Is the Mac Pro WAY overpriced?

[Freyqq]

I think the post about people looking for a "desktop" vs a "workstation" is 100% on the mark. Mac Pros are workstation-grade and marketed machines. iMacs are Apple's "desktop"...they have no "mid-tier"...which is what actually compares to an i7 machine.

and until that day comes, I and may others with a similar point of view will never buy a mac desktop..keeping a very lucrative portion of consumers in the dark but looking forward to windows 7..lol

I do have a mac laptop though btw (MBP)..their laptop lineup isn't as ridiculously priced as their desktop offerings

 

[akdj]

Someone mentioned it earlier...

Have you ever tried to sell a used Windows machine? You can't give them away after a year I was a Windows user for 20 years. Switched two years ago and I can't imagine EVER owning another PC again. My '08 Mac Pro is the fastest, most stable and efficient system I have ever used. My computers are a direct reflection on my bank account and the money I can make. It pains me to know I waited as long as I did to make the switch. Creative should ONLY be done on the Mac (OSX) platform, if for nothing but peace of mind and Speed! The Holy Grail. I have never lost a project, gotten a virus, experienced the inevitable Windows "Slow down" due to time, etc. Couldn't be happier and I am glad to pay the price.

I think we'll see alot of the benefits from the Nahelm '09 crop of MacPros when SL releases in September. Both the 08 and 09 pros should fair well with an updated OS. Also, other software companies following suit to take advantage of the multiple cores as we see from both sides....the Multi physical and virtual core rigs. Compared to my G4 or my older Windows Quad cores....I am able to run FCP with Color, Motion, PS, and DVD Studio Pro while simultaneously surfing the web, checking emails, printing a 13x19 print and syncing my iPhone No hiccups. What a machine to upgrade too Pop the hard drive sled and mount a new one, slide it back in and power it on. New RAM, just as easy. Easy to clean out the dust with the cable management. Aesthetically pleasing....and third party vendors are ready to take care of your "Upgrades" for a reasonable price. All of my RAM and HDD shopping was done at OWC

Mac Pros are only over priced if you're buying it for the wrong reasons. It is a bit over kill as a home computer for surfing, email, even basic video and photography editing. BUT, if you are able to use to computer for a living and this will better your workflow, it is NOT over priced. (I am talking about the dual quads and the singles. Not every one needs all that horsepower). Peace of mind is invaluable in my world. I get that with Apple. And the Mac Pro is my most used tool in my inventory.

J

 

[Freyqq]

Someone mentioned it earlier...

Have you ever tried to sell a used Windows machine? You can't give them away after a year I was a Windows user for 20 years. Switched two years ago and I can't imagine EVER owning another PC again. My '08 Mac Pro is the fastest, most stable and efficient system I have ever used. My computers are a direct reflection on my bank account and the money I can make. It pains me to know I waited as long as I did to make the switch. Creative should ONLY be done on the Mac (OSX) platform, if for nothing but peace of mind and Speed! The Holy Grail. I have never lost a project, gotten a virus, experienced the inevitable Windows "Slow down" due to time, etc. Couldn't be happier and I am glad to pay the price.

I think we'll see alot of the benefits from the Nahelm '09 crop of MacPros when SL releases in September. Both the 08 and 09 pros should fair well with an updated OS. Also, other software companies following suit to take advantage of the multiple cores as we see from both sides....the Multi physical and virtual core rigs. Compared to my G4 or my older Windows Quad cores....I am able to run FCP with Color, Motion, PS, and DVD Studio Pro while simultaneously surfing the web, checking emails, printing a 13x19 print and syncing my iPhone No hiccups. What a machine to upgrade too Pop the hard drive sled and mount a new one, slide it back in and power it on. New RAM, just as easy. Easy to clean out the dust with the cable management. Aesthetically pleasing....and third party vendors are ready to take care of your "Upgrades" for a reasonable price. All of my RAM and HDD shopping was done at OWC

Mac Pros are only over priced if you're buying it for the wrong reasons. It is a bit over kill as a home computer for surfing, email, even basic video and photography editing. BUT, if you are able to use to computer for a living and this will better your workflow, it is NOT over priced. (I am talking about the dual quads and the singles. Not every one needs all that horsepower). Peace of mind is invaluable in my world. I get that with Apple. And the Mac Pro is my most used tool in my inventory.

