Mac Pro(Early 2009)

Background

Introduced in March 2009, The Mac Pro (Early 2009) introduced Intel's Nehalem architecture to Apple's professional desktop line. Though the Intel Xeon 3500-series and 5500-series processors operated at lower clock rates than the 5400-series processors used in the Mac Pro (Early 2008), the system architecture provided more efficient caching and faster, point-to-point connections between the CPU and other system components, which resulted in a generally faster system, particularly for highly multi-threaded applications. The Mac Pro (Early 2009) came in two highly-customizable configurations. The Quad-Core model included a 4-core 2.66 GHz Intel Xeon 3500-series processor, 3 GB of RAM, a 640 GB 7200 RPM hard drive, and 512 MB of VRAM, for $2499 U.S. (a 2.93 processor and up to 16 GB of RAM were available as Built-to-order options). The 8-core model included two 4-core 2.26 GHz Intel Xeon 5500-series processors, 6 GB of RAM, a 640 GB 7200 RPM hard drive, and 512 MB of VRAM, for $3299 U.S. (2.66 and 2.93 GHz processors and up to 32 GB of RAM were available as built-to-order options). Built-to-order options for both models included up to 4 TB of storage (via four hard drive bays), up to three additional NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics cards, an ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics card, a second 18x SuperDrive, and RAID and Fibre Channel PCI Express cards.