Apple’s pulling out all the stops on its venerable Mac Pro line. This year’s edition offers more computing power than some developing countries. Here’s what’s in store for Apple’s power users in 2013.
The new Mac Pro is a beast of a machine. Sporting Intel Xeon E5 processors with between four and 12 cores — and topping out at seven teraflops of computing power — with up to 12GB of DDR5 RAM with a 30MB L3 cache, the 2013 MP can hold its own against even the most resource intensive of professional design application.
The graphics are equally impressive. The Mac Pro’s dual standard workstation GPUs run AMD FirePro graphics that support 4K video output. And, for connectivity, the 2013 Mac Pro will feature four USB 3.0 ports, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, a 2Gb Ethernet port, HDMI and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.
The 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon processor with 12GB DRAM and dual FirePro D300 GPUs will begin shipping in December for $3999 in Australia. Lifehacker Australia notes that it will cost $600 more here than what it will cost in the US. The 3.5GHz six-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.9GHz, dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3GB of VRAM each, 16GB of memory and 256GB of PCIe-based flash storage will start at $5299 in Australia.