Just a week before Macworld, where Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs traditionally brings its new products to light, the company has unveiled a new Mac Pro with two Intel quad-core Xeon processors running up to 3.2GHz, 12MB of L2 cache and a 1600MHz front side bus. A standard 8-core configuration running a pair of 2.8GHz Xeons and an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of video memory is priced starting at $2,799, but customizations can bring the price up quickly.

Apple also introduced a revamped 1U Xserve which it claims is up to twice as fast as its predecessor. It also boasts 8-core processing power with Intel Xeon “Harpertown” 5400 chips, up to 3TB of internal storage, and up to 32GB of 800MHz memory. The standard Xserve will retail for $2,999 – with a single 2.8GHz quad-core Xeon.

What’s interesting is that Apple seems to be getting some announcements out of the way ahead of next week’s Macworld in order to give more keynote time for the products that require a longer stay in the spotlight. Some of those rumored products include a slim sub-notebook, 3G iPhones and iTunes movie rentals.