Announced today and coming in August is the very, very long awaited update to the Mac Pro line. While the design of the machine remains the same, the Mac Pro now features the option of either 4, 6, 8, or 12 cores of processing power and a performance boost over previous models of up to 1.5x.

From Apple.com:

The new Mac Pro offers two advanced processor options from Intel. The Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor is available in a single-processor, quad-core configuration at speeds up to 3.2GHz. For even greater speed and power, choose the “Westmere” series, Intel’s next-generation processor based on its latest 32-nm process technology. ”Westmere” is available in both quad-core and 6-core versions, and the Mac Pro comes with either one or two processors. Which means that you can have a 6-core Mac Pro at 3.33GHz, an 8-core system at 2.4GHz, or, to max out your performance, a 12-core system at up to 2.93GHz.

The graphics card has been updated as well offering three (yes, 3 now!) video ports (2 miniDisplayPort and 1 dual-link DVI) on either the ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB GDDR5 RAM or the ATI Radeon HD 5870 with 1GB GDDR5 RAM.

For storage the Mac Pro still features the same RAID options but configurations have been updated to allow for up to four 512MB solid-state drives!

Pricing and availability to be announced.