… this is the fastest Mac ever made — let’s talk about the people for whom it might make sense to spend $4,999 on a desktop.
What you get for the money
But first, let’s recap why the starting price is so damn steep. For that staggering entry-level price, you get an 8-core processor from Intel’s workstation-class Xeon W series, paired with a Radeon Vega Pro 56 GPU, 32GB of 2666MHz DDR4 ECC RAM and 1TB of solid-state storage. Included is a Space Gray keyboard and matching mouse, though you can order it online with a Magic Trackpad instead of or in addition to the mouse. Regardless of your configuration, the display is a 27-inch 5K (5,120 x 2,880) panel with 500-nit brightness, a billion colors and support for the T3 color range. If those specs sound familiar, it’s because that’s the same panel used on the regular 27-inch iMac. In fairness, it really is a stunning display.
Instead of traditional VRAM, Apple packs in 8GB of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), wherein the memory is built on to the same package as the graphics chip, allowing for that greater bandwidth. Upgrade and you get a Radeon Pro Vega 64 GPU with double the memory.
… If that base model isn’t enough, you can upgrade to a 10-core, 14-core or 18-core processor. (The 14-core option wasn’t known before today.) If 32GB of RAM isn’t enough, you can opt for 64GB or 128GB. Keep in mind that even if you play it safe and get 32GB or 64GB, you can always add more RAM later, though not without the help of a service professional. For storage, you can upgrade to 2TB or — and this is a first for the Mac — 4TB.
More at Engadget
