Apple’s Mac Pros are pricey desktops designed for prosumer applications, so it’s not often you see them in a person’s home. But the speedy new iMac could render Mac Pros irrelevant even in offices if Apple doesn’t upgrade its high-end desktop soon.
Benchmark testing by Macworld found that the top-of-the-line iMac, which features a 2.8-GHz Core i7 processor (one of the newest Intel chips using the Nehalem microarchitecture) and a 27-inch LCD display, is faster than the two Mac Pros available — a quad-core 2.66-GHz model and an eight-core 2.26-GHz version.
Of course, the iMac and Mac Pro are not directly comparable beasts. With the iMac you get a screen, of course, and this computer-crammed-into-a-display doesn’t have as much wiggle room for adding upgrades. With the Mac Pro you don’t get a screen, but you have a sizable case with more flexibility in terms of adding hard drives, RAM and so on.
Still, there’s probably a good number of prosumers that will choose the iMac now thanks to its performance advantage, huge display and price tag. The Core i7 iMac costs $2,500; the quad-core 2.66GHz Mac Pro costs $2,500, and the eight-core 2.26GHz version costs $3,300.
With all that said, that probably means Apple will be rolling out an upgrade for the Mac Pro fairly soon — perhaps early 2010, since Apple has said this year’s holiday lineup is set.
See Also:
- Apple Unleashes New Macs, Multitouch Mouse
- The 27-Inch iMac Is the New Apple TV
- Customers Complain New iMacs Plagued With Performance Problems …
Image courtesy of Apple
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