The new Mac Pro: first look

The updated Mac Pro was just one of the many refreshed products announced today by Apple. They’ve taken an amazing machine and turned it into a monster. It’s like Beauty and the Beast all in one package. The most obvious updates were the new Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor and the NVIDIA graphics card.

While the outside has stayed relatively the same, the inside received some major changes. First, it’s been redesigned to make everything more accessible and upgradable. You can put 32GB of RAM, 4TB of storage and four PCI Express 2.0 espansion cards in here. That’s crazy!

If you take a look on the inside, you’ll find a number of new things. First up is the Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor. It has 8MB of shared L3 cache and 1066MHz of DDR3 ECC memory. Apple says these deliver up to 2.4 times greater memory bandwidths.

Next, you now have choices when it comes to graphics in the Mac Pro. You can pick between the NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB of GDDR3 memory or upgrade to an ATI Radeon HD 4870. The NVIDIA is supposed to be 2.9 times faster than previous models, and the ATI is 2 times faster than that, making it almost 6 times faster than the last Mac Pro, or at least that’s what she said. Both Mini DisplayPort and dual-link DVI are present on every one of these cards. Yes, I said every one of them. You can fit up to four, wallet permitting.

As far as ports are concerned, you have two USB 2.0, two Firewire 800 and a headphone mini jack on the front. The back has the same with an extra USB port, analog in and out for audio, two Gigabit Ethernet ports and your display connections.

I love how on Apple’s store page for the Mac Pro has the standard “Is this your first Mac?” link at the bottom for PC to Mac switchers. If this is anyone’s first Mac, I am thoroughly jealous. Most of us will never get to see one of these outside of an Apple Store.