Apple Introduces Intel-Based Mac Pro
At the company's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco Monday, Apple officially completed its transition to the Intel platform, introducing the Mac Pro to replace the aging G5 PowerMac. Apple says a similar machine from Dell costs $1,000 more.
The launch marks 210 days since Apple began shipping its first Intel based systems, with the planned switch announced at last year's WWDC. Analysts feared at the time that Apple would take a major hit in sales during the process, but the results have proved otherwise.
The new Mac Pro features two dual-core Intel "Woodcrest" processors, branded as the Xeon 5100 series. Processor speeds will initially reach 3GHz, with 4MB of shared L2 cache. Like their G5 predecessors, the Mac Pro will be fully 64-bit, but 1.6 to 2.1 times faster than the quad-processor PowerMac.
Apple has kept the same G5 PowerMac case for the Mac Pro, adding another optical drive and new hard drive carriers to insert them without tools. 4 PCI Express slots are included, along with a double-height graphics slot at the bottom for larger graphics cards.
In its standard configuration, the 2.66GHz dual Mac Pro with 1GB of RAM, Superdrive and 250GB hard drive will run $2,499 USD. Apple is also offering complete build-to-order option with up to 3GHz CPUs, 16GB of RAM, 2TB of hard disk space, and graphics up to an ATI X1900 or Nvidia FX4500.