8 core MacPro announced

[bwana]

http://www.apple.com/macpro/

Professional velocity.

8-core or quad-core Mac Pro workstation

Meet the latest addition to the Mac Pro family: The world’s first 3.0GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro. Consider the bar officially raised.

Performance standard
No matter which Mac Pro model you choose — 8-core or quad-core Intel Xeon — each delivers advanced performance, workstation graphics, and unparalleled expansion in so many possible configurations, your imagination has finally met its match.

Eight cores or four
Opt for the 8-core Mac Pro and you get the power of two Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Clovertown” processors running at 3.0GHz. Or choose a quad-core Mac Pro featuring two Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors and decide how fast they fly: 2.0GHz, 2.66GHz, or 3.0GHz. At 3.0GHz, the quad-core Mac Pro runs up to 2x faster than the Power Mac G5 Quad.1

as seen on Digg.com

 

[hj2k_x]

Any idea on pricing...?

*sigh

 

[icyrus]

Any idea on pricing...?

*sigh

An arm and a leg, and your torso, and your firstborn son...

 

[hj2k_x]

An arm and a leg, and your torso, and your firstborn son...

That is what I would imagine. At least 150% of the PC equivalent at any rate...

 

[bwana]

That is what I would imagine. At least 150% of the PC equivalent at any rate...

And what would the equivalent PC be?

EDIT according to a digg comment

For anyone that is curious:

An 8-core system (two 3.0GHz Quad-Core processors) with all default settings except processor (1gb ram, 250gb hdd, GeForce 7300 GT) costs $3,997.00.
A 4-core system (two 3.0GHz Dual-Core) with the same settings costs $3,298.00
A 4-core system (two 2.0GHz Dual-Core) with the same settings costs $2,200.00

 

[icyrus]

That is what I would imagine. At least 150% of the PC equivalent at any rate...

I seriously doubt that. It will obviously be expensive, but show me a pc equivalent much cheaper and I will be very much surprised.

 

[hj2k_x]

And what would the equivalent PC be?

EDIT according to a digg comment

Well it's not cheap, but that is certainly some machine.

 

[icyrus]

Hahaha I chose the top spec for everything, not including any screens and the grand total is $12 119

Nice.

 

[bwana]

Too bad I dont have a desk

 

[|tera|]

Too bad I dont have a desk

You do not have ze desk? vy not? dho you need ze desk? Get ze desk from the free desk store, localated somewhere close

OR, just wait for a Quad laptop thinga magick

 

[Skeptik]

As happened before, Apple will remove the cheaper options and the premium model(s) will be the only choice. Now hopefully they will also bump the iMac and the laptops.

 

[supersunbird]

Damn! ****! Thats just wack!

 

[gunslinger]

Very sweet indeed, I dont want to go and look my wallet might burn a hole in my pants

 

[PeterCH]

The nice thing is that a quad core can be updated to the 8 core by switching the CPUs because the CPUs are socketed and pin-compatible (and recognised by the system) . However let me tell you guys this, even with 4 cores, my
3GHz Mac Pro still only runs at 67% when rendering in FCP or Compressor.
I think it's probably the speed of my SATA II HDDs even though I have the
material spread over 2-3 drives, so reading and writing is done on seperate
drives, and there is 3GB of RAM on the system. So 8 cores is an overkill,
since even with 4 the system doesn't utilise them completely. Sure you can do other stuff when rendering, but sometimes you want to render the stuff
faster, without doing anything inbetween. 67% is what my Mac Pro maxes out.