I'm not sure what you're asking, but I was just correcting your comment that there was no eight core version of the E5-16xx.
Not sure about the confusion, that's what I was telling you. But you gave an example of an E5-1XXX and I told you no such thing.
There are a few six cores, here's the cheapest. $600 isn't cheap but about the same as the equivalent xeon and probably performs about the same. I guess you could quibble over whether a $600 chip is "consumer level".
http://ark.intel.com/products/77780/Intel-Core-i7-4930K-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz
Now you are just reaching. A consumer level I7 that is clocked lower, has less cache and is faster? Clearly you've made up your mind and should stick to self-built gaming rigs. Not sure what we are arguing about here anymore. You think Apple, and all the other PC builders use Xeon's for workstations, and they are wrong. They should be using consumer I7's because they are better than XEONS. Or should use them because they are cheaper, but apparently the same thing. That's why home-built rigs still exist, for people like you. I'm also thinking you think a GTX is as good as a FirePro and cost less money. They serve different purposes.
I think I, and the rest of the world, that doesn't use the machines for gaming are on the same page as Apple. It's a workstation, not just a computer. If they made it consumer level, dropped the price then it would just eat into the sales of the iMac and pro's would just move on to Windows workstations (By the way, HP Z620 is just beautiful).
I am really glad they are sticking to XEONS. If I wanted a super fast gaming rig, then I would absolutely build one myself and use windows. OSX/OpenGL is still slower than DirectX when it comes to gaming. Otherwise, get an iMac. It has everything you want. An i7 4770, gaming graphics, and regular non-ecc memory (sodimms though).
The Mac Pro... people are going to buy it for the same reason enterprises buy xeon servers instead of building their own servers. There is a reason that we pay so much extra money for XEONS, ECC memory, professional video cards, enterprise-level harddrives, and so on.
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Come on man... small businesses might be using home-built computers for Quickbooks, Maybe.. I have never seen SAP/SAPB1, Oracle, FourthShift, Great Plains, FRX, or ANY large SQL databases running on any consumer level hardware. If I would start asking IT personel to build home-rigs for all of my clients' servers, I think I would lose my business and be out of a job. That's like putting a WD green hard drive into a high-availability server because it's cheaper and performs just as good as a SAS drive. You can, but you will be fired within a month when that thing fails and the best you can come up with "it's the same thing, just cheaper".
I think the Mac Pro will not have high sales. I think it's sales will be really low, just like HP's and Dell's workstations are low. They cost a lot of money, and the general consumer just can't justify the cost. Those that can, do, and will buy them. Those that can't will stick with inspirons, mac mini's, imacs, and home-built rigs, if they need a little boost in performance.
By the way, this is coming from a guy that has built his own PC's since 486's in the 90's. Also made the mistake of using consumer-level hardware for a company early in my career. You try, you learn, you move on. I don't need any fact-sheets to tell me otherwise.
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You're preaching to the choir, mate. I am not the one who thinks Xeons and ECC RAM are a waste. I get frustrated with people that do and then try to compare prices to consumer level hardware. We are on the same page!
I am correct about the CPU
I know. I love Mac Rumors and sometimes have an itch to argue. But now I'm just getting frustrated and kind of done trying to prove that there is a difference between enterprise and consumer hardware outside of price and a specsheet that shows a difference in clock speed.
