Mac Pro Server Mid-2010

This model was offered as a custom configuration of the Mac Pro "Quad Core" 2.8 Server (2010/Nehalem). However, this system has significant technical differences and is documented as its own model, accordingly.

The Mac Pro "Twelve Core" 2.66 Server (Mid-2010/Westmere) features two 2.66 GHz Six Core 32-nm Xeon X5650 (Westmere) processors with a dedicated 256k of L2 cache for each core and 12MB of "fully shared" L3 cache per processor.

By default, it is configured with 8GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM, two 1TB (7200 RPM, 32 MB cache) 3Gb/s Serial ATA hard drives, an 18X dual-layer "SuperDrive" and an ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card with 1GB of GDDR5 memory.

Expansion includes two external 5.25" "optical" bays (one available by default), four internal 3.5" "cable-free, direct attach" hard drive bays (three available by default), and four PCIe 2.0 slots (one free PCIe 2.0 x16 slot and two free PCIe 2.0 x4 slots with the default single graphics card installed).

Port selection includes five USB 2.0 ports, four Firewire "800" ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet, two Mini DisplayPorts and a dual-link DVI port, and more. AirPort Extreme (802.11a/b/g/n) and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR comes standard.

As a high-end 12-core option in the 2010 server lineup, this 2.66 GHz model presented a formidable choice for businesses and research institutions requiring substantial processing power. Its dual 6-core "Westmere" processors were capable of handling a massive number of transactions and complex calculations simultaneously. With its overwhelming multi-threaded performance, this machine excelled as a large-scale database server or render farm. The combination of Mac OS X Server provided a powerful yet manageable server environment, earning immense trust from organizations with Mac-centric workflows. Its performance and expandability made it a standout among server hardware of its time.