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January 8, 2008

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Apple announces the new Mac Pro and Xserve

Posted Jan. 8, ’08, 6:55 AM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | Apple » News

The New Mac Pro We now know why the Apple Store is down right now. Apple has, just a week before Macworld Expo, announced the immediate availability (as soon as the Store is back up, we presume) of a new Mac Pro tower that proudly boasts of having two of Intel’s spanking new 45 nanometer Quad-Core Xeon processors, a choice of high-end graphics cards from both ATI (the Radeon HD 2600 XT, 256MB) and NVIDIA (Quadro FX 5600) and a storage capacity of up to four terabytes. It looks exactly the same as it did a few hours ago though. The standard configuration is priced at $2,799.

The new Xserve, one of the least hyped products in the Apple line-up, can now be outfitted with two of the same 45 nanometer Quad-Core Xeon processors that now power the Mac Pro (though they are clocked at 3.0GHz, as opposed to the 3.2GHz processors of the Mac tower). The tech specs page reveals the capability to have up to 32GB of RAM at 800MHz, 3TB of hard drive space and two PCI Express 2.0 expansion slots.

Though this is a little bit of bad news for those who were expectantly waiting for a visual refresh of the Mac Pro (were you?), it is honking good news indeed for the rest of us as it indicates that the Macworld keynote will feature things more exciting than major updates to Mac Pros and Xserves. If I wasn’t before, I’m definitely excited for the Macworld Expo now. Bring it on, Apple. Show us what you got.


5 Comments

goobimama Author Profile Page said:

I see that blu-ray is definitely going to be highlighted at macworld. I must say I'm impressed with 8-core as being a base model.

I pray for an amazing macworld :)

January 8, 2008 7:22 AM
Turbopenguin said:

Does this mean that there is room for a Quad-Core iMac?

January 8, 2008 7:45 AM
krye said:

Finally!

I am thrilled that the case design stayed the same. I love it and I am glad to see it stayed. I also picked up Apple Care for $50 on ebay months ago in anticipation of a Mac Pro purchase. What a deal! I am glad that this is still a Mac Pro and that I will be able to use the Apple Care that I bought. After all, I saved $200 on it!

I’ve been waiting a year for the Mac Pro processor/video card refresh. However, I am bumbed that the 3.2GHz one is so expensive ($4399). I was hoping that the price would have stayed at $3299. I forgot that these are 8 cores. The old 3.0GHz 8 core machine was $3999, so I guess $400 for the new architecture? Still, a little rich for my blood, and my wallet. Looks like I’ll have to settle for the 2.8 or the 3.0.

Although, I bet the new 2.8 is faster that the old 3.0. Maybe I’ll wait for some bench marks.

January 8, 2008 7:58 AM
Erik said:

I'm wondering when they will update the Xserve RAID.

In particular I'm expecting them to replace the hard drive interface with the same SATA/SAS interface combo that is used in the Xserve itself.

(This is particularly important as hard drive manufacturers appear to be in the process of discontinuing PATA based drive models.)

January 8, 2008 8:13 AM
Philippe Azimzadeh said:

Wow, the most expensive configuration on an Xserve (RAID) is $83,041.

The Mac OS X Server Software Support - Alliance selection is only $49,995 though, so that's good.

January 8, 2008 12:32 PM

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