Mac Pro Quad (09)... which windows 7?

For any Mac Pro, I recommend 64-bit. Professional should be good, I like to use Professional because it doesn't have the media center stuff that I don't need and it includes the domain stuff that I do need.

If you don't know what they mean, just get Home Premium 64-bit.

If you have other Macs and want to file share from Windows it is much easier with Professional or Ultimate. As you really need the Local Group Policy Editor which annoyingly is not available in Home.

stridemat said:

I would go with home premium (64bit), it will give you the most benefit with your machine.

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Incorrect. You need Professional or Ultimate editions of Windows to take advantage of dual CPU machines.

Cromulent said:

Incorrect. You need Professional or Ultimate editions of Windows to take advantage of dual CPU machines.

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I believe that is dual physical CPU's only. While dual core and quad core are used just fine in Windows XP/Vista/7 Home.

I certainly would hope that someone building a dual Xeon or Opteron workstation would be using Professional or Ultimate.

I've got Professional 64bit running on a separate drive in my Octad '09 Pro.

Runs fine so far. The only issues I recognised are missing Firewire Support and both Gigabit NICs don't support auto-sensing.
Besides that, everything works flawlessly.

ayeying said:

For any Mac Pro, I recommend 64-bit. Professional should be good, I like to use Professional because it doesn't have the media center stuff that I don't need and it includes the domain stuff that I do need.

If you don't know what they mean, just get Home Premium 64-bit.

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The Professional version now includes ALL applications of the Home Premium in addition to domain capability. That means the Media Center is also included in the Professional version.

Likewise, only the Professional and Ultimate support more than one sockets on the motherboard (multiple socket support). The Home Premium only support 1 socket but multiple cores. If your Mac Pro has 2 CPU sockets, then you'll need Professional or Ultimate.