Apple Mac Pro MA970LL/A Desktop

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Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 65 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000VR3E3C
• Item model number: Z0EM1
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,084 in Computer & Accessories (See Bestsellers in Computer & Accessories)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 8, 2008

Product Description

Model: Z0EM1

Amazon.com Product Description

Boost your productivity with the Apple Mac Pro desktop PC--the fastest Mac Apple has ever made. Combining two of Intel's new 64-bit, 45-nanometer Quad-Core Xeon 5400 processors running at 3.0 GHz, the Mac Pro is an unbelievably powerful workstation that can handle even the most intensive graphics rendering. Its industrial-style enclosure offers improved functionality with a cable-free installation process and massive upgrade ability--up to 32 GB of 800 MHz RAM and four hard drive bays for up to 4 TB (that's right--terabytes) of storage under the hood. And while it comes standard with a 16x SuperDrive (compatible with burning DVD±R/RW and CD-R/RW discs), you can also add a second writing SuperDrive.

Additionally, the Mac Pro MA970LL/A features a 320 GB hard drive, 2 GB of installed RAM, and the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT (two dual-link DVI ports) graphics card with 256 MB of video RAM, both FireWire 400 and 800 slots, optical digital audio input and output, Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard, and iLife '08. The Mac Pro also includes a DVI to VGA adapter and an Apple keyboard and Mighty Mouse.

Smart design makes installing massive amounts of memory, adding expansion cards, and increasing storage surprisingly simple.

Processor
Based on Intel's next-generation Core micro-architecture, the two 3.0 GHz 64-bit quad-core Intel Xeon 5400 processors are based on state-of-the-art 45nm Intel Core microarchitecture. With a new high-bandwidth hardware architecture, 12 MB of L2 cache per processor (each pair of cores shares 6 MB), and dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses, the new Mac Pro achieves a 61 percent increase in memory throughput. These 64-bit buses give each processor a direct connection to the system controller and deliver improved processor bandwidth of up to 25.6GB per second--20 percent greater than the previous Mac Pro. Every Intel Xeon processor features an enhanced SSE4 SIMD engine. Capable of completing 128-bit vector computations in a single cycle, SSE4 is ideal for transforming large sets of data, such as applying a filter to an image or rendering a video effect.

Because Intel designed this dual-core Xeon to be more efficient, it consumes less power than similar workstation-level processors, so your system fans don't have to work as hard to keep them cool. Working with Mac OS X Leopard, it also continues the tradition of enabling 64-bit computation. Ideal for scientific applications, the 64-bit Intel Xeon processors can express the extreme precision needed for floating-point mathematics and to express integers up to 18 billion.

The Mac Pro incorporates a 256-bit-wide, fully buffered memory architecture with Error Correction Code (ECC), which corrects single-bit errors and detects multiple-bit errors automatically. These features are especially important in mission-critical or compute-intensive environments. Apple designed a more stringent thermal specification for the Mac Pro FB-DIMMs, so the internal fans spin at slower speeds and keep the system quiet.

Graphics
This Mac Pro comes standard with the new, high-performance ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256 MB of GDDR3 memory, PCI Express 2.0, and two dual-link DVI ports. GDDR3 (Graphics Double Data Rate, version 3) is a graphics card-specific memory technology that's better able to deliver fluid frame rates for even the most advanced games and applications. It provides great performance for typical creative applications, and you get dual 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display support out of the box. With support for up to four graphics cards, the new Mac Pro can drive up to eight 30-inch displays at once for advanced visualization and large display walls.

Hard Drive
This Mac Pro (model MA970LL/A) comes loaded with a single 320 GB hard drive. It comes with four 3.5-inch internal hard drive bays for an enormous amount of internal storage--up to 4 TB. These bays are direct-attach and cable free, so it's easy to add or remove drives. Just attach the drive carrier to either a Serial ATA 3Gb/s or Serial Attached SCSI 3Gb/s drive, and slide the drive into place. There are no connectors or cables to contend with. Lock the drives with the side door latch, and you're done.

You can also choose ultrafast 15,000-rpm Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) 3Gb/s drives with 300GB of capacity for the highest in disk I/O performance. Together with the Mac Pro RAID Card, these drives provide 250MB/s of RAID 5 disk I/O performance. That's enough data to play back one stream of 10-bit uncompressed HD content. It's the ultimate storage solution for highly demanding data transfer situations like editing uncompressed HD video content or updating ultra-high-resolution images.

The Mac Pro is loaded with connectivity options.

