Computers

Apple might release six-core Mac Pros

(THE INQUIRER) - EXPENSIVE TOYMAKER Apple might be about to release a line of six-core Mac Pros that you will have to mortgage your house to buy.

A number of tech magazines are reporting that the Mac Pros will be based around Intel’s Core i7-970 chip and should be in the shops in a couple of weeks.

If turns out to be the case then Apple will have done a deal with Chipzilla to get the chips early again. A similar deal was done with Intel’s Core i5 chips when those found their way into Macbooks before they were widely available.

The rumour mill is also reporting that the machines will have Mac-edition ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards, which cost nearly £300.

The last major refresh to the Mac Pro equipped it with Intel’s Nehalem Xeon processors, with a high-end eight-core Mac Pro offering two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 chips. Earlier this month, Apple upgraded that to a potential maximum 2.93GHz eight-core system.

All up we can expect any new Apple Mac Pro machines to be expensive in a way that many can’t comprehend. Apple usually takes the hardware costs of the machines and then about doubles or triples that to arrive at a retail price.

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