Are xserves ever more powerful ?

[gjarold]

I am looking at the previous gen (2008) mac pros and comparing them to the current gen Xserve, and in terms of CPU and RAM, the xserves don't seem to have any premium in performance...

Is that the case ? It would seem that if one were trying to achieve the highest possible CPU speeds and ram configurations, one could just as easily do that with a mac pro vs. an xserve.

Is it assumed that the next generation xserves will match the 2009 mac pros and continue this trend ? It would be nice if there were some options on the xserve that were more powerful than the desktop systems...

 

[Umbongo]

The highest end Xeons aren't intended for 1U servers and likely put out too much heat for an Xserve. That said it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect a new Xserve to have the same processor options currently available on the 2009 Mac Pros. They could probably have 12 memory slots, but I wouldn't expect that.

 

[peskaa]

Mac Pros are generally faster and better able to take upgrades (such as GPUs) than Xserves. The advantage to an Xserve is the 1U rack size - Mac Pros don't fit in data centres very well.

When they update the Xserves to Nehalem they will be similar, but the Pros will likely be "better" in terms of cost and raw performance. The Xserves may peak out at a lower clock speed, depending on TDP of the CPUs - if they run too hot for the restricted enclosure, they don't get used.