J

But why would you want to sell your PC, when you can just upgrade the components that you need upgraded yourself..rather than buying a whole new computer every time it gets too slow for you. Need a new CPU? Buy a new core i7 or whatever. New motherboard? No problem. Etc... Not to mention that you could buy a couple of roughly equally speced PCs for the price of one mac pro. The point of resale value is moot.

 

[Tesselator]

Did you even read the post you replied to? It said the single socket price was too high, and the dual was not. You disagreed and argued that the single socket price was too high.

He commented on both. And so did I. Did you read my entire post?

I thought the W3500 series diferred from standard i7 processors as it was capable of using ECC RAM. Correct me if I'm wrong, but considering the above statements, but this could be an issue to some people - including one of my brother's "interesting" professors, who are using a single-socket computer for calculations. I don't KNOW the calculations, but I am assuming that they are not that parallel.

Yup that's right. And besides that they are identical. And since ECC does essentially nothing (except cost more) I submit that the two are completely identical for all intents and porpoises.

ECC refers to a technology which allows a computer system to operate even if a memory error occurs. Since I doubt naturally occurring alpha particle emitting radioactive isotopes or high energy cosmic rays from supernovas are going to strike my memory and cause such an error I personally can disregard it. Might be useful in military applications tho. Heck with what we now know about quantum physics if an Alpha particle comes my way I'll just look the other way and it'll turn into a harmless wave!


.

 

[Freyqq]

He commented on both. And so did I. Did you read my entire post?



Yup that's right. And besides that they are identical. And since ECC does essentially nothing I submit that the two are completely identical for all intents and purposes.

ECC refers to a technology which allows a computer system to operate even if a memory error occurs. Since I doubt naturally occurring alpha particle emitting radioactive isotopes or high energy cosmic rays from supernovas are going to strike my memory and cause such and error I personally can disregard it. Might be useful in military applications tho. Heck with what we now know about quantum physics if an Alpha particle comes my way I'll just look the other way and it'll turn into a harmless wave!

ECC is actually slower than regular ram too..which seems ironic given that apple seems to want to make their computer faster than the competition. It's the reason why the core i7 benches faster than the xeon.

 

[Tesselator]

I think the post about people looking for a "desktop" vs a "workstation" is 100% on the mark. Mac Pros are workstation-grade and marketed machines. iMacs are Apple's "desktop"...they have no "mid-tier"...which is what actually compares to an i7 machine.

OK, besides the case please explain any tangible differences between a "i7 machine" and the quad core Mac Pros.

ECC is actually slower than regular ram too..which seems ironic given that apple seems to want to make their computer faster than the competition. It's the reason why the core i7 benches faster than the xeon.

OK, I'll byte. What specific parts are "faster" in any of the Intel macs to date?

Not trying to be a dick but if there are I'd like to know. I don't see any myself. Drives? Consumer Grade. Video Cards? Gamer grade and slower because of inferior drivers and minute selection options. RAM? Slower or the same in every case. MB? I dunno but I guess it's not significantly different in any way over Intel's reference design - in fact it's scaled down a bit. . There's the 1st use of FireWire 800. Ummm... Something else?

 

[Freyqq]

OK, besides the case please explain any tangible differences between a "i7 machine" and the quad core Mac Pros.




OK, I'll byte. What specific parts are "faster" in any of the Intel macs to date?

Not trying to be a dick but if there are I'd like to know. I don't see any myself. Drives? Consumer Grade. Video Cards? Gamer grade and slower because of inferior drivers. RAM? Slower or the same in every case. MB? I dunno but I guess it's not significantly different in any way over Intel's reference design - in fact it's scaled down a bit. . There's the 1st use of FireWire 800. Ummm... Something else?

