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.

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.

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 3D Dock with Stacks).

• 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

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 email 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.