Today, Apple has ordered many 3.2GHz Intel Quad Core Xeon processors. The 45-nanometer chips are indeed the successors to those used in the existing Mac Pro. Pricing leaked out of Intel in August would have them selling for over $1000 each, however, making for some expensive Apple desktops given that each Mac Pro would need 2 of these chips. It would also require that Apple update the Mac Pro to have a 1600MHz front-side bus. Apple's current system is its custom 8-Core Mac Pro, which has 2 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors running on a 1333MHz front-side bus and selling for just under $4000. Mind you, this is with 1GB of RAM. Apple anticipates selling so many of these machines, that other PC manufacturers would barely have enough supply of the 3.2GHz chips to announce availability of these rival machines.

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