Apple MacPro 8-Core Intel Xeon 2X2.26GHz 6GB Memory 640 GB Hard Drive
DESIGN
Expansion made easy.
The redesigned interior of the new Mac Pro feels like the well-organized workstation it is. No rat’s nest of components here. You don’t need to turn the system on its side or struggle to reach into awkward spaces to make changes. Just remove the side panel for instant, easy access to everything. Slide out the processor tray to add memory. Slide out hard drive bays to add storage. Slide a simple bar to change up to four expansion cards at once. And with plenty of I/O ports both front and back, you’ll have room for all your external devices.
Tool-less PCI.
When it’s time to upgrade, a quick slide of the retention bar frees up the four expansion card slots for easy access. Thanks to a thumbscrew PCI bracket, you can swap out cards without any tools. All four slots are now PCI Express 2.0 for up to twice the performance of the previous generation. And since the graphics slot in the Mac Pro is double-wide, your graphics card won’t cover an adjacent slot.
Slide-in storage.
The Mac Pro comes with four 3.5-inch internal hard drive bays for an enormous amount of internal storage — up to 4TB.* The bays are direct-attach and cable free, so it’s easy to add or remove drives. Just attach the drive carrier to a Serial ATA 3Gb/s drive and slide the drive into place. There are no connectors or cables to contend with. Lock the drives with the side door latch, and you’re done.
Snap-in memory.
Install more memory in your Mac Pro in a snap. Literally. The redesigned interior lets you slide out the processor tray in one smooth motion, then simply snap new memory into place. You don’t have to dig around inside the computer or wrestle with wires or cables. The quad-core Mac Pro offers four slots that support up to 8GB of 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM, while the 8-core Mac Pro offers eight slots that support up to 32GB.
Front and back I/O.
There are plenty of places to connect external devices to your Mac Pro. You’ll find two FireWire 800 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, and a headphone minijack right up front — where it’s more convenient to connect storage, multimedia devices, and high-speed peripherals.
And there are even more ports on the back: three USB 2.0, two FireWire 800, optical audio in and out, analog audio in and out, and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports.
FEATURES
Accelerated Architecture
PROCESSOR
The “Nehalem” advantage.
Many quad-core processors are composed of two separate dies, which means some cached data has to travel outside the processor to get from core to core. That’s an inefficient way to access information. Enter the Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor. Its single-die, 64-bit architecture makes 8MB of fully shared L3 cache readily available to each of the four processor cores. The result is fast access to cache data and greater application performance. Combine that with the other technological advances and you get a Mac Pro that’s up to 1.9x faster than the previous generation.1
Memory bottlenecks begone.
System memory is often connected to a processor through a separate I/O controller. But each Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor features an integrated memory controller — another leap forward for workstation system architecture. By connecting memory directly to the processor, the new Mac Pro processors have faster access to data stored in memory, and memory latency is reduced by up to 40 percent.
The integrated memory controller, along with fast 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM, also gives Mac Pro up to a 2.4x increase in memory bandwidth over previous generations.2 More bandwidth allows for more data to be fed to the processor faster, helping each core spend its time processing data, not waiting for information to arrive. And Error Correction Code (ECC) corrects single-bit errors and detects multiple-bit errors automatically. That’s especially important in mission-critical and compute-intensive environments.
Power when (and where) you need it.
The new Mac Pro introduces Turbo Boost: a dynamic performance technology that automatically boosts the processor clock speed based on workload. If you’re using an application that doesn’t need every core, Turbo Boost shuts off the idle cores while simultaneously increasing the speed of the active ones, up to 3.33GHz on a 2.93GHz Mac Pro.
The virtue of virtual cores.
The new Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processors support Hyper-Threading, which allows two threads to run simultaneously on each core. So an 8-core Mac Pro presents 16 virtual cores that are recognized by Mac OS X. Performance is enhanced because Hyper-Threading enables the processor to take better advantage of the execution resources available in each core.
Path of least resistance.
A new bidirectional, point-to-point connection — called QuickPath Interconnect — gives the Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor quick access to the disk, I/O, and other Mac Pro subsystems. In the new 8-core Mac Pro, there’s a QuickPath Interconnect between the two quad-core processors as well. This connection acts as a direct pipeline, so processor-to-processor data doesn’t need to travel to the I/O hub first. It’s another way the new Mac Pro boosts performance across the board.
Powerfully efficient.
Based on an industry-leading 45-nm process technology and combined with improved power management capabilities, the new Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processors are more energy efficient than before. So the Mac Pro is faster than ever, while using less energy when idle.
GRAPHICS
Don’t keep those pixels waiting.
If you’re a pro who wants a desktop computer that keeps pace with your imagination, the Mac Pro delivers with faster graphics application performance across the board. Whether you’re decoding H.264 content in Final Cut Pro, creating 3D graphics in Motion, processing massive RAW images in Aperture, or playing the latest games, the graphics hardware in the new Mac Pro makes graphics applications faster.
The foundation of this new graphics architecture is the latest generation of GPUs connected to the system via a fast and wide PCI Express 2.0 16-lane bus. Couple that with Core Animation, Core Image, and Core Video technologies in Mac OS X Leopard. The result is a graphics platform for applications to seamlessly tap into a teraflop of graphics power.
Performance. It’s in the cards.