Using Mac OS X, you can stripe two, three, or all four hard drives in a RAID 0 array to increase performance and create a massive volume for video editing; or create a RAID 1 mirror for protecting your critical digital media assets against a drive failure. For the ultimate in data protection and enhanced performance, add the optional Mac Pro RAID Card with 256MB of RAID cache, a 72-hour cache-protecting battery, and hardware RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 0+1. Apple's RAID Utility software makes setting up and managing the RAID card easy.

Memory
While this Mac Pro comes loaded with just 1 GB of 667 MHz DDR2 RAM--which is satisfactory--this Mac Pro has two memory riser cards with four fully buffered DIMM slots each. Just slide out the riser cards and snap in the memory. You don't have to dig around inside the computer or wrestle with wires or cables. With a total of eight DIMM slots available, you can install up to 32GB of 800MHz ECC fully buffered DIMM memory.

Expansion and Connectivity
The Mac Pro features four full-length expansion slots, including a high-performance PCI Express 2.0 graphics slot, with up to twice the bandwidth of PCI Express. The graphics slot is double-wide, so it doesn't cover up an adjacent slot. In addition, three available expansion slots, one PCI Express 2.0 and two PCI Express, provide room to grow. And thanks to a tool-less PCI bracket, you can take out cards as fast as you put them in.

• Two FireWire 800 ports (one on front panel, one on back panel)
• Two FireWire 400 ports (one on front panel, one on back panel)
• Five USB 2.0 ports (two on front panel, three on back panel)
• Two USB 1.1 ports on included keyboard
• Front-panel headphone minijack and speaker
• Optical digital audio input and output Toslink ports
• Analog stereo line-level input and output minijacks

Preloaded with Leopard, you'll enjoy enhanced productivity and a clutter-free desktop (thanks to the redesigned 3-D Dock with Stacks).

Preloaded with Leopard and iLife '08
The biggest Mac OS X upgrade ever, the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system features over 300 new features, including:

• Time Machine, an effortless way to automatically back up everything on a Mac
• A redesigned Finder that lets users quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs
• Quick Look, a new way to instantly see files without opening an application
• Spaces, an intuitive new feature used to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them
• A brand new desktop with Stacks, a new way to easily access files from the Dock
• Major enhancements to Mail and iChat

Leopard's new desktop includes the redesigned 3-D Dock with Stacks, a new way to organize files for quick and easy access with just one click. Leopard automatically places web, e-mail and other downloads in a Downloads stack to maintain a clutter-free desktop, and you can instantly fan the contents of this and other Stacks into an elegant arc right from the Dock. The updated Finder includes Cover Flow and a new sidebar with a dramatically simplified way to search for, browse and copy content from any PC or Mac on a local network.

Time Machine lets you easily back up all of the data on your Mac, find lost files and even restore all of the software on their Mac. With just a one-click setup, Time Machine automatically keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on the Mac. In the event a file is lost, you can search back through time to find deleted files, applications, photos and other digital media and then instantly restore the file.

The Mac Pro also comes with the iLife '08 suite of applications that make it easy to live the digital life. Use iPhoto to share entire high-res photo albums with anyone who's got an e-mail address. Record your own songs and podcasts with GarageBand. Break into indie filmmaking with iMovie and iDVD. Then take all the stuff you made on your Mac and share it on the Web in one click with iWeb.

Dimensions
It measures 20.1 x 8.1 x 18.7 inches, and weighs 42.4 pounds.

What's in the Box
Mac Pro, Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse, DVI to VGA adapter, USB keyboard extension cable, install/restore DVDs, printed and electronic documentation

Product Description

# Two 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5100 series processors; # Intel Core microarchitecture (4MB of shared L2 cache per processor (8MB total); 128-bit SSE3 vector engine; 64-bit data paths and registers; Energy efficiency optimization); # 1.33GHz, 64-bit dual independent frontside buses; # 667MHz DDR2 ECC fully buffered DIMM (FB-DIMM) memory; # 256-bit-wide memory architecture; # NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT with 256MB of GDDR2 SDRAM, one single-link DVI port, and one dual-link DVI port; # Multiple graphics card configurations including two, three, or four NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT cards; # 300W for up to four PCI Express graphics cards; # Two independent 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet (RJ-45) interfaces with support for jumbo frames; # 500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 16MB cache; # 16x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

103 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very quiet. Incredible performance., January 16, 2008

By	Mitch Haile (San Jose, CA and Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

If you're reading this review, you probably already know the basics about this computer. Let me tell you a few things you might not be able to find elsewhere:

This computer is practically silent. The fans rotate at around 600 (six hundred!) RPM. This is much slower than the fans on most computers, and as a result they cannot be heard even with my ear a few inches from the computer. The 320 GB hard disk is very quiet as well--I installed two 500 GB Seagate drives I already owned, and they are the noisiest part of this computer. For comparison, this machine is significantly quieter than my old dual 2.0 GHz G5 tower.

