Prepare for ludicrous speed: Ars reviews the 8-core Mac Pro
After what has seemed to so many of us like an eternity, the wait for the Nehalem Xeon Mac Pros is finally over. When Macworld 2009 passed without any i7 or Nehalem Xeon announcement, I was worried that it would be a while before the dual-socket boards would be released. But Apple finally came through with eight cores, hyper-threading, and a speedy new frontside bus to make us masters of the deadline. It's safe to say that not everyone needs (or can afford) these new eight-core machines, but I've done some serious high-end grind-work to see what sort of user might be able to justify tossing his pocketbook into the juicer for this potential monster.
Our review would have been up a week earlier but I originally received a bad machine that crashed repeatedly and then refused to boot. Fortunately, it looks like this is far from common from the lack of "hey, I got a dud too" posts on Apple's Mac Pro 2009 forum. The second machine is doing fine—he's able to stay up without crashing and he's even got my smile.
