As the still unspecified December launch date for the Mac Pro nears, as well as unpublicized pricing for configurations other than the $2,999 and $3,999 models, we are all eagerly awaiting any new developments, and in the last few days, a couple of them have surfaced. Not only has MacRumors posted price quotes from members of both their forum and that of FCP.co, but they've also shared new sets of benchmarks for the 12-core Mac Pro have been uploaded by Geekbench as well. Continue on for more info.
Pricing
A few weeks ago, a member of the FCP.co forum reported that he had spoken with an Apple business rep and received information on the pricing for a maxed out Mac Pro. He writes:
I just chatted with an Apple business rep. Considering what the individual components cost, and what some of the estimates were, I'm SHOCKED at how good the pricing is.
A MAXED OUT MacPro- 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, D700s, and 12-core CPU is -- CN$9,700.
I also had him price out a 8-core with the 500GB SSD- and that was CN$7,700. I'm amazed.
That number may not seem all that amazing at first, but it's considerably less than some speculative prices that were somewhere in the vicinity of $14,000 for the 12-core CTO with all the bells and whistles (minus displays). MacRumors has also reported that one of their forum members received a quote for a higher-end 6-core stock model upgraded with additional RAM and flash storage, which came out to be a little over $5,000.
New Benchmarks
MacRumors explains that when the 6-core, 8-core, and 12-core models were tested, the first two were done so under Geekbench 3, while the 12-core was done so under Geekbench 2, making the results difficult to compare. However, the latest benchmarks for the 12-core have been uploaded, this time running on Geekbench 3 for all three runs. (Here are the links to Run 1, Run 2, and Run 3.)
According to MacRumors, the third run's better scores -- "roughly 10-11% higher than their 32-bit counterparts for both single-core and multi-core testing," might be attributed to the 64-bit version of the testing suite.
As we've said before in a previous post covering Mac Pro benchmarks, Geekbench is a CPU-only test that only measures processor and memory performance, meaning they don't utilize the GPU.
As far as the Mac Pro's launch date, we'll be sure to keep you posted on any new developments.
What do you think about the latest pricing/benchmark information?
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