Dell set the pricing
Dell is setting the pricing. It's not about the vendor costs.. it's all about what vendors think customers will pay.
I'm shopping for one to two compution nodes right now and the Dell Quad-Core 1U servers price at a bit cheaper at 1.86GHz [quad] vs. the dual-core system at 3.0GHz. Since 1.86GHz is very near the low end of the processor line, I'd suspect that we'll see the high end quad-cores sell for much more than the high-end Dual-cores. It won't matter what the part costs are [they are much closer]. There's too much extra value to end users who really need to run a lot of threads.
For most people, one Core2 Duo is plenty of horsepower for a long, long time. I'm typing on my new MacBookPro Core2 right now. One downside with the Core2Duo.. the thermal envelope IS higher than the Yonah CoreDuo processors. This thing gets pretty loud when the cpu [and the fans] spin up. It is wicked fast though [15" model with 2.33GHz]
This is one reason why I don't suspect we'll see a Core2Duo in a Mini any time soon. First off, the cpu is way too fast for a system with Integrated grpahics (unless you want a mini computation node). Unfortunately, Apple hasn't listened to me for the last few years so they haven't built in X-Grid support into all their consumer apps. If they had, your Mac MediaCenter could invisibly speed up the rendering of your iMovie project that you do on your iMac or Macbook. ;-) [as I always tell Apple, I hold no IP on potentially good ideas I provide publicly to Apple, go take them]
For most people, the towers are way too fast. I've set up a few dual-dual 2.66GHz machines and they are wicked fast. It really is difficult to slow them down even when you go out of your way to try (like Mathematica, HandBrake, a fork-bomb, and several other apps).
For me at home, the only reason I'd want a Tower would be for the X1900 video option. The Core2Duo iMac is more than powerful enough in every other way (even the occasional video work). I don't loose money when I'm waiting on a computational cycle though (like some of the people here)
At work, it's a different story. I'm looking for a very small computational cluster or One large computational node and 4 CPU cores may not be enough for multiple users.
Quad Dual-Core Opterons are too expensive so the Dual Quad-Core Intel systems would be perfect. The only problem is, at 1.66 and 1.83GHz, I'd likely be better off with 2 dual-core Core2Xeons running at 3.0GHz because they'd retire threads much faster and they run cooler (our chiller is over 20 years old so heat is a big issue). The Quad-Core Xeon chips run back up into the thermal range of the old P4 family chips. My whole excuse for new funding is to replace cluster of 22 single processor cluster nodes (ranging from 750MHz to 1GHz Athlons).
BTW.. it was some stupid ffakr who predicted in the last thread on this topic that we wouldn't see quad-core mac towers at this time.
I still suspect we'll see Quad-Core chips in one or two high end Tower models only and that will happen at MWSF at the earliest. I also think that it is no coincidence that Apple hasn't replaced the old PPC XServe Cluster Node yet.
Considering the relatively low part cost if moving from dual to quad cores.. I suspect that Apple will return the XServe Cluster Node and it may be Dual quad-core only.
ffakr
