Until this point, Intel’s x86 architecture was 32-bit only. It outperformed the Pentium III Xeon and Athlon MP to become a very popular server CPU. The Xeon made a huge leap forward in 2002, introducing Hyper-Threading to Intel’s server CPU. Unfortunately, the Pentium III Xeon and Pentium 4 both provided more processing power than the “Foster” Xeon CPUs. Intel dropped Pentium from the Xeon brand in 2001 with the release of Xeon CPUs based on the same NetBurst architecture as the Pentium 4. The Pentium II Xeon was replaced by the Pentium III Xeon in 1999. The first Xeon shipped in 1998, based on Pentium II technology and replacing the Pentium Pro, Intel’s previous server CPU. Xeon was Intel’s branding for its line of server CPUs, which are optimized for multiprocessing. Where the Power Mac G5 and iMac G5 used the same CPU (until the Late 2005 introduction of the G5 Dual and G5 Quad), that was never true of the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro line doesn’t use the same consumer CPUs found in other Macs. The big difference is that there are not a lot of PCIe cards compatible with the Power Mac G5, but there are a lot that are compatible with the Intel-based Mac Pro.įinally, the G5 Quad tops out at Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard, while the 2006 Mac Pro officially supports OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and can be hacked to run OS X 10.7 Lion.įor those looking for a powerful Snow Leopard Mac, which would mostly be because Snow Leopard was the last version of OS X to support PowerPC software such as AppleWorks and older versions of Microsoft Office and Photoshop, the quad-core 2006 Mac Pro is a powerhouse. Where the Power Mac G5 tops out at 16 GB of RAM, the Mac Pro can handle 32 GB.īoth machines have four PCI Express (PCIe) slots, one of which is occupied by a video card. Where the Power Mac G5 had two hard drive bays, the Mac Pro had four. Where the Power Mac G5 had one optical drive bay, the Mac Pro had two. Like the Power Mac G5 Quad, it had two dual-core CPUs, and even the entry-level $2,199 Mac Pro outperformed that G5 Quad.
The Mac Pro was the last Mac to make the transition from PowerPC to Intel technology. Whatever was to replace it had to be a real powerhouse – and the first Mac Pro certainly was.
With the October 2005 introduction of the 2.5 GHz Power Mac G5 Quad, Apple had introduced the most powerful PowerPC Mac ever.
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