Apple has announced the arrival of a new Xserve which can hold up to two Intel Quad Cores Xeons. Another big thing about this new server is that it comes with an unlimited client license for the Mac OS X Server Leopard.

If you want to know more, be sure to click on the "read more" link below to check out the full article.

Everyone's excited about the look and feel of Apple's Mac OS X Leopard and why not? The new OS is looking sleeker than ever and insiders are raving at how easy it is to set up.

   

Wired reports that they ran it on a Quad Core Xeon Mac Pro and Leopard went right on the prowl. These screens show some of what you can expect and it does look sweet.

The preview version doesn't have the final code but most sources say that Leopard has been impressive so far. The animations, the dock and the translucent toolbar are all contributing to giving the package that space-age look and the eye candy just has people's heads turning. DVD burning and Time Machine still haven't been tested, but that just leaves enough to have something to look forward to come launch date.

The Apple community's been waiting for this. It's been rumored that an eight-core Mac Pro is in the works, now it's a rumor no more. The Apple 8-core Mac Pro is finally here.

Back when the 8-core Mac Pro was still a rumor, it was said that it was going to be released later this year, possibly November. It was released earlier than everyone expected. This newly launched Mac Pro is the world's first 3.0 GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro. We can't help but get swayed by the tagline on the Apple site: "Consider the bar officially raised."

Mac Pro 8-core boasts advanced performance on workstation graphics, and "unparalleled" expansion in many possible configurations. Simply put, at 3.0 GHz the quad-core Mac Pro runs two times faster than Power Mac G5 Quad. Expansion-wise, it 8-core Mac Pro can accommodate up to four drives and 3TB of storage, eight DIMM slots to fill up with 16 GB of RAM, two Super Drives.

That's a lot of power. We are sure the programmers and software developers are going to be happy with the functions of this one.

   
 

Before the year ends, Intel is expected to introduce two four-core processors that are compatible to its Core 2 and Xeon Line. With these, it is now theoretically possible to have an 8-core Mac Pro (it features two LGA-771 sockets). Single systems can experience a dramatic increase in processing power should this quad-core processors become a reality.

To test the validity of this assumption, the guys over at AnandTech ran a simple experiment. According to them: "We grabbed a pair of 2.4GHz Clovertown samples and tossed them in the system, and to our pleasure, they worked just fine. The most important part of the test is that all 8 cores were detected and functional." The final chip is foreseen to use a 1333MHz FSB.

No crashes with the processors were also encountered after a series of stability test was performed.

The widespread availability of Intel Corp's new desktop processors in the past several weeks is not enough to make Apple introduce new line of iMac computers. We know now why as they confirm previous rumors to sidestep Core 2 Duo and use Merom, the mobile variant of chips, for the MacBook instead.

This month will not be over before they come up with the announcement regarding the next-gen models, including a 23-inch new member of the iMac family. This upgrade will be the third Apple ha made within the last 12 months.

In a related matter, this is not the first time Core 2 Duo was ignored by Apple. The recently unveiled Mac Pro high-end desktops went with Intel's higher-performance Xeon server processor, contrary to earlier reports. Then everybody thought Core 2 Duo will then be going to the iMac line, but here we are, Merom taking the spot.

Merom is said to be capable of up to 2.33GHZ speed, offering a 40 percent increase compared to the previous Core Duo CPU.

The team at Bare Feats may never win a Nobel prize for this but if you're a consumer on the market for a new computer, we suggest you check out their findings. The team put the 2.66GHz Mac Pro mano-a-mano with the 2.5GHz G5 Quad-Core Power Mac through a series of CPU intensive tests that include running:

Non-Universal Binary Apps

• PhotoShop CS2
  
• After Effects 7.0

Universal Binary Apps

• iMovie HD6
• Final Cut Pro 5
• FileMaker Pro 8.5
• Cinebench 9.5

And the results are...drumroll please...

Quad-Core G5 Power Mac beats Mac Pro Xeon/2.66GHz when running Photoshop CS2 and After Effects 7. Between the 3.0GHz Mac Pro and the Quad Core G5 Power Mac, Mac Pro is 5% slower on the Photoshop but 8% faster on the After Effects test.

Both versions of the Mac Pro are faster than the G5 Power Mac running iMovie, Final Cut Pro, FileMaker and Cinebench with the Mac Pro 2.66GHz up to 62% faster than the 2.5 GHz Quad-Core G5 Power Mac. The Mac Pro 3.0GHz was even faster by as much as 85%.

