74 MACWORLD FEBRUARY 2020
FEATURE MAC PROThe Mac Pro has plenty of room for expansion.
If you want Afterburner, it’s a $2,000
option.
EXTERNAL PORTS
The Mac Pro has an I/O card installed in
its half-length x4 PCI Express slot. This
card provides two USB 3 ports and two
Thunderbolt 3 ports. The Mac Pro also
has two 10Gb ethernet jacks. All of these
ports are accessible on the back of the
Mac Pro.
On top of the Mac Pro, there are two
Thunderbolt 3 ports. Apple also says
there’s a headphone jack, but by looking
at the photos of the Mac Pro, we can’t find
it. It’s probably somewhere on the front of
the machine.INTERNAL EXPANSION SLOTS
Inside the Mac Pro are eight PCI Express
expansion slots. You can install up to two
MPX modules, or up to four PCI Express
cards. There are also three full-length PCI
Express gen 3 slots (one x16 slot and two
x8 slots) and a half-length x4 PCI Express
gen 3 slot, but that’s used by an Apple I/O
card that provides two USB 3
and two Thunderbolt 3 ports.WIRELESS
802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
5.0 come built-in.SPEED
Apple says that the new Mac
Pro is “designed in pursuit of
performance,” capable of
handling 8K video editing, 3D
applications, software
development, and other
production-oriented tasks.
Apple’s Mac Pro website
shows only benchmarks for the
highest-end 28-core model.
They claim the new Mac Pro
provides three times the
performance in ProRes