Someone discovered support for AMD's discrete graphics card Radeon HD 7900 in the beta version of the upcoming upgrade OS X 10.8.3, which can be installed only on the Mac Pro systems - a new version of laptops and iMacs have only recently been introduced, while the Mac Pro quietly got only processor upgrades.

The latter refers to the earlier presented hardware refresh with quad Xeon on 3.2 GHz clock speed and 6 GB of RAM for the base model and two 6-core Xeon CPUs ticking at 2.4 GHz clock speed and 12 GB of RAM for a powerful Mac Pro. Unfortunately the current Mac Pro relies only on the older Radeon HD 5770 and 5870. Still some would argue that this is enough for systems primarily for professionals, video processing and more demanding tasks. In addition to faster graphics, Macs Pro will likely get support for USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, but the hardware refreshed models on the market will not come until next year.

[Ed – most feel that Apple should be moving to the Fire GL Pro or nVidias Quadro for the professional lines, but for some reason (probably to keep margins high) Apple maintains a consumer GPU in their pro line up. This topic has discussed quite a bit considering that Apple tends to refresh their mobile and consumer line about twice as often as they do their professional desktops. ]

What do you think about Apple’s slow hardware refresh cycle for the Mac Pro? Tell us in our Forum