Apple introduces the Mac Pro at the WWDC

Up to 5 million configurations possible

7 August 2006 18:41 GMT / By Amber Maitland

Apple is replacing its desktop computer, the G5 PowerMac with a new Intel chip based machine.

The new Mac Pro was announced by Steve Jobs in his annual keynote speech at the WWDC in San Francisco.

The new Mac Pro is based on Intel's Xeon Core 2 Duo chips that run at speeds of up to 3GHz, and include 4MB shared L2 cache.

The case will hold up to four hard drives to total up to 2 Terabytes of storage, and includes two optical drives and 4 PCI Express Slots.

One of the standard configurations is Dual 2 2.66 dual core Xeons, 1GB of Ram, 667 Mhz FB-DIMM, a 250GB Hard drive, and a Nvidia GeForce 7300GT graphics card - all for $2,499.

Apple says that the machines are truly built to order, with nearly 5 million configurations possible.

In the UK prices will start from £1699. In both America and the UK as per usual with Apple announcements, Jobs said, the new models would be shipping today.