The long gap between releases of Apple's most powerful computer—the Mac Pro—is finally about to come to an end. The company today announced that the first major upgrade of the Pro since August 2010 will be released in December.
A critical look at the Mac Pro
A graphics pro breaks down Apple's new machine.The entry-level model will cost $2,999 and will come with a 3.7GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processor, 12GB of DRAM, dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics chips with 2GB VRAM each, and 256GB of SSD. The machine is being assembled in the US, Apple said today.
Mac users with heavy processing needs, such as graphics professionals, were disappointed when Apple didn't refresh the stagnating platform last year. CEO Tim Cook promised that great news for Mac Pro users would come sometime in 2013, and Apple delivered on that promise in June when it unveiled a Mac Pro with a smaller design and upgraded internals. At the time, Apple said only that it would be "coming later this year," and the company didn't announce the official launch window until today.
The Mac Pro now has a cylindrical design, looking much like a black trash can. Its shell can be taken off in a "Darth Vader's helmet" sort of way, revealing futuristic looking innards that I like to think resemble a Dalek.
As we noted in previous coverage, fully loaded Pros can feature up to 12 cores-worth of Intel Xeon E5 chips, with up to 30MB L3 cache and 40GBps PCI Express bandwidth. There's a four-channel DDR3 memory controller that runs at 1866MHz, delivering up to 60GBps of memory bandwidth (twice as high as the previous model). Two AMD FirePro GPUs with up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM each help support up to three 4K displays, with GPU performance going from 2.7 to seven teraflops. Apple also promised 528GB/s total bandwidth.
"There's never been a system that can do what the Mac Pro can do with 4K video," Apple Senior VP of Marketing Phil Schiller said today.
The new Mac Pro—you can’t buy it yet, but you can look
Gallery: Two years in the making, Mac Pro gets a major redesign.The Mac Pro can have up to 1TB of user-accessible flash storage, with 1.2GB/s read speeds and 1GB/s write speed. Wireless connectivity is provided with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
With its cover off, ports for Thunderbolt 2, USB 3, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI 1.4 are revealed. Thunderbolt in particular is impressive, with six ports, each supporting up to six daisy-chained devices, 36 in total. Thunderbolt will provide 20Gbps throughput, Apple said today.
The new Mac Pro design also helps with power and cooling. Instead of multiple heat sinks and fans, heat is conducted away from the CPUs and GPUs and distributed across a "unified thermal core." That means "if one processor isn’t working as hard as the others, the extra thermal capacity can be shared efficiently among them," Apple has said.
The Mac Pro is environmentally friendly, with Energy Star 6 and EPEAT Gold certifications, Apple said. In an idle state, it consumes 43 watts and will be about as loud as a Mac mini.
Although the specs and re-design are impressive, the small package isn't completely beneficial to potential users. Dave Girard noted in his "Critical look at the new Mac Pro" that the machine has "a truly epic lack of expandability." Apple called it "the most expandable Mac ever built" because of its Thunderbolt ports, but Girard noted that it has no extra internal drive bays, only four USB 3.0 ports, and no optical drive. There's also no Nvidia option for the GPU.
The Mac Pro may not have everything users want, and it likely won't be the best-selling Mac computer. But with the three-year gap in major updates making Windows-based workstations look attractive even to Mac devotees, the Pro's release is important for Apple to hold on to users with the most intensive computing needs.
Apple’s event is currently in progress, and we will update this article as more details become available. Ars is there in person, so for up-to-the-minute information you can follow our liveblog.
Listing image by Apple
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