Apple has announced a new Mac Pro, starting at $5,999.
The new computer is Apple’s most advanced to date, featuring Xeon processors up to 28 cores, a new high-performance memory system with a massive 1.5TB capacity, eight PCIe expansion slots and a new graphics architecture designed to accommodate the world’s most advanced graphics cards. The Mac Pro also introduces Apple Afterburner, a new accelerator card designed to enable playback of 3 8K ProRes RAW videos simultaneously for editors.
Speaking of the new Mac Pro, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said the company had “designed Mac Pro for users who require a modular system with extreme performance, expansion, and configurability,” and with a “jaw-dropping design, the new Mac Pro is a monster that will enable pros to do their life’s best work.”
Apple’s new flagship desktop tower was designed for customers who demand the ultimate in performance, whether they’re rendering videos in production, playing virtual instruments in the studio, or testing applications on dozens of iOS devices at the same time. The new Mac Pro truly offers next-level power and performance, and state-of-the-art architecture to offer users everything they need to run unconstrained, all of the time, whatever their workload.
Perhaps one of the most impressive things about the new Mac Pro is memory performance, with the tower capable of analyzing hundreds of data sets or running multiple professional applications at the same time. The new Mac Pro features a unique six-channel memory architecture as well as 12 physical DIMM slots, designed to allow for up to 1.5TB of memory. What’s more, with eight PCI Express expansion slots, twice the previous generation’s, users are able to customize and expand their Mac Pro systems in a way that suits their needs best.
The Mac Pro wasn’t built for your Average Joe – it’s designed to accommodate the needs of 3D film animators, developers, photographers, and professional users. And it’s there where the Mac Pro lives up to its name, offering the world’s most powerful graphics card and an eye-watering 56 teraflops of graphics performance in its single system.
The tower features the Apple MPX Module, as well as Thunderbolt integration and over 500W of power, which are firsts for graphics cards.
To top it all off, the Pro was designed to run as a “super quiet operation” thanks to system thermal cooling integrated into the device’s MPX Module.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Mac Pro unless users could select the most appropriate customization for their needs, and Apple offers a whole host of options.
The base product, starting at $5,999, comes with a Radeon Pro 580X, although it’s possible to upgrade to the Radeon Pro Vega II, offering up to 14 teraflops of computing performance and 32GB of memory with 1TB/s of memory bandwidth, which is the highest GPU ever.
For users who demand even greater power, the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo features two Vega II GPUs for an incredible 28 teraflops of graphics performance and 64GB of memory, creating the world’s most powerful graphics card.
Because the Mac Pro can accommodate two MPX Modules, it’s possible for customers to use two Vega II Duos for a staggering 56 teraflops of graphics performance and 128GB of video memory, perfect for high-intensity editing in film studios.
Also new on the Mac Pro is Afterburner, which includes a programmable ASIC that can decode up to 6.3 billion pixels per second. The technology was designed to allow video editors to use native video formats right from their cameras, decoding up to three 8K ProRes RAW video streams and 12 streams of 4K ProRes RAW in real time, which Apple says will “virtually eliminate proxy workflows” and significantly speed up video editing on the Mac.
Apple will release the new Mac Pro later in the year. Stay tuned for more from AppleMagazine, every day of the week. We’ll bring you the latest on the new Mac Pro, as and when we get it.