Apple quietly upgraded the Mac Pro line on Monday after the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote presentation. The changes in the new models are relatively minor, although the Mac Pro does now come standard as a 12-core configuration instead of 8 cores.
Mac Pro: Same as it ever was. Almost.
The Mac Pro now ships with two 2.4GHz 6-core Xeon E5645 processors for 12 total cores. Unfortunately, those processors aren’t new for Intel and were first introduced in 2010. The standard graphics card is still ATI’s Radeon HD 5770 with 16GB RAM with two Mini DisplayPort and a dual-link DVI connectors.
If you’re looking for Thunderbolt connectors, you’ll have to turn to Apple’s other computer offerings, and unlike the just released MacBook Pro and MacBook Air updates, it doesn’t offer USB 3.0 support.
The standard Mac Pro configuration includes 12GB RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and SuperDrive for US$3,799. A quad-core model with a single 3.2GHz Intel Xeon processor, 6GB RAM, 1TB hard drive and SuperDrive costs $2,499.
The models are available now, but after a nearly two-year wait, there’s a good chance customers were hoping for something more in this refresh.