Mac Pro (Early 2008)

Eight cores. That is the Early 2008 Mac Pro in two words. Intel's Harpertown Xeons put four cores in each of the tower's two sockets at 2.8 to 3.2GHz, where the 2006 machine had managed two per socket, alongside a faster front-side bus, more and quicker RAM, and professional NVIDIA or ATI graphics as options. For the people it was built for the difference was immediate. Editors cutting HD in Final Cut, 3D artists rendering, scientists running simulations and audio engineers stacking plugin tracks all watched their export times fall sharply. The case was unchanged, which nobody minded. Tool-free drive bays, accessible processor trays and generous PCI Express expansion made it a machine IT departments and power users could actually work on. Reviewers rated it among the fastest workstations available at any price, matching or beating Windows and Linux boxes built on the same Xeons. Fully configured it cost well above an equivalent PC workstation. Apple's professional customers were already committed to Final Cut, Logic and Aperture and mostly paid it. Enthusiasts still name this generation as the high point of the cheese-grater era.