Newest Mac Pros offer up to eight processor cores.
Apple has released a line of Mac Pro PCs that feature quad-core Intel processors.
The surprise announcement came in the form of an update posted to Apple's MacPro page. The systems are currently available through Apple's online store.
The Xeon "Clovertown" series is currently Intel's highest performance commercial CPU. The chips were first demonstrated by Paul Otellini at IDC in August and are said by Intel to perform up to 80 per cent faster than dual-core chips.
The new Mac Pros feature two Xeon 5300 quad-core chips running at 3.0 ghz, as well as the capacity for up to 3TB of hard drive storage and 16GB of RAM. Users can choose between ATI or nVdia graphics cards.
Apple positions the quad-core systems as high end work stations for the professional market. Retail prices start at $6,429.
The quad-core announcement comes at an opportune time for high-end users seeking to upgrade their Macs. Adobe announced www.vnunet.com its Creative Suite 3 package last week. The suite includes industry standard applications Photoshop and Premiere and is the first version of Creative Suite to run natively on Intel processors. Some experts predict that CS3 will www.vnunet.com from professional users that rely on Adobe applications.