The Mac Pros don't use the Nehalem i7 Intel "Bloomfield" quad core processors which were released five months ago... they use two of the Intel Nehalem Xeon Quad core "Gainestown" processors (which won't be released to the other manufacturers for another couple of weeks). Retailing for around $2500 each, the Gainestown processors run about $2,000 more expensive than the i7s with the same clock speed which can be purchased for around $550 each.
You also have to use ECC memory... which the i7s don't support.
until recently i had no idea intel still made Xeon.
I’m out of the loop now.
They rock.
Using that Passmark CPU test just now i was able to score a
3948 with my Q6600 2.4 OC’d to 3.4.
Seems like a great score till you read those Xeon numbers.
See that AMD on the top?
Holy crap!!