Apple might release six-core Mac Pros

The chip alone costs more than a $1000!

Apple might be about to release a line of six-core Mac Pros that you will have to mortgage your house to buy.

A number of tech magazines are reporting that the Mac Pros will be based around Intel's Core i7-970 chip and should be in the shops in a couple of weeks.

If this turns out to be the case then Apple will have done a deal with Intel to get the chips early again. A similar deal was done with Intel's Core i5 chips when those found their way into Macbooks before they were widely available.

The rumour mill is also reporting that the machines will have Mac-edition ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards, which cost nearly $600.

The last major refresh to the Mac Pro equipped it with Intel's Nehalem Xeon processors, with a high-end eight-core Mac Pro offering two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 chips. Earlier this month, Apple upgraded that to a potential maximum 2.93GHz eight-core system.

All up we can expect any new Apple Mac Pro machines to be expensive in a way that many can't comprehend. Apple usually takes the hardware costs of the machines and then about doubles or triples that to arrive at a retail price.

Our guess is that any new Mac Pro will probably end up at about $6,000 or more. The beast will be targeted at high-end professional workstations in publishing and art studios.

Behind the scenes with Mass Effect 3! GTX 560 VGA round-up! Essential Skyrim tweaks to improve your game! Plus reviews, news, hardware, more games, and easy to following modding guides for PC builders. ON SALE NOW!

Ads by Google

8 Comments

Jeruselem Mar 15, 2010 2:26 PM	I wonder the Intel i7-980X is an option? :D
brissietex Mar 16, 2010 1:13 PM	so let me think...that'd mean the base model of these new Macs would cost as much as a small nice new car when you factor in the Apple Tax. :)
sonic087 Mar 16, 2010 7:12 PM	Umm the Macbook's use Core 2 Duo chips, the new iMac's use i5 and i7 chips. Bring on the Apple Tax :)
strifus Apr 23, 2010 8:14 PM	I dont know why people actually buy the stuff. I mean apart from the aesthetics and the OS, there is nothing that is really good about the Macs themselves. Often running benches slower than a similarly rated PC build, easily less upgradable and your choices are limited in many areas. So I would rather spend the same money on a much better specced PC than on a lower specced Mac.
A23 Apr 27, 2010 1:25 AM	Isn't that what Macs are for? Nobody who buys a Ferrari selects on price alone. Defining where good aesthetics can go and having a user interface which works properly don't always get beamed down from Mars for free. I'm unsure exactly how to make use of that many bogomips, but then, I doubt that most Ferrari drivers know how to make best use of all that horsepower. Just being able to have it and show it is a bragging right for the professions and never mind the price. So long as a high price is supporting greener and fairer supply chain management, end of life decommissioning, and the sensible parts of R&D, that is a price which should not be lowered to match bog standard systems made by monkeys and slung overboard as e-waste off Somalia.
A23 Apr 27, 2010 1:27 AM	By the way, I'm writing from a bog standard system recovered from mostly 8-12 year old parts of a Win98 box and running Ubuntu 9.10.
baalbeck May 5, 2010 7:04 PM	Wonderfull news. 12 core ??? Hopefully this will bring down the resale of 8 core machines to a reasonable level.
12345 May 13, 2010 10:53 AM	LOL. apple tax. Bend over please and accept... Mastercard?

Comments have been disabled on this article.

Latest Competitions

Thermaltake kicks off your gaming year with a BANG
Thermaltake has started off the new year with a bang by giving away a Tt eSport Theron Laser mouse to not one or two, but TWENTY lucky Atomicans!

Atomic Magazine

Issue: 133 | February, 2012

Atomic is a magazine aimed squarely at computer enthusiasts, gamers, and serious PC upgraders.

Every month we bring you the latest reviews of new technology and PC components, in depth features on everything from overclocking to console hacking, and gaming previews and interviews.

What's in this issue?