Apple updates Mac Pro -- "the fastest Mac we've ever made"

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Apple's updated the Mac Pro with Intel's new 45nm quad-core Penryn Xeon 5400 (Stoakley) CPUs at up to 3.2GHz. The new 8-core config is $2,800, and Apple's Phil Schiller is calling these machines the "fastest Mac we've ever made" (not that we'd expect the newest machine would be anything but). Standard options:


  • mac-pro-penryn

  • two 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors with dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses;

  • 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM memory, expandable up to 32GB;

  • ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory;

  • 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;

  • 16x SuperDrive™ with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);

  • two PCI Express 2.0 slots and two PCI Express slots;

  • Bluetooth 2.0+EDR; and

  • ships with Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse.


No Blu-ray, as rumored, but it can be configured with plenty of drives (as usual), RAID, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 graphics cards, and 802.11n. Why do we feel like Apple threw these up today just to screw with everyone at CES? (Actually, it's because Intel is announcing all those new chips at CES right now-- I get that.)