With four hard drives and two 2600 video cards installed, the computer draws about 220 watts of electricity when it is under little load. I've seen the wattage get as high at 300 watts when things really get cranking. The computer generates a fair amount of heat. I found that I wanted to leave at least 6" clearance behind the computer for good ventilation.

This Mac Pro is really really fast. I have the 2.2 GHz MacBook Pro as well, and had been very impressed with the speed of the laptop. But the Mac Pro is far faster for the work I do (software development, so a lot of VMs, a lot of code compilations, etc.). Compilations of Linux software in VMware are far faster on this machine than my old dual core Linux tower.

For any kind of serious work, you're going to want more than the 2 GB of RAM it comes with. Unfortunately, very few 3rd party vendors have significant amounts of the 800 MHz Mac Pro RAM in stock as of this writing (8 days after the introduction of the computer). I have an additional 10 GB on order. Even Apple has delays for the FB-DIMMs bigger than 1 GB.

I am running 4 displays with two ATI 2600 cards in the two 16 lane PCIe slots. 2D performance is very fluid. I have not tried any 3D games or applications.

A lot of people on the web have complained about the price. Yes, $2800 + accessories is a high entry point, but if you're considering this computer, you're probably using the computer for hard core work. If you need this kind of performance, then this computer is money well spent.

Update (May 2008): I've since upgraded to 12 GB of RAM, 2x1000 + 2x500 GB internal drives, and a third 2600 video card. The computer uses a bit more electricity than it did prior to the upgrades, mostly due to the RAM. However, it's still a very quiet computer and runs with cool temperatures. I've had this machine since a few days after its release in January and still am happy with the performance.

64 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best computer I have owned, February 6, 2008

By	Photographer, Mac user (California) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

Here are some things to consider when shopping around for this type of system. This machine is dual-CPU, with a 1600MHz frontside bus and 800MHz memory. Most server-grade systems like this, say from HP or Dell, are still shipping with a 1333MHz bus and 667MHz memory. The extra bandwidth helps on applications like video encoding.

The tower case is perfection. You're looking at a 1000 watt power supply, aluminum case, a large number of huge fans that run slowly, meaning quietly. It would cost about $300 to assemble a comparable unit for a dual-CPU PC, and you'd end up with something weighing 70 or 80 lbs, instead of 50. I know, I've lifted them. This case has some marginal improvements on the original Mac Pro case, like rubber bumpers on the drive sleds to decrease vibration. I sold a Mac Pro quad 2.66 to buy this dual quad 2.8. This machine is all around faster, more polished, and quieter. Which is saying something, because the original Mac Pro was quiet. I cannot stress enough how quiet this tower is. If you do any sort of audio work, or just like to have a quiet house or work environment, you can appreciate a computer that is almost completely silent. Occasionally I'll hear some disk activity, almost inaudible. Seriously, my laptop makes more noise because its hard drive has less shielding.

Each of the CPUs in this Mac is an Intel Xeon E5462 running at 2.8Ghz. These chips are $850 APIECE if you buy them retail. Dell and HP generally sell comparable systems with the Xeon E5440 running at 2.83GHz and a slower 1333MHz bus... for much more money. You are getting a great deal with this Mac.

You don't buy a machine like this and hobble it with the stock memory and hard drive. (Dell and HP also skimp on the included RAM and HD). Do yourself a favor and get another 4GB or 8GB of RAM, using 4 DIMMs. This architecture performs best when you use DIMMs in matched sets of 4, for quad-channel performance. This will increase your memory bandwidth by 5-15%. Shop around for RAM, and make sure that they are CAS 5-5-5 800MHz FB-DIMMs.

The stock hard drive in mine turned out to be a 320GB Western Digital. You never know what you'll get, as Apple also uses Seagate and other vendors. Again, do yourself a favor and add a high-performance drive and make it your boot drive. See sites like tomshardware.com or thetechreport.com for drive comparisons. I personally use a WD 750GB RE2 and a Seagate 7200.11 500GB drive. 1 Terabyte drives will perform even better. You're not just buying extra capacity. High capacity drives generally have higher transfer rates as well. These drives are now relatively inexpensive. The Samsung Spinpoint F1 is the fastest out there, but I'm waiting to hear reliability reports. The two I mentioned are well-proven in the PC world and I've heard good reports from other Mac users.

