During Apple's WWDC keynote speech, the company took time out to give developers a sneak peek at its new Mac Pro Workstation computer. On Tuesday, October 22, Apple gave the world a closer look at its next generation Workstation, the first major upgrade of the Mac Pro line since August 2010. Folks who are interested, can pick up the entry level model for $2,999, which will come with 3.7GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processor, 12GB of DRAM, dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics chips with 2GB VRAM each, and 256GB of SSD.
Unlike other Mac Pro's in the past, the next generation Workstation will be manufactured in the United States, which could be a reason for the steep price.
Power users who require heavy processing power and GPU calculations, were disappointed when Apple did not announce a new upgrade last year; however, CEO Time Cook promised great news for Mac Pro users in 2013 via Facebook, and the company did not disappoint. The new Mac Pro has a new cylindrical design and its black look gives it the impression of being a work of art. The shell can be removed to reveal the internals, which looks quite futuristic at first glance.
A fully loaded Mac Pro can feature up to 12 core of Intel Xenon E5 processors, with 40GBps PCI Express bandwidth and 30MB of L3 cache. Furthermore, there's two AMD FirePro GPUs with up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM, which allows the Mac Pro to support up to three 4K displays. The Cupertino giant also promised 528GB/s total bandwidth.
In addition, there's a four-channel DDR3 memory controller that runs at 1866MHz, delivering up to 60GBps of memory bandwidth. This is twice as high compared to the previous Mac Pro model. For those who require a lot of space, the Mac Pro can have up to 1 terabyte of user accessible flash storage, with 1.2GB/s read speeds and 1GB/s write speed. There's also support for Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0.
The new Mac Pro cylindrical design is not just for show, it helps a lot with cooling and power.
The Mac Pro will likely not have everything Mac developers want, but it is still a worthy upgrade of a Workstation that saw its last upgrade 3 years ago. If Apple hadn't made this move, Apple developers would possibly have begun viewing Windows Workstations as an attractive option.
