Mac Pro introduced (notes from Keynote): Ships today, Up to Dual dual-core 3 GHz, more

• G5 "will fade into history"
• based on the Intel Xeon chipset "Woodcrest"
• "Core 2" architecture -- all dual-core
• Speeds up to 3 Ghz
• 4 MB shared L2 cache
• 128 bit vector engine
• 64-bit
• performance per watt: Xeon compares favorably to G5 and Opteron.
• Two dual-core Xeons in each Mac Pro (four cores)
• Performance comparison to G5: specInt -- 54 for G5, 115 from G5
• "Twice as fast as the G5" -- Schiller
• Real-world performance increases -- Xcode 1.8 times faster on Mac Pro compared to G5
• Dual 1.33 GHz busses
• 4 channel, 256-bit, 667 MHz RAM bus, up to 16 GB of RAM supported
• Less cooling
• 4 hard drives can be installed, 4 TB
• Dual optical drive bays
• More front I/0: Another USB and FireWire 800
• 4 PCI express slots, Double-wide graphics slot
• New drive carrier, drives simply snap in place, no cables or installation tools required

One standard configuration:

• dual 2.66 Ghz dual-core Xeons
• 1 GB RAM
• 250 GB hard drive
• Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT
• $2499

Pricing comparison to Dell: Dell's similar configuration about $1000 more

User-configurable options:

• 2.0 Ghz, 2.66 Ghz, 3 GHz
• ATI Radeon X1900
• Nvidia QuadroFX 4500
• AirPort and Bluetooth

Starts shipping today

Schiller -- "transition complete" 210 days to completely transition January 10 to August 7th.

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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