 24″ Cinema display at $799 to that and congratulations to all who can afford it. Oh, and a new 27″ cinema display will be out in September.
But an expansion looks to be an easier task on the new Mac Pro. Just remove the side panel for instant access to everything. Slide out the processor tray to add memory. Slide out drive bays to add storage. Slide a simple bar to change up to four expansion cards at once. And there are plenty of I/O ports both front and back, you’ll have room for all your external devices.
Other new features for the advanced tech savvy include:
1. Turbo Boost – automatically boosts the processor clock speed based on workload. If you’re using an application that doesn’t need every core, Turbo Boost increases the speed of the active ones, up to 3.33GHz on a 12-core Mac Pro, and up to 3.6GHz on a 6-core system.
2.QuickPath Interconnect — gives the Intel Xeon processors quick access to the disk, I/O, and other Mac Pro subsystems. In dual-processor Mac Pro models, there’s a QuickPath Interconnect between the two processors as well. This connection acts as a direct pipeline, so processor-to-processor data doesn’t need to travel to the I/O hub first. It’s another way the Mac Pro boosts performance across the board.
3.ENERGY STAR 5.0- sets significantly higher efficiency limits for power supplies and aggressive limits for the computer’s typical annual power consumption.
4.Hyper-Threading- allows two threads to run simultaneously on each core. So, for example, a 12-core Mac Pro presents 24 virtual cores that are recognized by Mac OS X. Performance is enhanced because Hyper-Threading enables the processor to take better advantage of the execution resources available in each core.
5.Single-die, 64-bit architecture- makes 8MB or 12MB of fully shared L3 cache readily available to each of the processor cores. The result is fast access to cache data and greater application performance. Combine that with the other technological advances and you get a Mac Pro that’s up to 1.5x faster than the previous generation.1
