Apple's waiting on Intel's Penryn for revamped Mac Pros?

Apple's desktop warrior Mac Pro doesn't get half the play of Apple's laptops and iMac in the rumor mill, but that doesn't mean there isn't plenty of pent up love for the beastly machine. AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has a revision ready with a significant overhaul of the internals. Apparently what's holding things up is Intel's 45nm Penryn chips, which should be available around the middle of November. Of course, rumors had the Mac Pro in quite similar shape last year, with Apple holding up production for upcoming Clovertown chips. Those arrived right on time, but Apple held up the 8-core Mac for five months in anticipation of Creative Suite 3. The theories this time around are that now that demand is raging for pro machines thanks to Adobe's quite successful product, Apple's going to try to get a new high-end machine -- which could be up to 45 percent faster -- out the door as soon as possible. Rumored specs top out at dual quad-core Xeon "Harpertown" chips running up to 3.2GHz with 1600MHz bus and 12MB of L2 cache, which would be 8 cores of thunder indeed. Who knows if Intel can be shipping enough of those by the end of this year to warrant a Mac Pro release, but it seems like however it goes down, professionals are going to have a new and pricey toy from Apple before too terribly long.

[tony @ Oct 18th 2007 2:01PM]

Good, maybe the current 8 core will see a price reduction on ebay and elsewhere for the new year.

[Connor Murphy @ Oct 18th 2007 2:02PM]

Finally. Been waiting on this for a loong time, now if only Colorware would paint it black for me....

[scott @ Oct 18th 2007 2:31PM]

These guys'll do it for you, but without a warrantee, eek...

http://www.alumamax.com/product.html

[Geir E @ Oct 19th 2007 3:29AM]

I would paint it black for you for free. Send it over, and I'll have it back, ready to flunk its new black color, somewhere around 2010.

[Fraser Drew @ Oct 18th 2007 2:07PM]

Black MacPro would be sweet... If only i had the money i would be there a longggg time ago! (not a pro user, but would love headless Mac to sit under my desk)

[Jason @ Oct 18th 2007 2:12PM]

45% faster in real world usage? - I highly doubt that.

More like 5-15% faster in real world usage.

[shaun @ Oct 18th 2007 2:27PM]

God I've always seen the mac pros in the shop and thought "if I won the lottery I would soo get one of those" but when you think about it how wasted would it be just running like iLife and microsoft word? It's like seriously powerful lol

[apeguero @ Oct 18th 2007 2:28PM]

Man. How much faster could it get? I've had my MacPro for almost a year now and 2.66ghz dual core CPUs and 7gigs of RAM is plenty quick for me. What would I do with so much power? I'll have to resist the urge as I'm plenty happy with my older MacPro at the time and I'm also not creating movies or doing big time batch jobs of any kind.

[Rob @ Oct 18th 2007 2:32PM]

Very nice. I've been eying one of these babies ever since they were called "G5." However, I don't think my copy of Final Cut Pro 4 will work on this. Man, I'd hate to cough up the big bucks for FCP again.

[sdwells @ Oct 18th 2007 2:38PM]

the mac pros are in desperate need of a revamp...... if you want to call them a professional computer then the base model should be at least up to pro standards! only 1gb ram?! only one 250gb hard drive?! bluetooth and wireless NOT BUILT IN?! yeah you can pay the ridiculously high price to upgrade those and other aspects of the mac pro, but i'm saying they should set a higher bar to start with.

... that and i would expect the apple care extended protection plan to be a standard on all "pro" equipment they sell, if you're buying "pro" equipment then you should get "pro" level support included...

[Norris Shelton @ Oct 18th 2007 2:56PM]

I would rather they not have these features. I want the CPU's and will put in my own raptors. Bluetooth and wireless ... not interested.

[HineyWipe @ Oct 18th 2007 3:17PM]

You still get more bang per buck. The Mac Pro has been a BIG improvement over the G5 machines. But like any design, it can benefit from staying current:
-SAS drives
-more video output options
-more bus speed
-eSata ports
-lower power, faster cores
When you price the cost of the dual processors in both dual core and quad core, the Mac Pros are still cheaper in BTO.
Currently, upgrading xeons to a pair of 3.0Ghz Dual 5160's will run $1600.
And a pair of 5365's (the quad 3.0's) will run $2500. So those wanting to upgrade from older Pro's will have to decide if it's worth it. But atleast, they can.

[Dax @ Oct 18th 2007 3:54PM]

I totally agree. Apple has all but forgotton about the Mac Pro. The case design is really old and the displays need to be refreshed badly. While they have received good speed bumps, its going to take a redesign to get consumers to plop down 4k.

[kevinm @ Oct 18th 2007 5:05PM]

The major drawback, for me, is the lack of support for the latest graphics from ATI and Nvidia. The are a bit lacking.

[Anthony @ Oct 18th 2007 2:44PM]

I just hope that means us current owners get a chance to upgrade the video card. I don't care if its at a slight premium cost wise, it would just be nice to have the option.

[celeritas @ Oct 18th 2007 3:12PM]

It would be nice to see support for SLi or Crossfire on the new Mac Pro and more extensive configuration options. Also, the online store lists the RAID card as a $999 option for the Mac Pro. Am I missing something here or is that the most overpriced piece of computer hardware I've ever seen. Not that I could even afford the base configuration anyway but a college guy can dream, right?

