New Mac Pros: Featuring the Xeon "Nehalem" Processor
“Beauty outside. Beast inside.”
New Mac Pros were announced this morning, and boy, are they hot. Here’s a rundown of the new features:
New Intel Processors
Intel’s road map indicated that an update was coming; however, the Xeon Nehalem processor beat those expectations.
The Nehalem processor has single-die, 64-bit architecture that is touted to be more efficient than the older quad-core processors. (With separate-die technology, the data has to “travel outside the processor to get from core to core” making the transition slower.)
In addition, the Nehalem processor features an intergrated memory controller which conducts the memory directly to the processor. This translates into a 2.4x speed increase in memory bandwidth. Fast, fast, fast!
Redesigned Interior
It’s been a while since the inside of the Mac Pro has been touched. It goes without saying that the inside design of the Mac Pro is aesthetically pleasing, but Apple actually says “no rat’s nest of components here!”
From the initial images, I can’t tell if it’s a big change or not, but I’m sure our service techs will get a look soon enough…
New Graphics Cards
The previous generation Mac Pros had the ATI Radeon HD graphics cards, and the new NVIDIA and ATI Radeon HD cards have been tested at 2.9x and 6.6x faster, respectively.
Configurations
- Quad Core: One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Nehalem processor/3GB RAM/640GB Hard Drive/18x double-layer SuperDrive/NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB – $2,499.99
- 8-Core: Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Nehalem processors/6GB (six 1GB) RAM/640GB Hard Drive/18x double-layer SuperDrive/NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB – $3,299.99
It’s clear that the Mac Pro is constantly evolving with the latest technology, and remains price-competitive in the industry for those who demand the biggest and best.
We’ll get our hands on these shortly, and keep you updated with more information. Stay tuned.