Apple said to be preparing 12-core Mac Pros and 27-inch LED Cinema Displays
By Vlad Savov 
posted March 19th 2010 7:32AM
posted March 19th 2010 7:32AM
AppleInsider has rounded up its stable of "people familiar with the matter" and squeezed them for info on Cupertino's plans for the near term. Firstly, they've heard that a 27-inch version of the currently available 24-inch LED Cinema Display is on its way, sporting a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution and targeted for release "by June." The more exciting tip from those in the know, however, relates to the well aged Mac Pro and its future upgrade path. Apple has apparently firmed up plans to offer 6- and 12-core options (to replace the current 4- and 8-core variants), though the star of the show internally is said to be Intel's Xeon 5600, rather than the similarly specced Core i7-980X that had been rumored. This seems to be motivated by the fact the i7 beast can't do dual-CPU configurations, which are necessary to offer a dozen cores. Pricing for the single Xeon CPU model is expected to be close to the current $2,499 starting sticker, but release dates still elude us.
@smithers Why does it need SSD? it already has 4 hard drive bays for up to 2 TBs of onboard storage, not to mention you could just by an external. SSD would just drive up costs.
@amart89
2.5" Boot drive. I dont want to use a full 3.5" bay for a tiny SSD. And It wouldn't drive costs up because if you're looking for an ssd then you're already willing to pay the cost of entry. Buying an external HD defeats the purpose of buying a machine with so much internal storage (which by the way is 8tb max not 2. "2tb x 4hd's"). I have an 8 core MP and my processors are far from my problem when streaming GB's worth of video and audio, and hooked up to external interfaces. LATENCY is what the pros call it.....
@smithers Sit it on top of the optical drive, unless you have two of those.
@smithers
I completely agree that they need to also upgrade the other hardware (SATA 3, USB 3, eSATA) if they are being a professional machine. Since I work in video and film production, a blu-ray burner is pretty much a must have on the new system. Customers want to see their footage shot on RED in HD, not SD. Sure I can buy an aftermarket drive, but if Apple is serious about providing these machines to professionals, then they need to step up their game and put in what professionals need.
@eminisp Maybe he used strong words, but he is still right. Even if you get the parts for cheaper, how much cheaper would that be? And what you save would be at the cost of building it yourself, no support and waiting for good deals.
Also they'll probably have a usb 3.0 on their next model, as it becomes more widely used. I mean be honest, do you have any need for it at the moment?
@amart89 I wouldn't be surprised (depending on when this come out) if USB 3.0 capability is baked into the hardware and could be switched on via a firmware update (like they did with airport extreme a few years back)
@amart89
When you buy a $6000 machine you have the need for it to be future proof. USB 3.0 will be prevalent in 2011. It doesn't matter if I need it now, point is, I will need it and I wont have it.... If I buy a MP this year I'm not going to buy another one next year just because Apple decided to finally put a 2 year old technology in it. We're not talking about a $1100 MacBook that you can just "buy a new one" when it gets too slow but it "fits my needs now".... This is a Mac"PRO"
@smithers
Completely agree. I'm in the market for a new MP, but won't be purchasing one until it is outfitted with current technologies (i.e. USB 3.0, Blu-Ray, etc.)
@Optimus
SATA i can understand, but surely you can jut pop in a usb board. how easy is that?
It would have to be the xeons . You cant put 2 core ix processors together.
I'm not sure why you would be surprised that they would use Xeon 5600s over an i7 chip.... the X58 chipset that the i7 series uses doesn't support SMP (not to be confused with SMT, aka Hyper Threading).
they should make it a quad-socket mobo, you know, just to make sure people are insane enough to want one.. (but I mean 4x6 cores?, you may need 1 core just dedicated to assigning threads to other cores)
Nice screen, but will it display 3D. And even better yet, when do Macs get to play Blu-Rays with menus :P
I was recently looking into a dedicated rendering/modelling rig and there's actually a point where it becomes cheaper to buy a Mac Pro and rip out the OS than buying from Dell.
But considering what the Sandy Bridge B2 will offer thanks to AVX I'll probably go that route and buy a normal single socket rig for the time until that.