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Why are Mac Pros so expensive? How would this $2500 base model Mac Pro compare to the following Hacintosh setup in terms of overall estimated performance? Am I comparing apples and oranges here? It seems as if the Hacintosh should blow the Mac Pro out of the water while saving $1500 as well!

 

 

Base model Mac Pro configuration:

  • Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors
  • 1GB memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory
  • 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive

TsubukiSama's Hac Pro configuration:

Mainboard : Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R

Processor : Intel Quad Core 6600

RAM : 4 GB OCZ Gold XTC DDR2 pc6400

Graphic card : 7950GT 256mb

Harddrive : 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II

Case : Antec Sonata III with a 500W PSU

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Try to compare a Mac Pro with a brand name similar configuration (e.g. Dell) and you will see the almost similar prices. Testing components and configurations are so high expensive. Don't ask me why, these are the procedures, I don't made its.

Main differences:

 

- Xeons vs Core 2's

- ECC (Error-checking) RAM vs standard RAM

 

Go price up a mobo which can handle ECC RAM, a quad Xeon (or pair of dual Xeons) and some ECC RAM and you wont see such a huge difference in price. I mean, fair enough you're saying you can build a very powerful machine for a lot less, but its not a fair comparison in this case.

Why are Mac Pros so expensive? How would this $2500 base model Mac Pro compare to the following Hacintosh setup in terms of overall estimated performance? Am I comparing apples and oranges here? It seems as if the Hacintosh should blow the Mac Pro out of the water while saving $1500 as well!

Base model Mac Pro configuration:

  • Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors
  • 1GB memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory
  • 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive

TsubukiSama's Hac Pro configuration:

Mainboard : Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R

Processor : Intel Quad Core 6600

RAM : 4 GB OCZ Gold XTC DDR2 pc6400

Graphic card : 7950GT 256mb

Harddrive : 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II

Case : Antec Sonata III with a 500W PSU

 

The differences are what the others have pointed out, but for any practical purpose the Hac Pro should be better, including perhaps performance. That would be definitely true if you use a Quad Extreme or, better, wait for a Penryn and use even faster RAM.

Xeon is certainly an argument.

However ECC RAM is not necessarily an advantage in 'real-life' desktop operation. It can even be slower than high quality regular RAM. I'm no tech expert but I know from various day time jobs in IT that ECC RAM is mostly used in servers and workstations where data reliability is of highest relevance and where raw performance is less of an issue. IT gurus told me that the odds of data corruption in the middle of a session due to whatever obscure external influences (cosmic rays for instance...) is basically negligible. Regular backups should do the trick. Companies just need to be virtually 100% on the safe side. If that's the case for single users...

 

4GB of Apple's RAM would lift the price by $700 in my neck of the woods. A 500GB HD by $380, a RAID card by $1170...

plus I don't like Apple's 'official' choice of graphics cards.

 

It's certainly all top quality but it adds up quickly and I know you can have it cheaper within only marginal performance disadvantages, if any.

The really significant advantage of the Mac Pro for me would be warranty and hassle-free upgrades.

 

I will most likely end up buying a Mac Pro one day but for now a Hack and a Macbook will do.

Why are Mac Pros so expensive? How would this $2500 base model Mac Pro compare to the following Hacintosh setup in terms of overall estimated performance? Am I comparing apples and oranges here? It seems as if the Hacintosh should blow the Mac Pro out of the water while saving $1500 as well!

 

 

Base model Mac Pro configuration:

  • Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors
  • 1GB memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory
  • 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive

TsubukiSama's Hac Pro configuration:

Mainboard : Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R

Processor : Intel Quad Core 6600

RAM : 4 GB OCZ Gold XTC DDR2 pc6400

Graphic card : 7950GT 256mb

Harddrive : 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II

Case : Antec Sonata III with a 500W PSU

 

Hi Drexel,

 

I have the same exact Hac Pro and it runs great! Very fast! At work I have a Mac Pro, Quad Xeon 2.66, 2 gigs of ram, and it seems to run slower than my Hac Pro. I run Final Cut Pro on both machines and the Hac Pro is much quicker!

 

I have a couple of questions for you:

 

1) When I shut down my Hac Pro, it would shutdown then restart itself, have you encountered this??

2) What OSX86 version are you running?? I'm running Uphuck 10.4.9, but I think Rosetta wasn't installed. Is there a way to install it without re-installing all the software?

 

Any help would be great!

 

Miro30

4GB of Apple's RAM would lift the price by $700 in my neck of the woods. A 500GB HD by $380, a RAID card by $1170...

plus I don't like Apple's 'official' choice of graphics cards.

 

Absolutely. And in any case those upgrade prices are way over the top. See for instance the cost of equivalent RAM at Crucial.

4GB of Apple's RAM would lift the price by $700 in my neck of the woods. A 500GB HD by $380, a RAID card by $1170...

plus I don't like Apple's 'official' choice of graphics cards.

 

If you buy it from Apple, it's $700. Same with the harddrive, but not the raid card and poor choice of graphic cards for Macs. THEY NEED THE G80 SERIES!!!!

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