Nothing screams ‘serious multimedia maven’ like a pair of six-core Xeon powerplants and a desktop display larger than some people’s LCD telly...
Apple’s overnight refresh hit both ends of its desktop range, with the heavy-duty Mac Pro scoring a new line of quad-core and six-core Xeon processors plus ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics.
Perhaps even more appealing to desktop dynamos will be the appearance of two Mini DisplayPorts alongside a dual-link DVI port.
Things kick off with the $3,499 quad-core 2.8GHz Xeon W3530 matched to an ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of gDDR5, 3GB of DDR3 RAM and a 1TB drive.
Take it up to $4,899 and you get twice the Xeon love with a pair of quad-core 2.4GHz E5620 chips with 6GB of RAM, plus the same GPU and hard drive as the previous model.
Upgrade options vary between models but the roster includes the aforementioned pair of six-core Xeon processors (choose between the 2.66GHz X5650 and the 2.93GHz X5670) for twelve cores of Mac muscle; a double serve of Radeon HD 5770 cards with 1GB of GDDR5 memory apiece; and up to four 1TB hard drives or 512GB solid state drives.
Then you’ve got that insane 27 inch 16:9 LED Cinema Display, clocking at 2560 x 1440 pixels. This is the same display as the 27 inch iMac, it’s just been broken out and set free.
How much? Apple’s not saying for now – they promise to reveal the numbers in time for the screen’s September launch – but for what it’s worth, the US price is US$999
Given that the 24 inch LED Cinema Display sells stateside for US$899, and lists here for A$1,299, then if we apply the same differential to the 27 inch monster monitor we’re looking at an Aussie price close to $1,450.