The new workstation costs $3,000 for the basic but still powerful model, but upgrading the processor, storage, and graphics quickly raises the price.
The Mac Pro is built in the US.
(Credit: Apple)
The $3,000 entry-level configuration of Apple's new Mac Pro is nothing to sneeze at -- but if you want more horsepower, the price goes up rapidly as high as $9,600.
Apple's distinctively glossy black and cylindrical Mac Pro just went on sale Thursday, with a ship date of December 30. Apple teased customers for more than a year about the new machine, which replaces a much bulkier and now quite elderly Mac Pro. Mac Pros are geared for people with demanding computing chores, with video editing at the top of the list: each step up in computing power means that editors can add new effects, experiment with more looks for a scene, or share rough cuts sooner.
The basic model of the distinctive workstation includes a 3.7 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with a 10MB memory cache, 12GB of 1866MHz DDR3 error-correcting memory, dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics chips with 2GB of video memory each, and a 256GB SSD whose flash memory is connected via the PCI Express bus for faster performance than ordinary SATA-connected SSDs.
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It's also got four USB 3.0 ports, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, an HDMI 1.4 port, two gigabit Ethernet ports, 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless networking, a headphone jack, a digital or analog audio output jack, and a built-in speaker.
If you have another $1,000 to spend and you don't want a new MacBook Air, you can pick a higher-end Mac Pro configuration. It's got a six-core Xeon E5 with 12MB of cache, 16GB of memory, and dual AMD Firepro D500 graphics chips.
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If you want to go beyond the basics, the sticker shock really kicks in. Other upgrade options are as follows:
Moving to a 512GB SSD costs an extra $300, and moving to 1GB costs $800, for example.
Processor upgrades give customers more processing cores -- handy for rendering video or other processor-intensive chores -- but lower clock speeds.
The entry-level model Xeon upgrades are as follows: 3.5GHz 6-core chip with 12MB of adds $500.00, a 3.0GHz 8-core chip with 25MB of cache adds $2,000, and a 2.7GHz 12-core chip with 30MB of cache adds $3,500.00.
For the higher-end Mac Pro, moving to the 3.0GHz 8-core chip with 25MB of cache adds $1,500.00, and the 2.7GHz 12-core chip with 30MB of cache adds $3,000.
Upgrading the basic configuration to 16GB of memory costs another $100, 32GB costs $500 more, and 64GB costs $1,300 more. Upgrading the higher-end model to 32GB costs $400 more, and to 64GB costs $1,200 more.
For graphics upgrades, the lower-end starter model offers two upgrades: dual AMD FirePro D500 graphics chips with 3GB video RAM for another $400, or dual D700 graphics chips with 6GB of VRAM for another $1,000. The higher-end Mac Pro offers only the latter upgrade, which costs another $600.
The Mac Pro doesn't have a monitor, of course, but you can add an Apple 27-inch Thunderbolt display for $1,000 or a 32-inch Sharp PN-K321 4K display for $3,595.
Shipping is free, though.