System Profiler displays wrong info

That doesn't sound right to me. It should say 2 CPUs with 8 (or 16 virtual cores).

Have you spoken to Apple tech support about this? It would appear only one CPU is being identified but if Activity monitor is showing 8 CPU is that the 4 real cores of the single CPU plus the 4 virtual cores or the 8 real cores of 2 CPUs?

So you did the BTO for dual quad top of the line, and you only show one cpu is present....

Ring up AppleCare Customer Service
Run Apple Hardware Test

Lastly, "kick the tires" as in give it a PRAM/NVRAM reset (two restart cycles from cold boot); and/or SMC Reset (I'd go for longer is better as far as unplugged for 5 minutes or 5 hrs).

There have been occassions when system profiler was wrong, and that was due to bad install of the OS. Like runnning an update that should not have been; using Migration Assistant from older model or G5; that sort of thing.

Want to rule out defective cpu first.

Relax, that was an understandable error that anyone could have made and you still have a superb machine.

Take care.

So you got a Quad 2.9, but only 4 DIMM slots. Still a lot of machine, so maybe after you get settled and use to it, let us know how well it fares.

I thought at first maybe you swapped out stock cpu for retail Nehalem 5570s at first.

This means you are $2k richer than you were ten minutes ago, yes? enough to buy some SSD drives and RAM to put it into high gear. 🙂