Validating recent leaks, Apple has released two new Xserve models. The servers are sized to fit a 1U rack, and have been upgraded to Intel's Nehalem platform, which Apple claims can produce up to an 89 percent improvement in terms of performance per watt. The base model uses a single, 2.26GHz quad-core Xeon CPU, while the upper tier adds a second Xeon and allows scaling clock speed up to 2.93GHz.

Each Xeon is tied to three channels of 1066MHz DDR3 ECC memory, and Apple says it has achieved a 19 percent drop in idle power consumption. Three 3.5-inch bays support 7200rpm SATA and 15,000rpm SAS drives, in combinations up to 3TB. Buyers can additionally include a separate 128GB SSD drive as a boot disk, and expand externally through the use of two PCIe x16 slots, as well as miscellaneous RAID options. These include a new Xserve RAID card with 497Mbps in bandwidth, 512MB of cache and support for RAID 0, 1 and 5 configurations.

All Xserves ship with an unlimited client version of Leopard Server. Prices for the single-processor model start at $2,999; the dual-processor model costs a minimum of $3,599. Shipping times are currently listed at 24 hours or three to five days, respectively.