If you need this sort of power or simply want the best experience that OS X can offer you, with a machine that will last you a long time, the 2.8 is a good choice. Unfortunately, this is currently Apple's bottom of the line tower machine (unless you configure-to-order a single-CPU unit directly from Apple). Apple has had a history of always using server-class, rather than desktop-class chips in their tower machines. Unless Apple ever releases a tower Mac that uses Intel's desktop chips like the QX6850 or forthcoming QX9770, this is likely the cheapest tower Mac we'll see. But at least you can feel safe in getting something priced lower, with better performance, than comparable PC dual-CPU systems. And yes, it will run Windows just like any other PC, if you choose to do so.

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A switcher, thanks to the Mac Pro and OS X, June 7, 2008

By	BigD - See all my reviews

I'm writing this review from the perspective of a power Windows user, switching to OS X after 20 years of Windows. If you have been using Windows, I'm hoping this review will help you with your transition to the Mac.

PROS:
-To start off, as everyone else in their reviews has stated, the Mac Pro is whisper quiet. I can barely hear the system, even when running many applications. You do hear the hard drive, especially after adding a second drive, but the sound is minimal. I thought most of the other reviewers were exaggerating about the quietness, but they were not at all.

-Setting up the Mac Pro was very easy. I did not have to change any network settings to connect to the internet, my PCs, my NAS drive, or my printer. Since my printer was networked, all it took was a username/password to connect. My printer's picture even shows up when printing and viewing the details. Everything connected seamlessly out of the box. I just had to do a quick configuration for my multi-monitors, which took about 30 seconds. I should point out that setting up multi monitors on Vista took about 4 minutes, even though I have been using Windows all of my life.

-Simply, the Mac Pro is very fast. Before ever using the Mac Pro, I did think the system would feel slightly faster than it is, but checking the "Activity Monitor," the processors are barely used, so it could be the lack of dual quad support for most of the programs I'm using. When programs start to take advantage of dual quads and quad cores in general, I do think the system will feel even faster.

-Installing programs is a breeze. Every single program that needs to be installed, installs the exact same way. The same # of steps, the same process, and the same results. Most programs don't include an uninstaller (of course, Office Mac does). Just drag and drop the single file from the Applications folder to the trash, and it's deleted.

-I installed Vista using Boot Camp, for programs not yet available for the Mac. I then installed Parallels to run a virtual machine of the Boot Camp partition. Installation was a breeze and Parallels is a great program, as long as you're using build 5604+, since a flickering issue was present with .3 and parallels prior to that version. Using Parallels to run Vista and OS X simultaneously since there is a seamless integration of both operating systems when moving from one to the other. For example, the mouse moves from one OS to the other without any button presses. You can also open Vista programs on OS X programs and vice versa. There is also a Coherence mode, where you can have both Vista and OS X running seamlessly together in one window. I'm using dual monitors, but you can use Spaces for a virtual multi monitor setup and still have the seamless integration between OS X and Vista. One recommendation for using Vista on Parallels is to upgrade to 4 gigs of RAM. 2 gigs for Vista and 2 for OS X. I would not recommend running Vista with just 1 gig. If you use Windows XP, 1 gig should be fine, but Vista uses a lot of RAM. I do feel like I made a mistake going with Vista instead of XP.

-You can still watch your WMV files on OS X. Download Flip4Mac straight from microsoft.com and those files will open with Quicktime.

-Adium is a great and free instant messaging client that will work with almost any service out there. The integration of a program called Growl takes instant messaging to a new level. You can change the icon in the Dock, where I have Yoda Duck as my icon.

-As stated above, I did upgrade to 4 gigs of RAM. The installation of the RAM was extremely easy. Opening the system and taking a look inside, the design of the Mac Pro is a work of art. You cannot see a cable, and the air flow of the system is unbeatable. (will Apple have a water-cooled Mac Pro?) I paid $125 for Kingston RAM (instead of $500 from Apple). The installation was very easy, though it did require one more step than standard RAM installations. The RAM was displayed in the OS X system info right after booting. I highly recommend 4 gigs of RAM if you are using a VM, especially if that VM is Vista.