Faster as in a xeon with x ECC ram benched against a similarly specced i7 computer of similar GHZ with x regular ddr3 triple channel ram -> the i7 benches faster. The platform is faster, i'm not talking specifics. The point being, ECC ram is slower than regular ddr3 ram.

Yeah you're probably about on the mark about why there are speed differences. Drives should be the same. CPU, we've been over. Ram, been over that. Video cards..yeah a little slower b\c of drivers probably...but the 285 and the 4870 are close to the top of the line. No 4870x2 or 295 from apple though. MB is prob fine, but you can't overclock which nets big gains for windows folks. All i can think of atm. But you don't buy a mac b\c you want to win every benchmark against a computer that costs 1/3 of your mac pro do you? No..you buy it for the OS, so that's just the price to pay for that convenience.

 

[Dr.Pants]

Yup that's right. And besides that they are identical. And since ECC does essentially nothing (except cost more) I submit that the two are completely identical for all intents and porpoises.

ECC refers to a technology which allows a computer system to operate even if a memory error occurs. Since I doubt naturally occurring alpha particle emitting radioactive isotopes or high energy cosmic rays from supernovas are going to strike my memory and cause such an error I personally can disregard it. Might be useful in military applications tho. Heck with what we now know about quantum physics if an Alpha particle comes my way I'll just look the other way and it'll turn into a harmless wave!

Well, when I first heard "Alpha Particle" I thought to myself "WTF?! Why's there a helium in my memory?!" Also, apparently good for correcting errors when Rapture comes along! Still, I should note that MacRumors is not the appropriate place to be discussing string theory and Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle

Back on-topic, ECC RAM functionality less about the causes of a bit of memory failing instead as making sure the system remains running if it happens. I would note that obviously there is or was a need for ECC RAM as somebody had to think of Hamming and FEC coding, in addition to ECC RAM's development. Obviously, there have been enough problems over the years to justify use in the mainstream market, not just some fuddy-duddy reactors and decaying probes in space.

 

[mward333]

you have a nice work setup, have a picture?

Sure; if you want to see my MacPro, take a look at:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/342246/
My MacPro is pictured in post #34.

[Multimedia posted a picture of his setup in that thread too. I don't know that guy personally, but he was a longtime Macrumors user who got banned in fall 2007.]

 

[Tesselator]

Faster as in...

Oh, I was thinking Workstation vs Workstation. Not Workstation vs. Desktop.

Yeah, workstation MBs and CPUs are a little better. With two four core procs DTs really can't compete. But in sticking to the appropriate comparisons Apple comes up kinda short - you have to admit. And to remain on topic they charge over-speced prices for these under-speced systems. At least this is true for all 2009 Mac Pros. Last year and for the two years prior I could have and would have stuck up for Apple and shown just how very price competitive they were. Sucks that I can't this year too. This year a DIY kit with 18 DIMM slots, 6 PCIe slots, 36GB RAM, two quad-core 3.2GHz Nehalem, Typical drives, cards, and case go for under $5k. Apple wants $6K for much much less.

Their $2.5K entry level quad is under-speced even compared to a $1K desk-top.

Anyway I was just wondering if there was something I didn't know - maybe about the MB or something that justified the price differences.

 

[DoFoT9]

ECC is actually slower than regular ram too..which seems ironic given that apple seems to want to make their computer faster than the competition. It's the reason why the core i7 benches faster than the xeon.

well TBH for a large majority of MP users (who use their machine professionally) this is very important. the fact that its ECC gives the computer better reliability and less computational errors. the RAM may be slower but they are guaranteed to have no errors (it might be limited by the fact that if there are errors they need to be corrected and computing the fixes are the reason why its slower?? im not sure though).

i dont think the MP is excessively overpriced, maybe by a bit.. but look at every other mac - they are all overpriced by a bit. but i dont mind, its worth it

 

[Tesselator]

Well, when I first heard "Alpha Particle" I thought to myself "WTF?! Why's there a helium in my memory?!" Also, apparently good for correcting errors when Rapture comes along! Still, I should note that MacRumors is not the appropriate place to be discussing string theory and Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle

Back on-topic, ECC RAM functionality less about the causes of a bit of memory failing instead as making sure the system remains running if it happens. I would note that obviously there is or was a need for ECC RAM as somebody had to think of Hamming and FEC coding, in addition to ECC RAM's development. Obviously, there have been enough problems over the years to justify use in the mainstream market, not just some fuddy-duddy reactors and decaying probes in space.

