The newly introduced Apple Mac Pro will probably be the most expensive workstation ever. Even the basic version of the system with 8-core Xeon processor, Radeon Pro 580X as well as 32 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD that will be released in autumn costs 5,999 dollars plus VAT in the USA. Apple has not yet published the prices for the numerous upgrade options, but based on the Group’s previous pricing policy, the maximum equipment should cost around 50,000 dollars.
At first glance, it’s noticeable that Apple has turned away from the cylinder design of its predecessor and has rebuilt the Mac Pro into a classic desktop case.
Also graphics card the Mac Pro from AMD is a premiere. Two Vega GPUs manufactured in 7 nm are installed per graphics card. The Radeon Vega II Duo has 32 GB of graphics memory per GPU, with two built-in graphics cards the Mac Pro has four GPUs with a total of 128 GB of graphics memory. The total computing power of the graphics cards is 56 TeraFlops in the fastest configuration according to Apple. This corresponds to the performance of four Radeon VII graphics cards. The basic version unfortunately “only” uses a Radeon Pro 580X (Polaris), as an intermediate stage there is a graphics card with a single Vega-20 GPU and 32 GB graphics memory to choose from.
The processors for Mac Pro come exclusively from Intel. The fastest CPU available alone, the Intel Xeon W-3275M with 28 cores and 56 threads, already costs almost 7,500 dollars. The memory offers between 32 GB and 1.5 TB capacity. The SSD of the basic version has a ridiculous 256 GB in the price range. A maximum of 4 TB SSD capacity is possible via two M.2 modules, which Apple will have paid for princely as usual.
| Cores/threads | Clock (base) | Turbo (1 core) / Turbo 3.0 | max. memory | TDP | Price | |
| Xeon W-3275M | 28/56 | 2.5 GHz | 4.4 / 4.6 GHz | 2 TB DDR4-2933 | 205 W | 7.453 USD |
| Xeon W-3265M | 24/48 | 2.7 GHz | 4.4 / 4.6 GHz | 2 TB DDR4-2933 | 205 W | 6.353 USD |
| Xeon W-3245 | 16/32 | 3.2 GHz | 4.4 / 4.6 GHz | 1 TB DDR4-2933 | 205 W | 1,999 USD |
| Xeon W-3235 | 12/24 | 3.3 GHz | 4.4 / 4.5 GHz | 1 TB DDR4-2933 | 180 W | 1.398 USD |
| Xeon W-3223 | 8/16 | 3.5 GHz | 4.0 / 4.2 GHz | 1 TB DDR4-2933 | 180 W | 749 USD |
Power supply with 1.400 Watt
In the fastest configuration, the power consumption of the Mac-Pro is around 850 watts. Since a total of eight PCIe slots are available and the Mac Pro will be equipped with additional hardware, Apple has already installed a power supply with 1,400 watts of power even in the lowest configuration. The impressive axial fans behind the “cheese grater front” are also fitted in all equipment variants. According to Apple, the powerful cooling system ensures that the Mac Pro doesn’t get loud as an iMac Pro even under heavy load.
Apple Afterburner for video editing
The PCIe expansion card Apple Afterburner underlines Apple’s claim to bring a device for professional users onto the market with the Mac Pro, in addition to the high price. According to the presentation, thanks to hardware acceleration of the ProRes and ProRes RAW video formats, the expansion card enables decoding of 12 parallel 4K streams or three parallel 8K streams. Thanks to the free resources of GPU and CPU, this should enable the use of filters in real time.
The motherboard, which instead of the (E)ATX form factor has its own format developed by Apple, offers two 10 Gbit LAN ports, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, two USB 3.0 ports and a jack port.