[Philometalist @ Oct 18th 2007 8:42PM]

Just to clarifiy, the Mobo in the Current Mac Pros DO support SLI, it's the operating system that blocks the machine from taking advantage of the technology. People have been running PC based vid cards in SLI configurations in the Mac Pro for a while now via bootcamp in Windows, but must remove such cards and replaced them with the Apple supported cards inorder to reboot into OS X. It's not the Mac Pro that's the problem, it's the OS.

Just wanted to point that out.

[bob e @ Oct 18th 2007 3:38PM]

I bet those won't come cheap my friends. Quite agreed this tired line up is in dire need of a makeover.

http://www.macproguide.com

[Adam @ Oct 18th 2007 3:48PM]

I'd like to see the laptop 45nm in the Macbook Pro sometime soon. I'm hoping it will be before the end of the year, but all I keep reading is that the MBP revision won't be until January or February.

[Ballashoes @ Oct 18th 2007 4:06PM]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=162638&page=1

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=162552

[Dale @ Oct 18th 2007 4:12PM]

There were the days when I drooled at the thought of owning a quad core Mac Pro. Day to day, though, my 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro more than meets my needs... I can even run World Of Warcraft and Command & Conquer 3 at the system's maximum resolution, all settings maxed out without slowdown. More than that is just a waste of money.

[cyrus @ Oct 18th 2007 4:25PM]

I don't care much about a change in design but I'll surely appreciate a black Mac Pro. I currently use a 3.0 GHZ (8-core) , 1.5 GB, 16Gb mem for my home office, and it's fast enough. Although my next upgrade would probable be in 2 years' time, I'd love if in its next "improvement" it would have all, and more, of what hineywipe mentioned and support for Crossfire. And an upgradeable graphic card

[Philometalist @ Oct 18th 2007 8:30PM]

I'm really happy with my Quad 2.66 but I'm interested to see what a "significant overhaul of the internals" will turn out to be.

[Philometalist @ Oct 18th 2007 9:23PM]

Just to clarifiy, the Mobo in the Current Mac Pros DO support SLI,
it's the operating system that blocks the machine from taking
advantage of the technology. People have been running PC based vid
cards in SLI configurations in the Mac Pro for a while now via
bootcamp in Windows, but must remove such cards and replaced them
with the Apple supported cards inorder to reboot into OS X. It's not
the Mac Pro that's the problem, it's the OS.

Just wanted to point that out.

[Max Fun @ Oct 18th 2007 9:25PM]

I want a Mac as my gaming and work machine. But I already have a sweet 24" screen, so the iMac is out (don't like built in screens either), and the Mac mini doesn't have a video card, so the only option is a Mac Pro. But I don't need a freak'in 8 core, don't care to pay for registered RAM, and I want DX10 video cards, so I'm hoping that Apple will release a 'entry level' Mac Pro with just 4 non-Xeon cores and a mid to high end graphics card. Sadly, I can see it eating into their iMac sales, so it's not likely to happen :(

[Joe B @ Oct 18th 2007 9:48PM]

I find it hard to believe that they would release a new Mac Pro to cash in on the CS3 market right after the new OS is released. Just last month Adobe warned their customers that CS3 was not working with Leopard. Unless Apple ironed out the kinks in the last few weeks since that statement, I don't see many pro level designers buying a system with an operating system incompatible with their primary tools.

[James D @ Oct 18th 2007 9:52PM]

some of you just dont get the market its aimed at do you?

its an 8 core workstation, you can put in as much ram as you want, and kit it out with a (limited) variety of graphics cards. you can connect it to external fiber / esata arrays etc for faster storage.

for comparison machines, look at Dell Precision, Sun Ultra's, Boxxtech, HP workstations etc, then the price starts to look a whole lot better doesnt it?

[N30 G30 @ Oct 18th 2007 11:12PM]

This machine is insane. Perfect for 3D artist, digital photographers, and graphic artists in general.

I want to see the motherboard on this thing!

[LegendZ28 @ Oct 19th 2007 11:21AM]

Interesting that so many people want to go back to black now, a few years ago, everything came in black and people thought it was too ordinary and dull. Now that everything comes in silver and white, people want to go back to black devices.

[coldracerx @ Oct 19th 2007 7:46PM]

Is there any way I can get this case and build my own machine. I love the look of the mac pro case for obvious reason (cool insides) but I want to build my own system that does not break the bank also I will never use a mac (again)so want to build a nice winxp/vista machine with this case.
If you know where to buy just this case let me know.

[Nick @ Dec 29th 2007 6:54AM]

Personally what I want is a more compact, less power-hungry Mac which can still take two hard drives. I'm stuck with a Mac Mini at the moment with a pile of drives and hubs, but it would be much better if it was all in one box. My recipe would include the aforementioned twin 3.5" hard drives, a decent ration of USB and Firewire ports, support for a minimum of 4GB RAM, and a compact enclosure. I totally don't want a desk-dominating power sucking megamonster system like the current Mac Pros. I know they aren't as power-hungry as some PCs might be, but they're still Hummers in comparison to the Prius I would like. This is the box that Apple need now to fill the gaping void in the middle of its product offering. I, for one, am not going to buy a new system until something like this comes out. When it does I will probably buy three straight away to re-equip our family systems.