14 DAY TRIAL // At its World Wide Developers Conference that took place in august, Apple unveiled the Mac Pro. This quad Xeon 64-bit desktop workstation featured two Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors running up to 3.0GHz and a new system architecture that delivered up to twice the performance of the Power Mac G5 Quad.
After the Mac Pro has been introduced, Apple received positive feedback not only from customers, but from analysts as well and this seemed to encourage Apple to "raise the bar" once again.
Apple is preparing a new version of the Mac Pro with 8 cores "under the hood". Plans of the Mac maker are to drop jaws and strike awe with a new king of speed, a super-charged Mac Pro, some sources say. This would certainly not be a first, and the new "beast" will house two of Intel's forthcoming quad-core Xeon 5300 series "Clovertown" chips. No official release date has been made public, but people familiar with Apple's plans say that the new eight-core Mac could be introduced after the second half of November as that is the time that Intel will officially launch its quad-core Xeon line, which - in addition to Clovertown - will also include a single processor variant code-named "Kentsfield."
Of the four Clovertown chips that have turned up on Intel price lists, only two fit the bill as potential candidates for the new systems due to their 1333MHz, 64-bit dual independent frontside buses and 8MB Level 2 cache.
The Xeon X5355 runs at speeds of 2.66GHz per core and will retail in lots of 1000 for $1172 each. Meanwhile, the Xeon E5345 runs at 2.33GHz per core and will cost considerably less, making it the ideal candidate for the default configuration of the eight-core Mac Pro. At just $851 a piece, the 2.33GHz carries the same price tag as the 3.0GHz dual-core Woodcrest Xeon currently available to quad-core Mac Pro buyers.
As it stands, the release of the eight-core Mac Pro hinges on both Intel and Apple. But following Intel's mid-Nov. quad-core Xeon launch, the ball should be completely on Apple's side of the court. It'll be strictly a marketing decision from there, say insiders, as the Mac maker wrapped up hardware preparations for this brawny beast during the tail-end of the back-to-school season , AppleInsider reported regarding this issue.
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