Apple Puts Eight Cores in Mac Pros

By Geoff Duncan April 4, 2007

Apple Puts Eight Cores in Mac Pros

Apple has rolled out its latest "speed bump," this time enhanceing its top-of-the-line Mac Pro desktop computers with an option to have two quad-core Intel Xeon "Clovertown" processors on board, upping the processor core total to eight for the system’s high-end configuration.

Apple is still offering quad-core versions of the Mac Pro, sporting two 2.6 or 3.0 GHz Intel Dual-Core Xeon 5100 processors. But the top dog now comes with two 3.0 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon 5300 processors, each sporting 8 MB of L2 cache (each core pair on each CPU shares 4 MB), dual 1.33 GHz 64-bit independent front-side buses, and Intel’s 128-bit SSE3 vector engine. And the Mac Pro, of course, maintains the same impressive list of specifications as when the systems debuted last August, including 8 DIMM slots supporting up to 16 GB of RAM, support for up to eight displays, 3 TB of storage, optional Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and 802.11n Wi-Fi wireless connectivity, two FireWire 800 ports, two FireWire 400 ports, five USB 2.0 ports (and two USB 1.1 ports for peripherals, just for fun), 16× double-layer DVD burner and a second open optical drive bay.

If you’re the sort of person who sees an immediate use for an eight-core Xeon behemoth—and many of Apple’s media-creating customers are—the pricing information on these is probably irrelevant: in many cases, the computers are merely a peripheral to pro-level outboard gear. But mere mortals might be interested to know that eight-core Mac Pro configurations start at $3,799 with 1 GB of RAm and a 250 GB hard drive; start tricking the system out with a decent amount of RAM and high-end video and you easily get into the $5,000 range before adding more storage, software, or one of Apple’s fancy displays. We suppose the good news is that from here on out, these systems will only get cheaper!

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Apple

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

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