It's occurring at the lower end of the spectrum and not the higher one.
A price drop on the single socket model would have won more people over to the Mac Pro side.
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Apple Quietly Adds 3.33 GHz Quad-Core Option to Mac Pro
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A price drop on the single socket model would have won more people over to the Mac Pro side.
In a Precision desktop, Dell charges $820 to go from a 2.66 quad to a 3.20 or 3.33 quad -- curiously the same price for either option. Going from a 250GB internal disk to a 1.5TB (no 2TB option shown) is $555. Vendors have long marked up stuff they resell - I don't see how Apple is any worse than the rest in this respect.
Something to keep in mind when ordering minimum-config systems and adding third-party stuff to them is that you're still paying for the minimum-config components. If you have enough memory slots to keep the Apple sticks in there it's not so bad, but on my G5, I had to remove the OOTB memory to add in more, so it goes to waste. Same with disks - if you buy a 2TB disk elsewhere, you're still paying Apple for whatever smaller disk the box ships with. If you don't plan to add more than 3 internals, and have use for the smaller OOTB disk that's fine, but if you want 4x2TB internal, you'll have to yank the smaller one you paid for. When you factor that in, the price differential perhaps is somewhat lessened.
Delayed till Q2. Most likely late Q2 as well. It would work well for WWDC. It is scheduled to come at about June.
The iMac does not do it for me either, for several reasons. Mainly, I need at least 2 HD and the ability to upgrade the video card as well. The iMac is the only machine in the line up that is almost a decent deal if it meets your needs. Apple is simply out of touch with reality when it come to the Mac Pro.
It is very sad, if Apple offered a reasonably priced tower they would sell millions of them, while making so much more money. At some point down the road they will have to. They can not sustain their hardware sales with such poor choices. As a 20 years Mac user and much money invested, I am finding it very hard not to build a Hackintosh or switch to Windows entirely.
True. I was badly making a point on how seldom Macs are refreshed these days, without dropping their prices after several months. Apple has basically gone to a 12-18 month refresh holding prices and components the same, as others drop them during the life cycle of the product. With this minor "optional" update, Apple is charging an arm and a leg for it.
I have always owned the top Mac offerings, that is until these past few years. Apple has made it impossible for me to buy a Mac Pro with my hard earned money. Especially when I look at the offerings, and pricing, in the PC world. I just can't justify it.
Very true although in all fairness, it should be a comparison between unoverclocked speeds. So the i7-975 @ 3.33GHz for $999.99 is basically the same as the Xeon W3580 @ 3.33GHz for $1089.99. The i7-920 @ 2.66Ghz for $288.99 is basically the same as the Xeon W3520 @ 2.66GHz for $309.99. So the Xeons W35xx series chips used in the Mac Pros only cost a sliver more than their i7 counterparts with the only real difference being ECC memory support.
The thing is, Apple would rather people buy 27" iMacs and upgrade more frequently. The lifetime of a Mac Pro can be dragged out for longer with the odd graphics upgrade. So anyone who's worried about the cost difference between the iMac and the Mac Pro is not worth the hassle to appease as far as Apple goes and anyone with business accounts can cough up whatever they ask for.
I remember going through the costing of the 2009 Mac Pros when they came out. By just looking at the Xeon list prices alone and assuming that motherboards for Nehalem workstations cost roughly the same as the previous Mac Pro motherboards (a reasonable assumption since there hasn't suddenly been a five times hike in motherboard costs) then Apple had increased their profit margins by $1000 on every Mac Pro. In other words, they could have sold their Mac Pros for $1000 cheaper and made the same amount of profit they did with the 2008 Mac Pros at launch. If you don't believe me, go look up the launch prices of the Xeon chips on Wikipedia and look up the launch prices of Mac Pros.
and you can probably 1/5 the (retail) cost of a single socket motherboard compared to a double...
The thing is, if they were to make a reasonably priced tower with an i7 in it then yes, they would sell millions. However, they'd also lose millions of sales in iMacs. IMacs are far more profitable than a low cost i7 tower to Apple. The absence of a "mid-end tower" has never really bothered me as much as it has a lot of people on here. I've always felt that Apple would be daft (businesswise) to go that route and it hasn't ever really been an issue to me because I wanted quad/octo core and up until the 2008 Mac Pro, getting a workstation from Apple wasn't *that* much more than a 'regular pc' and was in fact cheaper than building the same machine yourself of getting it from HP or Dell. Now, I just can't justify it.
glad to see the 2TB drives. i hope the mac pro will still get those 6-core processors early 2010 though
Hard drive option, as usual, priced beyond justification
I agree that laying down that kind of money for a stock (i.e. Western Digital) hard drive seems like paying far too much. I don't think that anyone can make the Apple quality-through-synergy argument about charging people all that extra money for a larger drive.
I agree that laying down that kind of money for a stock (i.e. Western Digital) hard drive seems like paying far too much. I don't think that anyone can make the Apple quality-through-synergy argument about charging people all that extra money for a larger drive.
Especially their slowness, at best, of using faster video card technologies. No 4870x2? No 5870, for that matter...
I just switched to Apple (Mac Pro), despite some disappointments. The more I read, the more depressed I get.
Even my instructor, an Apple fanboy, is contemplating getting a $2200 alienware instead of the $2500 MBP. Same size screen but a quad core CPU, amongst other things, Apple really is overpricing - their 17" MBP should be closer to $1700 and not $2500... (and that's not a terribly unfair consideration; the 2.53GHz HP for $1000 is no slouch, hardware-wise... especially if it has a 7200RPM drive while the 178" MBP has a 5400RPM drive...
