Intel's Nehalem Xeon CPUs Make Their Way into Apple's New Xserve Servers

One week ago, Santa Clara, California-based Intel officially rolled out its highly anticipated line of Nehalem EP-based Xeon processors, designed to provide business and professional users with a new level of performance for their high-end server CPUs. During this time, a number of PC vendors have also announced the introduction of their new Nehalem-based servers and workstations, boasting a considerable increase in performance, thanks to Intel's new generation of processors. Today, Cupertino, California-based Apple has officially updated its line of Xserve server systems, which have adopted Intel's latest line of Xeon processors, the Nehalem-based Xeon 5500-series CPUs.

As most major PC vendors in the market, Apple is offering a complete line of computer systems, starting from your everyday portable PC to the high-end and business-oriented Xserve systems. With the introduction of Intel's latest Xeon processors, the Cupertino, California-based company has decided it's time to upgrade its existing Xserve offering, consequently adopting Intel's highest performance Xeon processors to date. With the new upgrade, the Apple Xserve systems will be featured with Xeon 5500-series processors running at speeds of up to 2.93GHz.

According to Apple, the new Xserve systems are available immediately through the company's online store and authorized resellers. Starting at a price of US$2999, the Xserve configuration includes a single 2.26GHz Quad-Core Xeon 5500 CPU with 8MB of L3 cache, 3GB of 1066MHz DDR3 ECC memory and a 160GB 7200 RPM SATA drive. Additional features include on-board dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, two PCI Express 2.0 x16 expansion slots, two FireWire800 and three USB 2.0 ports and, obviously, an unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard, Apple's business-oriented operating system.

Additional configuration options include a new Xserve RAID card that delivers an enhanced performance of up to 497MB/s and support for RAID levels 0, 1 and 5 with 512MB of cache. Also, the new Xserve offers three 3.5-inch drive bays that can be equipped with both 7200RPM SATA and 15000RPM SAS drives and a maximum of 3TB of internal storage. Also, according to Apple the standard 160GB hard drive can be replaced by a much faster 128GB SSD, an option that will cost the end-user an additional US$500.