Hehhehehe... But seriously what I named:

• radioactive isotopes (which emit alpha particles), and
• high energy cosmic rays from supernovas.

Are about the only things that can flip memory bits. ECC can only deal with these kinds of "soft errors". Anything else and you're screwed anyway. ECC really is completely useless in non-military applications. Or maybe 1 person of all non-ECC operators over a 10-year collective might experience this situation. I actually doubt it though.
.

 

[Gonk42]

BUT, if you are able to use to computer for a living and this will better your workflow, it is NOT over priced. (I am talking about the dual quads and the singles. Not every one needs all that horsepower). Peace of mind is invaluable in my world. I get that with Apple. And the Mac Pro is my most used tool in my inventory.

J

The resale value of the Mac Pro is higher because the new prices are high, also they are standard units so the buyer knows roughly what they are getting but it is dependent on an on-going demand for Mac Pros which may change if Apple continues its present very high price policy.

I agree with you that if you are a professional creative with a big investment in Apple software then there is a big cost associated with switching and time is money so a hassle free system is worth a lot of money and Apple is happy to charge a lot of money.

But away from the small core market of professional creatives there will be much more price sensitivity (say in universities/education, software developers etc) and even amongst professionals they may prefer a little hassle if it saves a lot of cash.

If the market for the Mac Pro is decreased too much by high pricing then third party Apps will not be developed for OS X and even Apple will have less and less interest in the product.

I think with the 09 Mac Pro Apple has made it clear that they are no longer trying to extend the market beyond the existing core market, they will continue it as a niche product but it is only worth their while if they can make a large profit on each unit.

May be I'm being too pessimistic and at the next refresh the prices will revert to more like the 08 and earlier models but it seems to me that the 09 refresh marked a bit of a sea change.

 

[Umbongo]

Hehhehehe... But seriously what I named:

• radioactive isotopes (which emit alpha particles), and
• high energy cosmic rays from supernovas.

Are about the only things that can flip memory bits. ECC can only deal with these kinds of "soft errors". Anything else and you're screwed anyway. ECC really is completely useless in non-military applications. Or maybe 1 person of all non-ECC operators over a 10-year collective might experience this situation. I actually doubt it though.
.

You're numbers are way off. From this white paper on memory errors:

Even using a relatively conservative error rate (500 FIT/Mbit), a system with 1 GByte of RAM can expect an error every two weeks;

There is no reason to leave things to chance when you can control it. That is why ECC memory is standard on servers, regardless of Application.

 

[Tesselator]

Sure sure, in the sweetest way I can say it:

Smother me with goofy white papers - it's still all just crap.

Once a week. Bahahahaaa.... When was that last time your non-ECC was hit with a cosmic ray and you noticed it? Yeah, thought so.
One of these papers even says every 12 hours PER GIGABYTE. I'm laughing so hard right now.


EDIT: And did I forget to mention that in my estimate... the one guy in ten years in happened to... would be living in the Himalaya Mountains... on top of Mt. Everest! LOL
This just makes me wanna go right out and give Apple an extra $1000.00 to an extra $2,000.00 to make my RAM cosmic-ray-proof. Tee Hee Hee...

 

[brentsg]

He commented on both. And so did I. Did you read my entire post?

Then your post makes even less sense than I thought.

You said you completely disagreed. But actually you agreed with him on the single socket argument.... Yet all of the evidence you provided in the post was concerning the single socket machine.... on which you actually agreed with him.

You apparently disagree with him on the dual socket, yet you provided no comment at all on that one.