) Never thought I'd say this, but it's a greater pity hackintosh doesn't work well on laptops... Either way the customer is getting screwed and Linux is a joke to begin with...
Not at all. The W3580 CPU, on its own, sells at newegg for $1089. It's a surprisingly small markup... it also outperforms the entry level 2.26 8-core system for multithreaded tasks, and cremates the same machine with single-threaded apps (3.33 vs 2.26, hehe...)
"Surprisingly small markup"? The W3580 sells at newegg for $1089. The W3520 sells for $309.99. Apple charges $1200 to upgrade from the W3520 to the W3580. That's over a 50% markup. I'd call that fairly large, wouldn't you?!?
Price to build a computer (hackintosh or other)
I've been thinking about building a Media Center computer to hook up to my 55" LCD for a personal xmas present.
I did this on newegg last night.
Core i7-860 2.8ghz w/ Intel P55 LGA 1156 motherboard
16GB CORSAIR XMS3 DDR3 SDRAM @1600 mhz
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready
CrossFireX Support Video Card
Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1850 MCE Kit 1128 PCI-Express x1 -- (I got two of these for a total of four tv tuners)
Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive -- (i will use this drive for OS)
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive -- (i will use this drive for gaming)
Western Digital 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive -- (I will use this drive for Multimedia Storage)
Pioneer Black Blu-ray Disc/DVD/CD Writer SATA Model BDR-205BKS
Sony Optiarc 24X DVD/CD Rewritable Drive Black SATA Model AD-7240S-0B
All-in-one Media card reader
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM
COOLER MASTER HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower
Computer Case
CoolerMaster 1000w power supply
Grand Total w/ free shipping -- $2,446.32
I use windows because of windows media center, but a hackintosh would fly with this thing also im sure of that. I toned down the video card alittle just because they are so easy to replace and drop in price so rapidly, and with
16gb of ram + 1gb video ram this will do more than what I need, at least for now....
I've been thinking about building a Media Center computer to hook up to my 55" LCD for a personal xmas present.
I did this on newegg last night.
Core i7-860 2.8ghz w/ Intel P55 LGA 1156 motherboard
16GB CORSAIR XMS3 DDR3 SDRAM @1600 mhz
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready
CrossFireX Support Video Card
Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1850 MCE Kit 1128 PCI-Express x1 -- (I got two of these for a total of four tv tuners)
Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive -- (i will use this drive for OS)
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive -- (i will use this drive for gaming)
Western Digital 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive -- (I will use this drive for Multimedia Storage)
Pioneer Black Blu-ray Disc/DVD/CD Writer SATA Model BDR-205BKS
Sony Optiarc 24X DVD/CD Rewritable Drive Black SATA Model AD-7240S-0B
All-in-one Media card reader
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM
COOLER MASTER HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower
Computer Case
CoolerMaster 1000w power supply
Grand Total w/ free shipping -- $2,446.32
I use windows because of windows media center, but a hackintosh would fly with this thing also im sure of that. I toned down the video card alittle just because they are so easy to replace and drop in price so rapidly, and with
16gb of ram + 1gb video ram this will do more than what I need, at least for now....
Two questions:
- 16 GiB of memory seems excessive for a Media Centre system, do you really need that much? (Memory prices go down, so buying more memory than you need now vs. upgrading in the future is not cost effective.)
- Which memory did you choose - the Intel P55 mobos have 4 memory slots, and I can't find 4 GiB DDR3 DIMMs from Corsair on Newegg
4 GB of DDR3-1600 on my general purpose desktop here. It functions as a media center as well but I'm trying to source that out to my spare AMD machine.
RAM was cheaper back in September as well. Befor that DDR2-800 was down to $38 for 2 x 2 GB back during the summer.
I use windows because of windows media center, but a hackintosh would fly with this thing also im sure of that. I toned down the video card alittle just because they are so easy to replace and drop in price so rapidly, and with
16gb of ram + 1gb video ram this will do more than what I need, at least for now....
This really isn't the thread for what you want to discuss. However, 16gb of RAM seems a little excessive for a media centre. Hell, it seems excessive for pretty much any one's use!
My Core i7-940 with 12 GiB is paging far more than I like - as soon as the 4 GiB DIMMs hit reasonable prices it's going to 18 GiB then 24 GiB.
(The big culprit is an x64 VM that I'm giving 6 GiB, but it wants more....)
I'm not doubting that some people can use it but 16gb of RAM for a media centre/occasional gaming machine seems a little excessive to me. Hell I could use 16gb of RAM but then I run scientific simulations etc. No game or film needs that much RAM though.
nice - love the sarcastic fanboy title.
still, you can't blame apple if people are willing to pay the money.
after all, its just cash and we all have way too much of that anyhow.
Grand Total w/ free shipping -- $2,446.32
I use windows because of windows media center, but a hackintosh would fly with this thing also im sure of that. I toned down the video card alittle just because they are so easy to replace and drop in price so rapidly, and with
16gb of ram + 1gb video ram this will do more than what I need, at least for now....
kind of a random place for your post.
but anyways, to each his own concerning your build - you need to get what you feel you need. i would save on the RAM and get more storage, 2TB will get devoured fast, and divide it over drives to have redundancy for backup unless you don't mind losing all your media if that one drive goes down.
personally, i love my 4TB hp mediasmart windows home server and the fact that my multimedia content is accessible from any media extender anywhere in my home - appleTVs, PCs and Macs, xbox, xbox 360, etc.