Apple's description of its latest Xserve, the Quad Xeon 64-bit server, is a bit of a misnomer. Though Intel makes a CPU called the Quad Core, this isn't it. This server sports twin Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5100 CPUs. Nomenclature aside, our Clear Choice Test of the Xserve found it performed much faster than the older Xserve G4 model we previously tested. It also has far greater memory and disk speed.

On the outside, the Xserve doesn't look much different from its predecessor, which has twin 32-bit PowerPC CPUs. We compiled programs and performed large file copies on the new model. Using the GNU gcc4 compiler, we found that compile times typically took an average of 10% of the time the Xserve G4 unit took. File copies, especially large files, were 65% to 82% faster on the new hardware than on the G4.

Some of the goodies crammed into the 1U rack frame include space for three Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) or Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives with as much as 2.1TB of storage and as much as 32GB of memory. This means that the new Xserve can be power hungry. It's fed by a 650-watt power supply with an optional redundant supply.

The densely packed Xserve includes two PCI Express card slots, one of which can be reconfigured to be an independent, bus-controlled PCI-X slot; we thought it might be full, but indeed there is still more. The independent PCI-X slot doesn't depend on the other slot, so it can run full speed. In other systems, the PCI-X bus speed often is throttled down to the lowest-speed card in the bus. Not so here.

There are two Gigabit Ethernet ports, two FireWire 800 ports on the rear and a FireWire 400 jack on the front. FireWire is Apple's name for the IEEE 1394 high-speed serial interface.

NETWORK SERVER APPLE XSERVE QUAD XEON Apple

4.07

Price: Base price: $3,000; as tested: $7,600. Pros: High-performing hardware; improved management. Cons: Somewhat expensive. The breakdown Performance 40% 4 Scoring Key: 5: Exceptional 4: Very good 3: Average 2: Below average 1: Subpar or not available Features 25% 4 Manageability 20% 4 Serviceability 15% 4.5 TOTAL SCORE 4.07

Click to see: NetResults for Apple Xserve