The Bottomline: If money is a big issue and the machine will be used for non-UB pro apps (like Photoshop CS2), Quad-Core G5 Power Mac is a good choice. If the machine is destined for heavy Universal Binary apps (like Final Cut Pro 5.1) and cost is not a factor, go for the new Mac Pro plus the expensive memory (the team recommend at least 4GB). However, expect a 5-week wait for the optional Radeon X1900 XT and the scarcity of correct memory from upgrade sources.

This lucky person certainly did get a new Mac Pro. Not only was this brand new Mac Pro owner kind enough to share his experience with the world, he also ran his new machine through a gamut of benchmarks and real world application-based tests to prove its mettle. I think the fact that this guy took the time to provide us with usable information about the new Mac Pro makes his post different than the average all photography and no substance box openings that populate the web.

This particular machine has two 2.Ghz Dual Core processors (2 Xeon woodcrest processors- for a total of 4 logical processors), 1GB of ram, a 7300gt graphics accelerator, and a 250GB Seagate hard disk. As unbelievably powerful as that machine sounds, the specs for the test machine are not anywhere near the top of the line for the Mac Pro. Keep in mind that this test machine has but 1GB of ram. 1GB of ram, inside a machine that has the capacity for an astonishing 16GBs of ram total, is not a whole lot. In fact, 1GB is the minimum amount of ram that you should have when using a dual processor system as powerful as this one.

Geekbench provides an entire page full of test results that indicate the actual performance potential of this particular Mac Pro. The generous new Mac Pro owner also ran a Photoshop test, a timed compressor test, a Rosetta test and an encoding test. Of course, this extremely giving person also blessed us with a variety of near pornographic shots depicting the new machine in intimate detail. I must admit, when I look at the pictures of our lucky Mac Pro owner opening that box, my heart begins to race and my mind wanders off to think of the things that I could do if I had one.


Photoshop Test:
Test 1: 80% memory allocation, 20 history states = 3min 52secs

Test 2: 90% memory allocation, 1 history state = 3min 4secs

Test 3: (more a test of raw CPU) Radial blur 100, best quality on Eagle Image in test
Mac Pro= 29 secs
Quad G5 = 42 secs


Compressor:
source: 5min HDV 1080i60 clip (export from FCP timeline)
output: Compressor default 16:9 120min fast encode
results:
G5 2ghz 2.5gb ram: 34min
Mac Pro: 12min


Handbrake:
h.264 main profile
1000kbps Average Quality
2-pass encoding
128kbps AAC audio
Donnie Darko disc (not image on HD) 65fps average.

Geekbench:
297.9


Rosetta test:
194.8

I remember debating, about a decade ago, the sensitive issue of "x86 versus PowerPC performance" with my fellow nerds while dealing with dandruff.

So look at where we are now. I still have dandruff, but the Apple Mac Pro is getting a whopper of a processor that promises to send professional desktop consumers to high heaven on fluffy clouds of cheddar (for the Apple noobs, the "cheddar" joke refers to the "cheesegrater-like appearance" of the Mac Pro casing - look at the picture above).

The Mac Pros are getting 64-bit dual-core Xeon Woodcrest processors. With 4MB L2 cache (for the non-technical, that just means the processor has a lot of built-in space to do extra things). Top speed? 3GHz. For those Appletons not familiar with the Xeon, the Xeon series of microprocessors are Intel's server-class PC microprocessors. They are usually used for multiple-processor PCs. And now, for multiprocessor Macs, because Apple is putting two (that's 2) of those Xeon beauties in each Mac Pro.

This new Mac Pro definitely promises to be better than the G5. While this is more or less what was previously anticipated, the details about the cheesy insides are just yummy: it has room for four (that's 4) internal HDDs, although the basic Mac Pro will "only" have a 250GB HDD. And 1GB RAM. And the NVIDIA GeForce 256MB 7300GT. And a 16x SuperDrive. That sounds about right for a powerful office server.

Not good enough you say? Can't grate the cheese you say? Well, you can opt for up to 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB of disk space (for noobs who don't know what a "TB" is, let me just say that one "TB" or terabyte is roughly one trillion bytes, one million megabytes, or one thousand GB). Now that's some serious cheese.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm now waiting for the Mac Pro to get the quad-core processor so I can calculate the meaning of life. And yes, I'm still dealing with dandruff.