Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 04 March 2009 04:06
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
A revamped Mac Pro brings Intel's Nehalem Xeon chips to Apple's lineup for the first time. Apple claims this and other changes can double the performance of its high-end desktop.
As its name suggests, the Mac Pro is aimed at users that require maximum performance, storage and expandability.
Updated 2.93 GHz Xeon processors and three 1066 MHz DDR3 memory channels combine to give the 2009 Mac Pro up to twice the performance of its predecessor, Apple claims.
Graphics performance is also boosted with the Nvidia GeForce GT 120 as standard and the option of the ATI Radeon HD 4870. These choices echo the selection of the GT 120 and HD 4850 for high-end configurations of the
new iMac.
While the recyclable aluminium case looks the same, internal changes provide easier access to components and reduce the amount of material needed for manufacture.
Two standard configurations are offered.
$A4499 buys a single 2.66 GHz Xeon 3500 and 3G of RAM (expandable to 8G), while $A5899 gets you dual 2.26 Xeon 5500s with 6G (expandable to 32G) of RAM.
What else do you get? Please
read on .
