Mac Pro Mid-2010

This model was offered as a custom configuration of the Mac Pro "Eight Core" 2.4 (2010/Westmere). However, this system has significant technical differences, and is documented as its own model, accordingly.

The Mac Pro "Twelve Core" 2.66 (Mid-2010/Westmere) features dual 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. It also could be configured with other dual Six Core processors, but these are documented as distinct models for convenience.

By default, this model was configured with 6GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM, a 1TB (7200 RPM, 32 MB cache) 3Gb/s Serial ATA hard drive, 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.

While the "Mid-2010" models share virtually identical external appearance as the "Early 2009" models, all "Mid-2010" models are equipped with faster graphics and notable technical enhancements exist for higher-end "Westmere" models too with faster processors and as many as twelve cores (two six core processors) via custom configuration.

As the 12-core configuration for the Mid-2010 Mac Pro, this model achieved the highest multi-threaded performance in Mac history at the time. Its two 6-core "Westmere" processors could handle a total of 24 threads simultaneously with Hyper-Threading, and the performance was simply breathtaking. This machine garnered enthusiastic support from users who demanded the utmost in computational power, such as professional video editors, 3D artists, and scientists. Although its base clock speed was higher than the 2.4 GHz model, and its price correspondingly steeper, it was justified as an investment in productivity through benefits like reduced rendering times. This model is remembered as one of the performance peaks in the history of the Mac Pro.