 

[-hh]

Cindori: I agree that the Mac Pro has a much more elegant design, and I'll take your word that the RAM & CPU are better, but is it really worth twice as much as that Dell (which actually looks like a pretty decent system for a Dell)? Does it really represent typical workstation pricing? If so, I'd better stay away from workstations...

Welcome to the world of the Law of Diminishing Returns.

In a nutshell, cost : performance is never a linear relationship when looking at the top end of technology: one can easily end up doubling the price (or more) and end up gaining less (often far less) than 2x the performance.

For example, for roughly $50,000 you can find a few high end sports cars that can hit around a 5 second time for 0-60mph. But if you want to go faster, what products exist?

Consider for example the Porsche 911 Turbo for $100,000 (twice the price): while it is faster...0-60mph in 3.8 seconds...but despite being 2x as much, its not 2x as fast. To get a 0-60 time of 2.5 seconds, you're looking at something like a Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4, which costs around $1,400,000.
Yes, that's ~30x more to be 2x as fast.

To use a computer in an example, Apple's octo Mac Pro starts at $3300 for 2.26GHz...and to bump the CPU to 2.66GHz costs another $1400. This is a 42% cost increase for a 18% performance gain (ceteris paribus) and merely YA example of the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Oh, I was thinking Workstation vs Workstation. Not Workstation vs. Desktop.

When one "backs off" from a Workstation to a Desktop, one very much should expect more than a 10% reduction in price as a result of a 10% reduction in performance.

Granted, Apple has done poorly with the value in the single-CPU version of the Mac Pro, but that doesn't entirely discount the octo simply through association.

This year a DIY kit with 18 DIMM slots, 6 PCIe slots, 36GB RAM, two quad-core 3.2GHz Nehalem, Typical drives, cards, and case go for under $5k. Apple wants $6K for much much less.

Except for the OEM's value-added steps that a DIY never has, such as of the product coming fully assembled & tested, and with a "one stop" warranty, etc. YMMV as to how much these elements are worth, but it is clearly never zero.


-hh

 

[djellison]

The dual-processor 8 core Mac Pro is expensive, but so are all dual-processor workstation machines.

However - the crime is the single processor 4 core machine. THat doesn't need a Xeon. It could be 50% cheaper with an i7 CPU. THAT machine is way overpriced for what it is.

 

[Umbongo]

The dual-processor 8 core Mac Pro is expensive, but so are all dual-processor workstation machines.

However - the crime is the single processor 4 core machine. THat doesn't need a Xeon. It could be 50% cheaper with an i7 CPU. THAT machine is way overpriced for what it is.

The processor isn't what increases the cost, the Core i7 and the Xeons cost the same.

 

[Demonfart]

I'm going to make a very safe bet that not many of you guys use your Macs professionally...or at least not for design/editing/compositing/etc. While most of your arguments and white papers and articles and opining add up I think that you are missing a huge point; one juicy identity design gig, or a single mediocre commercial production, or even a solid opening animation, can and should pay for all of/most of a new Mac Pro. If that sounds silly then you either aren't charging enough or you might need to log some more time in the trenches before you drop the money for a pro-level workstation like the Mac Pro.

Really, a couple of thousand is peanuts on almost any contract these days, so why should you even be sweating the difference in price between these lovely Apple workstations and their slightly less apt but cheaper PC cousins? Seems more like an excuse to argue than a valid talking point to me.

 

[doox00]

I'm going to make a very safe bet that not many of you guys use your Macs professionally...or at least not for design/editing/compositing/etc. While most of your arguments and white papers and articles and opining add up I think that you are missing a huge point; one juicy identity design gig, or a single mediocre commercial production, or even a solid opening animation, can and should pay for all of/most of a new Mac Pro. If that sounds silly then you either aren't charging enough or you might need to log some more time in the trenches before you drop the money for a pro-level workstation like the Mac Pro.

Really, a couple of thousand is peanuts on almost any contract these days, so why should you even be sweating the difference in price between these lovely Apple workstations and their slightly less apt but cheaper PC cousins? Seems more like an excuse to argue than a valid talking point to me.