All-new high-performance graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA make Mac Pro graphics technology faster than before. Perfect for motion graphics, 3D modeling, rendering, or animation, the NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB of GDDR3 memory comes standard — and provides up to 2.9x the performance of previous Mac Pro standard graphics cards.1
For even more graphics horsepower, upgrade to the ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 512MB of GDDR5 memory. An ideal choice for the most demanding applications, this card features a wider memory bus and higher-performance GPU, resulting in up to 2x faster performance compared with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 120.
Graphics on display.
Every new Mac Pro graphics card features two display ports for maximum workspace flexibility. A Mini DisplayPort connects the new 24-inch Apple LED Cinema Display with ease. A dual-link DVI port connects a 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display or any other DVI display. And with support for up to four NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 cards, you can connect more displays — up to eight total.
STORGAE & RAID
Massive storage.
The Mac Pro comes with four 3.5-inch internal hard drive bays for an enormous amount of internal storage — up to 4TB when you install four 1TB Serial ATA 3Gb/s drives.1 Each bay provides its own independent 3Gb/s channel for fast access to data. And thanks to the cable-free, direct-attach installation system, adding (or replacing) hard drives is a surprisingly simple process.
Ready to RAID — with a new card.
For the ultimate in data protection and enhanced performance, add the new Mac Pro RAID Card with 512MB of RAID cache, a 72-hour cache-protecting battery, and hardware RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 0+1. A new cableless connection and intuitive Apple software make it a snap to install this optional card. It’s the perfect solution for workgroup servers, video pros working with high-bit-rate assets, or anyone who wants to protect critical data.
Even without a RAID card, Mac OS X lets you stripe two, three, or all four hard drives in a RAID 0 array to increase performance and create a massive volume for tasks such as video editing; or create a RAID 1 mirror to protect digital media assets from a drive failure.
Double-layer burner times two.
Sure it’s great to have one 18x SuperDrive at your disposal, but think how much more productive you could be with two. Imagine backing up your data to two double-layer DVDs at once. Or burning Aperture projects to one DVD, while importing music from a CD into your iTunes library. With two optical drive bays in every system, the Mac Pro lets you do exactly that.
MAC OS X LEOPARD
Mac OS X Leopard is engineered to get the most out of the advanced architecture in the new Mac Pro. Built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation, Leopard delivers true 64-bit performance and incorporates industry-leading developer tools.
UNIX compliant.
What makes Mac OS X Leopard a powerful operating system is the technology behind it: a fully certified UNIX foundation. With a rock-solid UNIX infrastructure, it’s one of the most secure and stable operating systems on any platform. As a developer, you’ll appreciate Leopard even more because it’s fully UNIX compliant. That means it compiles and runs all your existing UNIX code, so you can deploy it in environments that demand full conformance. The result: Software performs exactly as it’s meant to. And because the powerful tools built into Leopard improve application performance on multicore processors, the new Mac Pro is the ideal workstation.
64-bit power.
Leopard is to the new Mac Pro what a skilled driver is to a car with a powerful engine — a perfect match. Since the entire operating system is 64-bit ready, you can take full advantage of the 64-bit architecture of the Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processors inside the new Mac Pro. Add to that the 32GB of memory available for the Mac Pro, and the performance of Leopard is even better than before. Leopard also enables developers to build complete 64-bit applications using the Cocoa, Quartz, OpenGL, and X11 GUI frameworks. And because Leopard supports 64-bit and 32-bit applications, you don’t need a new set of devices or drivers.
Multicore. Multitask.
At the heart of the new Mac Pro are one or two Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processors with an incredible amount of processing power. Optimized for multicore technology, Leopard provides powerful tools that make it easy to reap the benefits of the Mac Pro. The scheduler in Leopard, for instance, is very efficient at allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. So Leopard spends less time managing tasks and more time performing computations. As a developer, you can build applications that execute the same efficiency, thanks to NSOperation, a breakthrough API that optimizes applications for multicore processing.
Core Animation.
From the cascading windows of Time Machine to the smooth animation of the reflective 3D Dock, stunning visual effects truly set Leopard apart. Behind all that beauty is a technology built into Leopard called Core Animation. The performance of Core Animation benefits from the multicore processors and advanced graphics hardware in the new Mac Pro. For developers, Core Animation easily opens up the power of Apple’s graphics technologies. You can create animated user interfaces and visualizations that simultaneously layer different media types, such as text, 2D graphics, OpenGL rendering, and QuickTime video, all in real time.
Xcode developer tools.
Xcode is the graphical development environment that comes with every Mac. It's the same software used by Apple to produce Mac OS X, and it's packed with tools and features, including a powerful graphical debugger, a code editor supporting dozens of languages, and the amazing Instruments tool to visualize your application's performance. Xcode is optimized to take advantage of the multicore Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processors and system memory in the Mac Pro. It performs 20 percent faster than before, supports multiple languages (both computer and human), and offers programmers everything they need to make stunning Mac OS X applications.
Voilà. Instant server.
The multitalented Mac Pro can also act as a powerful small-workgroup server. Just add Mac OS X Server. The resulting solution combines Mac ease of use with flexible configuration options and server-class hardware. With 8-core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processing power, up to 32GB of ECC memory, a new optional RAID card, and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, a Mac Pro workgroup server has everything you need — and then some.
What's Included:
- Mac Pro
- Power cord
- Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad and Mighty Mouse
- USB keyboard extension cable
- Install/restore DVDs
- Printed and electronic documentation