Apple’s new cylinder-shaped Mac Pro will go on sale tomorrow, Thursday, 19 December, the consumer tech giant has revealed.
“Can’t innovate anymore, my ass,” was how Apple chief of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller introduced the new desktop computer back in June at the Worldwide Developer Conference as he aimed to silence critics of Apple’s innovation pipeline.
The new Mac Pro is the most unusual desktop device yet to emerge from the Apple stable. Standing 9.9 inches high and wrapped in an aluminium enclosure, it is one-eight the volume of the previous generation Mac Pro machine.
The new computer features 4-core, 6-core, 8-core or 12-core Intel Xeon processors running at speeds up to 3.9 GHz, as well as two workstation-class AMD FirePro GPUs that deliver up to eight times the graphics performance of the new Mac Pro’s predecessor.
PCIe-based flash storage delivers sequential read speeds up to 10 times faster than conventional hard drives and, according to Apple, ECC DDR3 gives the new Mac up to 60Gbpx of memory bandwidth for seamlessly editing full-resolution 4k video while simultaneously rendering effects in the background.
The Mac Pro comes with six Thunderbolt 2 ports – each with up to 20Gbps of bandwidth per device – and can support up to 36 different peripherals, including the latest 4K displays.
Price and availability
From tomorrow, the Mac Pro is available with a 3.7 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz, dual AMD FirePro D300 GPUs with 2GB of VRAM each, 12GB of memory, and 256GB of PCIe-based flash storage starting at €3,099, including VAT (€2,519.51, excluding VAT); and with a 3.5 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9 GHz, dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3GB of VRAM each, 16GB of memory, and 256GB of PCIe-based flash storage starting at €4,099, including VAT (€3,332.52 excluding VAT).
Configure-to-order options include faster 8-core or 12-core Intel Xeon E5 processors, AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of VRAM, up to 64GB of memory, and up to 1TB of PCIe-based flash storage.
