Can someone clue me in on the difference between the Nehalem and the Westmere processor? I guess the Nehalem would be a step up fromt he 2009 Xeon? and the Westmere a step up from the Nehalem? Also the new ATI GPU's ( 5780) will it work on the 2009 model? Thx.
Westmere (32nm) is a die shrink of a Nehalem (45nm). Aside from that, there's not much of a difference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture)#Westmere You may or may not be interested in the AES instruction set.
Thanks for help. Also trying to figure out if the new ati card will be compatible with the 2009 models. A guy at the apple store told me they will be not and i find this absurd? How can it be possible? I don't know much about Mac's on the inside but i have been building PC's for a long time and never heard anything more silly.