Although Apple has already offered a sneak peek at their new sleek black aluminum Mac Pro, the device is not expected to launch until sometime later this year (likely in the fall). They’ve also stopped short of revealing the actual specs of the new device – but new Geekbench results appearing at Primate Labs may shed a bit of light on what to expect in terms of performance.
The results were first noticed by MacRumors editor Eric Silva:
[…]if a new Geekbench result is authentic, it appears that the new machine is already starting to show up in public benchmarking databases. Rather than showing up as a “MacPro6,1” as would be expected for Apple’s next-generation Mac Pro, the new machine is dubbed “AAPLJ90,1”, perhaps a reference to a J90 code name following Apple’s usual format.
Also supporting the authenticity of the entry is the listing of a custom build of OS X Mavericks, 13A2054, running on the machine. The listed motherboard ID is also one which was discovered in OS X Mavericks as corresponding to the new Mac Pro. The machine in question is running a single 12-core processor from the upcoming Ivy Bridge-E family, specifically the Xeon E5-2697 v2 running at 2.7 GHz. It is also equipped with 64 GB of RAM.
By comparison, the machine shows significantly higher performance using a single processor than the current high-end Mac Pro running dual 3.06 GHz CPUs. While there’s little question that the benchmarks are likely authentic, the bigger question is whether results represent what Apple will include with their final hardware once it begins shipping.
Notably, MacRumors points to a conversation with John Poole of Primate Labs, who suggests the results may not be final, and may in fact point to unresolved thermal issues in the hardware. It’s also likely that further refinements to OS X Mavericks (which is still very much in beta) and the hardware itself could bring even more significant performance gains.
Regardless, Apple’s new Mac Pro appears to be a serious power house when it comes to performance – and I cannot wait to get my hands on one in person.
MacRumors also spotted benchmarks for an unreleased 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, showing modest performance gains.
