Apple has refreshed their Mac Pro workstation lineup with the introduction of 8 core systems, doubling their previous offerings which featured a quad core system. The new Mac Pro comes with two Quad-Core Intel XEON “Clovertown” processors clocked in at 3 GHz. Of course if 8 processor cores seems a bit too much for your liking, you can still get a Mac Pro system with quad cores made up of two dual core Intel XEON “Woodcrest” processors which can range in speeds from 2GHz to 3GHz.

Here are some of the specification highlights of the new Mac Pro systems:

For the 8 core system

  • Two 3GHz Quad Core Intel XEON 5300 series processors with 8 MB of L2 cache per processor (16MB total)
  • 1.33GHz 64 bit dual independent frontside bus

For the quad core system

  • Two Dual Core Intel XEON 5100 series processors with 4 MB of shared L2 cache per processor (8 MB total)
  • 1.33 GHz 64 bit dual independent frontside bus

Other specs:

  • 667 MHz DDR2 ECC fully buffered DIMM memory
  • NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT, ATI Radeon X1900 XT, or NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 graphics
  • Dual 10/100/1000 NIC ports
  • Four independent 3Gb/s SATA bays
  • 16x SuperDrive with double layer support
  • 2 FireWire 800 ports
  • 2 FireWire 400 ports
  • 5 USB 2.0 ports
  • 2 USB 1.1 ports
  • Front panel headphone minijack and speaker
  • Optical digital audio input and output TOSLINK ports
  • Analog stereo line in and out

Soo.. how much? Well they’re certainly not cheap if you want all eight cores. If you want the base configuration WITH eight cores, be prepared to spend at least $3997.If you simply want a 2GHz quad core system, then the system price is relatively reasonable at $2200.

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