Only one week ahead of the popular Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Apple unveiled upgraded versions of its Mac Pro and Xserve models.

The company’s new Mac Pro’s prices start at no less than $2,799, but the workstation combines eight cores, out of which two are Intel’s new 45-nanometer Quad-Core Xeon processors, code-named Harpertown. The new powerful architecture includes also a faster 1.6 GHz system bus, as well as 12 MB of L2 cache per microprocessor, which is three times more compared to previous systems. The upgraded Mac Pro architecture also supports twice as much RAM: up to 32 GB.

Apple said that among other tough improvements included with the latest version of Mac Pro, one should note its built-in Bluetooth standard, its ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT video card with 256 MB of memory and its two dual-link DVI ports, which support dual 30-inch displays out of the box. Video card upgrades include NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800GT with 512 MG of memory.

As for Xserve, this architecture finally enters the 8-core fray, despite the fact that its standard configuration remains a quad-core model. It also benefits from Intel’s Xeon 5400 quad-core microprocessors and it features a 1600 MHz bus, support for 32 GB of RAM and PCIe 2.0 slots.

The standard Xserve’s price remains $2,999.