Apple must have felt their “wow factor” was a little low; what with their relative silence since the rush of hardware updates; the iPhone being the most recent bit of hullaballoo. Today they kicked it up a notch, releasing an 8 core Mac Pro, as well as lowering the prices of their 20 and 23 inch Cinema displays $100, and their 30 inch $200.

It is generally known through the Mac community as well as the art and entertainment industries that the Mac Pro really is that…designed for the pros. If you weren’t working on the recent movie 300, running a recording studio, or doing intense graphical or image editing, you really don’t need the Pro.

Apple’s new 8 core setup only broadens that gap; the entire setup is listed below:

- 2 Quad-core Intel Xeon 5300 “Clovertown” processors at 3.0 GHz

- 16 MB L2 cache

- 128 SSE3 Vector Engine

- 1.33 GHz front side buses (2x)
Those are the basic processing specifications, and obviously you can customize your Mac Pro to your heart’s content.

Personally, if I was a professional, I would probably want this setup below:

- 2 dual quad-core xeon processors at 3.0 GHz each

- 4 GB DDR2 Memory (667 mhz)

- 1 Terabyte storage (2 500 GB hard drives)

- 4 GeForce 7300 GTs (256 MB each)

- 2 30″ Apple Cinema displays

- Applecare protection plan

This comes in at a lean $9,628. Drop in the bucket, right? But you have 8 CORES!!

As I stated before, Apple also dropped the price of the 20, 23, and 30 inch displays to $599, $899, and $1799, respectively. Most likely this is an incentive to those Pros who undoubtably want something pretty to go with their new Mac Pro…it could also be because their cinema displays are a tad bit overpriced to start with.

No complaints here; now, whoever gets their 8 core Mac Pro and 30 inch cinema display, you call me so I can play the most impressive game of Rome: Total War ever.