Mac Pro (Early 2008)

Notes

Architecture Details:

• CPU:64-bit
• EFI: 64-bit
• Graphics: 64-bit

OS Support:

• Shipped: Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.1
• Maximum: Current OS X
• Windows: XP, Vista, 7 (32/64)

History:
After a yearlong wait, Apple released the last "Core"-derived Mac Pro with many welcome internal changes, though it retained the "cheese grater" look dating back to the G5. At the top of the list was the Penryn-based "Harpertown" Xeon CPU, now quad-core by default and sporting 12 MB of L2 cache onboard. In addition, the new architecture increased the frontside bus bandwidth to 1.6 GT/s and upped possible RAM bandwidth to 800 MT/s while remaining fully-buffered like the '06-'07 lineup. An updated chipset also allowed for SATA link speeds of 3.0 Gb/s, in turn increasing possible storage capacity from '06's 2 TB maximum.

Apple incorporated a few subtle changes of its own, notably adding two PCIe v2.0-compliant slots to replace two of the four existing v1.0 slots, allowing for faster graphics options in all setups. Maximum RAM also doubled officially from 16 GB to 32 GB. For AirPort-equipped setups, draft 802.11n was now a permanent addition.

The standard setup offered two 2.8 GHz processors, giving eight cores in total. A single-processor "quad core" option was also available.

This is the earliest model supporting both OS X Mountain Lion and Windows 7; to take advantage of the dual-CPU setup and more than 4 GB RAM, the latter should be a 64-bit Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate edition (the Home editions legally forbid more than one physical CPU irrespective of the number of cores on the CPU).