New Mac Pros, Xserves Released By Apple!

Apple today updated their professional lines of computers, giving new architectures and speed bumps to the Mac Pro and Xserve lines:

"The new Mac Pro is the fastest Mac we've ever made," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "With 3.2 GHz 8-core Xeon processing, a 1600 MHz front side bus and 800 MHz memory, the new Mac Pro uses the fastest Intel Xeon architecture on the market."

Both the Xserve and the Mac Pro now feature Intel's new 45nm. Penryn processors and motherboard architecture and come in Quad-Core configurations standard. The Mac Pro features 2 Quad-Core Penryn processors standard.

Noticeably absent is the rumoured addition of standard Blu-ray drives to the Mac Pro, despite recent gains by the Blu-ray camp and Apple's membership in the Blu-ray consortium.

All in all this announcement is pretty standard fare with the expected updates and speed bumps for both products lines.

What makes this announcement really exciting is the fact that we're still one week from Steve Jobs's keynote at Macworld (which will happen on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 9am PST.) The fact that Apple has released updates to their professional lines a week in advance means Apple has something much bigger to announce at the keynote...

... and that sends shivers down the spines of all of us in the Apple camp.

Hit the jump for the new standard specs in the Mac Pro and Xserve.

Apple Announces Penryn Mac Pros and Xserves [Mac Rumors]