Add-on hardware compatibility

• For 2006 and 2008 models, Apple recommends an Apple-specified heat sink on each memory DIMM for cooling, and the required on-chip thermal manager may shut down memory, or increase fan speed, if it starts to overheat.^[20] Several third-party, self-installable memory upgrades that include Apple-specified heat sinks are available. In contrast, the 2009 Mac Pro with Nehalem processors uses unbuffered memory with no heatsinks.
• The Mac Pro, as with other Macintosh platfo...

The Mac Pro comes with the BIOS successor EFI 1.1 and handles booting differently from the conventional BIOS-based PC.^[32]

Apple's Boot Camp provides BIOS backwards compatibility, allowing dual and triple boot configurations. These operating systems are installable on Intel x86 based Apple computers:^[33]

• Mac OS X 10.4.7 and later
• Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 32-bit & 64-bit (hardware drivers are included in Boot Camp)
• Other 80x86 operating systems such as Linux x86, Solaris, DOS, Be...

Specifications

Processors

The current 8 core standard configuration Mac Pro uses two Quad core Intel E5620 Xeon processors @2.4 GHz ^[13][14], but can be configured with upto two Hexacore Core Intel Xeon Processor X5670 @2.93 GHz^[15].All current Mac Pros have processors with 12Mb of Intel Smart cache(L3 cache).^[16] All current Mac Pro processors are capable of Intel's Turbo Boosttechnology (similar to Intel's SpeedStep technology), which dynamically boosts the clock rate of a core in intervals of 133 MHz if t...

An Intel-based replacement for the Power Mac G5 had long been expected prior to the release of the Mac Pro. The iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro had moved to an Intel-based architecture starting in January 2006, leaving the Power Mac G5 as the only machine in the Mac lineup still based on the PowerPC. Speculation about the G5's eventual replacement was common. Rumors initially expected the machine to differ physically from the existing G5 and considered a number of different possible i...

The Mac Pro is a workstation computer manufactured by Apple Inc. The machines are based on Xeon microprocessors, but are similar to the Power Mac G5 they replaced in terms of outward appearance and expansion capabilities. The Mac Pro is the fastest computer that Apple offers and one of three desktop computers in the current Macintosh lineup, the other two being the iMac and Mac mini.

The first Mac Pro was based on dual Dual-core Xeon Woodcrest processors and formally announced on August 7, 200...