-I also added a second hard drive to the system to use as my Time Machine backup. Again, installation was a breeze. Hit a button and pull out the tray. Use the built in screws and push the tray back in. That's it. Once I booted, OS X stated a drive was not formatted and that I needed to format the drive. A quick click and 5 minutes later, I had an extra 320 gigs of space.

-Time Machine is simply the easiest backup solution. Click a button to turn it on, choose a hard drive, and that's it. If you want to sell someone on the the Mac Pro or any Mac, show the recovery of a file using Time Machine.

-Working with the Finder is quick and easy. Find the files you want and click the spacebar to get a preview. Additionally, you can quickly and easily find a program, files, etc., using Spotlight. Spotlight indexes your entire computer without reading and writing to the hard drive as much as Vista. If you use Vista, you'll hear the hard drive indexing every so often, whereas on OS X, you will not hear a blip.

-No need for defragmenting. There isn't a native defragmenter in OS X. Apple recommends that if you feel you need to defrag, a system restart will do it. Though there are defrag utilities in the Apple support docs, it states that defragging could even decrease performance!

-The system just does not crash. The Force Quit application, much like CTR-ALT-DEL, is something I have not used in the over a month of using my Mac Pro. On the other hand, Vista has crashed on me since installing it, but this could be due to it being setup as a VM, so I cannot completely fault Vista.

-If you want a program, chances are it exists in OS X. There are certain specialized programs that will not work, but with time, these should be added as well, as the OS X market share grows. Programs like Yummy FTP and Coda, to edit HTML, are all out there. Interestingly, I found that many products have multiple competitors, where you'd think OS X wouldn't have that many programs written for it.

-I do like the keyboard that the system comes with. It types very well and is very quiet. The mighty mouse is not useable for me, because I'm left-handed. I do not invert my keys, so I still use the right part of the mouse as my right-click. Try clicking on the right side and 90% of the time, nothing will happen. Now try with your right hand, it will always work.

-Great support by Mac. I called once, and the support was quick and easy. It's obvious that the initial person answering the call has limited knowledge, but she asked many times that I could be transferred to another, more experienced technician. (I called to confirm if Time Machine was not available with my NAS drive.) The phone support should be longer, but you can purchase more time if you feel the need.

-The Mac Pro, though pretty large, looks fantastic and also has nice handles on the top, so you can lift the system pretty easily. Even the power plug is designed to fit seamlessly in the port.

CONS
-First and foremost, do not expect to play games like Cyris on this system. Though the RAM and processor speeds well exceed the recommended specs, the video card of the Mac Pro is not up to it. The ATi VC is pretty weak in this respect. If you expect to game, I'll suggest the Nvidia 8800GT which can now be bought outside of Apple. Also, the VC options in general are limited. You must use a VC flashed with the Mac Bios.

-The #1 reason I am running Vista is because of Outlook. There is no good way (one program, called Little Machines, was able to transfer the files, but without any attachments, though it did work pretty well) of bringing my PST file from Outlook to either Mail or even Microsoft's own program, Entourage. I have 2 gigs worth of email and losing everything to move to Entourage was too much. I hope there will be a native way of transferring those files over, with their attachments, seamlessly. Much like Boot Camp, I hope Apple comes up with a solution, even if Microsoft does not. Without Boot Camp, I would have never purchased the Mac Pro.

-The same transfer issue applies to Quicken. There is no native way of bringing the QDF file to Mac. There are instructions of how to convert the file, but you will have to make large concessions. For example, all category names must be 15 characters or less. Additionally, not everything is moved over. You lose too much information for a program in which every bit of information is important.

-Though hard drives are cheap, there isn't an option to use Time Machine with my previously purchased NAS drive, even if I were to format in the native OS X file system. Time Capsule, Apple's own NAS, is supported. I was hoping this would be added in 10.5.3, but it was not. I'd like to have an external backup as well, just in case of a power spike causing both hard drives to fail internally.

-A shortage of USB ports on the back. The system comes with 3 USB ports on the back. Pretty low by today's standards. I never use Firewire, even though there are two of them. There are similar ports on the front though.

-A system as expensive as this should not only have a fast hard drive, it should have a fast top-of-the-line hard drive. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Mac Pro uses a 7200 RPM hard drive with 8mb of cache. I'd expect at least 16mb of cache and possibly even a 10,000 RPM drive. How can a $2,700 system not have a faster hard drive?

-Though Safari is a nice browser overall (the web clip feature, for example) I'd like to see a more complete browser, with constant updates, like Firefox. Though Firefox does have a... Read more ›

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