One thing you might have missed in all the excitement of yesterday’s new iMac, Mac Mini and Mac Pro announcements, is that the latest Apple Mac Pro is cleverly sporting a brand new, next-gen Intel chipset. Both versions pack the new quad core Intel Xeon ‘Nehalem’ processor, which Intel itself hadn’t even gotten around to announcing properly.
If you recognise the name ‘Nehalem’, it’s because it’s the name of the same architecture that goes into Intel’s Core i7 desktop processors. These aren’t quite the same though – the Mac Pro packs the newer Nehalem-EP Xeon line of CPUs, which are designed for dual-socket servers and workstations.
The new Mac Pros come in two flavours: a quad core machine with one 2.66GHz Intel Xeon Nehalem processor, and a crushingly expensive 8-core version with two 2.26GHz Intel Xeon processors. Apple decided to pack the new Intel CPUs into these hefty buggers due to the demands of high definition video – or, more specifically, the real time editing of HD video.
Other companies are likely to follow Apple’s lead, releasing machines with the same Nehalem-EP architecture. Although by the end of the year, even these might be overshadowed by Nehalem-EX processors, designed for large servers.
Out now | From £1,899 | Intel (available at Apple) (via Macworld)