That is not really the point, regardless of how much your contract may be for one job you are doing on your Mac Pro the cost is super inflated for the hardware. If 3000-6000 is peanuts to you, then congrats, but to most that is a huge chunk of change. You can spec out a PC with nearly identical specs (and run OSX on it more than likely) and cost nearly half as much, look at the newegg shopping cart I posted the other day, that is nearly identical to a Mac Pro spec wise and is 1500+ less than the Mac Pro.

But like I said before, if I were rich and could afford one, I would. My main PC is pretty powerful though and cost me like 1600ish to build (4-500 of which was the water cooling parts). Core i7 system with gtx 260's in sli, 6gb ram, overclocked to 3.8ghz at min, sometimes I bump it to 4ghz. Runs fantastic in Vista 64. my hackintosh is a c2d e6750 @ 3.2ghz 9600gt and 4gb of ram, that one runs pretty niceas well and was 500~ to build.

 

[thepawn]

Sure sure, in the sweetest way I can say it:

Smother me with goofy white papers - it's still all just crap.

Once a week. Bahahahaaa.... When was that last time your non-ECC was hit with a cosmic ray and you noticed it? Yeah, thought so.
One of these papers even says every 12 hours PER GIGABYTE. I'm laughing so hard right now.


EDIT: And did I forget to mention that in my estimate... the one guy in ten years in happened to... would be living in the Himalaya Mountains... on top of Mt. Everest! LOL
This just makes me wanna go right out and give Apple an extra $1000.00 to an extra $2,000.00 to make my RAM cosmic-ray-proof. Tee Hee Hee...

And to some, that is the value proposition. As an high end example, in the high-transaction financial world, there are many apps (especially in the derivative market) that depend on 0-defect 0-downtime as their running mantra. That's how things like RAIDed memory even came to exist. Would you ever consider RAIDing your memory for fault tolerance? Probably not.

It's all about what the loss in time or data is worth to the client - across the board, from ECC ram to the qualtiy of the hardware build, to the level of support contact you can get.

You are obviously not the target market for it and would prefer a desktop. At which point, as a "desktop" the Mac Pro is vastly overpriced. Granted, the recent set of Mac Pros DO also have a "Apple premium" to them. If Apple had an expandable/modifiable desktop I know I sure would have bought it, but between an iMac and a Mac Pro, I went with the Pro and sucked up the workstation premium.

 

[Tesselator]

There are sub-$1k machines with ECC. Your point is?

Hardware build? OK, show me the difference.

Support contact? Apple? Hehehe... When was the last time Apple went to someone's
house to repair their machine?? With Apple you pay $300 for the right to mail it in
which you also have to pay for. For a workstation it's probably the worst service in
the industry or close to it. Am I wrong?

I don't want a DT. I want them to offer the goods they're asking people to pay for.
They clearly are NOT doing that in 2009! No rational arguments can be made in
their favor to the contrary.

 

[RebootD]

I think the post about people looking for a "desktop" vs a "workstation" is 100% on the mark. Mac Pros are workstation-grade and marketed machines. iMacs are Apple's "desktop"...they have no "mid-tier"...which is what actually compares to an i7 machine.

iMacs do not count as a 'desktop' they are a notebook that isn't portable with notebook parts inside. You're limited to only 2X Ram slots and a single non-user replaceable hard drive. Plus they are no where near an i7 machine in specs! Where is the Quad Core option? Up to 24GB of ram? Multiple Hard drives? Multiple GFX Card options?

Case in point my father who refuses to use Macs because he can't use his V-Cast nonsense so he bought a Dell with a 2.66 Quad / 6GB DDR3 / 22in LCD / 1TB Hard drive for only $700. He can add more ram later, add a new hard drive or put in a real video card if he chooses to later. Desktops = customization and expandability. Sure he is using windows but he could care less. All that matters is Vcast and he got more for less.

 

[RebootD]

Their $2.5K entry level quad is under-speced even compared to a $1K desk-top.

I love you man but stop making me feel worse about my purchase already!