Apple Unveils New Mac Pro and Retina 32″ Display with 6K Resolution and HDR
Apple has introduced a new Mac Pro. The desktop has a stainless steel housing and handles, can be moved via wheels, is designed for modularity and has very powerful specifications. Apple also comes with a Retina 32″ screen with 6k and HDR support.
The new Mac Pro features an Intel Xeon processor that supports up to 28 CPU cores. There is also support for working memory with a capacity of up to 1.5TB, there are six memory channels, which are ECC memory at 2933MHz and twelve available slots.
There are eight PCI-e slots for graphics cards and support for up to four Radeon Pro Vega II GPUs. The default configuration is a single Radeon Pro Vega II with 32GB of HBM2 memory. The required power is provided by a 1.4 kW power supply. Users can use a so-called mpx module, which can add extra computing power to an x16 PCI connector via a Thunderbolt 3 connection. The desktop is calculated on two mpx modules, so that a total of four Vega II GPUs can be placed.
Apple has also added its own hardware in the form of the Afterburner card to the Mac Pro. This means that 6.3 billion pixels can be decoded per second. This means three simultaneous 8k raw video streams can be played, or twelve 4k streams. To keep all this cool, there are three fans and a blower, which, according to Apple, together make less noise than an iMac Pro that is working hard.
The new Mac Pro is the successor to the black cylindrical Mac Pro from December 2013. It includes a version of the desktop with an eight-core Intel Xeon CPU, 32GB of RAM and the Radeon Pro 580; this model will be available this fall for $5999. For those interested, a Mac Pro version will also be available in a rack from the autumn, so that it can be placed in an editing or server room, for example.
In addition, Apple has also introduced a new screen for the Mac Pro. It’s about the Pro Display XDR. It’s a 6k Retina display with a 32″ diagonal screen size, making it the largest Retina panel the company has ever made, according to Apple. The new Mac Pro can connect six of these monitors, increasing the total number of pixels at 120 million. The screen can be rotated vertically into a portrait position.
This screen is completely focused on a convincing HDR display: it has a sustained brightness of 1000cd/m² and a peak brightness of 1600cd/m². Furthermore, the screen has a dci-p3 color space and a static contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1. According to Apple, the Pro Display XDR has very good viewing angles and the company does not speak of high dynamic range with this screen, but ‘extreme dynamic range’.
The Pro Display XDR will cost $4999, although the nano-texture version will cost $1000 more. The special monitor stand, from which the screen can be detached quite easily, costs 999 euros.