If you’re like me and are about due for a new Mac Pro upgrade, don’t get your wallet out just yet. You might’ve heard about Apple’s recent update to the iMac line, with the huge 27″ Core i7 model… well, that model closed the gap quite a bit on Mac Pro performance and at a much lower price point. Meantime, Intel has begun manufacturing its 6-core Gulftown Core i7 and Core i9 (Xeon) CPUs… based on the same Nehalem architecture as current Mac Pros, but which have been shrunk down and which include new performance optimizations as well.
The point of all this is that it’s pretty likely Apple will get an exclusivity deal with Intel (just as they had with Nehalem Xeons in the beginning) to launch the new 6-core machines sometime early in 2010. There is also the possibility that Apple will include new connectivity options like USB 3 and the new Radeon 5870 card, and other high-end BTO options, to further separate the performance-value score of the Mac Pros from the iMac. Hopefully -if they’re merciful- they’ll drop the price on the Mac pros by $300 or so as well. They’ve been pretty steep this last go-round (enough so that I stuck with my old Penryn Mac Pro) and this would also further separate Mac Pros from the rest of the crowd in terms of performance value.
We also know that Adobe has been optimizing applications like After Effects CS4 for multi-core machines, and that Adobe has already announced After Effects CS5, as well as Photoshop CS5, will be true 64-bit apps on the Mac, allowing for greater RAM allocations for huge project files, etc. We’re entering the golden age of creative computing here IMO. We’re going to be able to experiment more freely, being render-bound less often when mocking things up, and performance overall should be much more efficient in the next few years as software makers start to catch up to these 8 and 12-core beasts stocked with powerful GPUs and 12-24 GB of RAM. Should be fun!!
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