The current Apple Mac Pro has been around for a few years now and it has become somewhat outdated. Meaning really any time now Apple could announce the next generation Mac Pro which would include the latest parts from Intel and it looks like NVIDIA this year.
According to some anonymous sources Apple plans to switch over to NVIDIA to provide the graphics cards for the next Mac Pro. The NVIDIA graphics would be paired with upcoming Ivy Bridge processors which are due to arrive this April and replace the current Sandy Bridge chips. The new Ivy Bridge chips will solve all of the issues that the older Mac Pro had with overheating. Since Ivy Bridge uses a 22nm manufacturing process it uses quite a bit less energy and as the result of that it produces quite a bit less heat.
Apple right now is testing out Ivy Bridge processors with 8 cores and 20MB of L3 cache for their upcoming Mac Pro. Since we’re talking about a Mac Pro here you’ll probably be able to pick up a system with two of those eight core processors which will be a step up from the previous maximum of two six core processors. So as you can tell when it comes to the processors Intel has Apple covered. But what about the graphics card?
NVIDIA should be the company providing the graphics cards for the next Mac Pro. The Mac Pros should use the upcoming NVIDIA Kepler platform which is also due to arrive this spring. The NVIDIA cards should work better than AMD cards when it comes to a lot of the Adobe products that people use on the Mac Pros. Apple also had some issues with the AMD cards in the last Mac Pros so the NVIDIA cards might fix those issues.
When it comes to the launch of these Ivy Bridge and Kepler Mac Pros we’re most likely looking at a Q3 2012 launch which is still a ways away. But if you want to get a Mac Pro I’d really suggest waiting since I don’t think you want to spend $2500 on something that will get replaced in just a few months.
