Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Think Different: Ridiculously Fast, Ridiculously Expensive!
- Thread starter Bucko
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Why? Do you need a mac pro? I have an old one, Im not going back to pcs because I can't afford a new one, im happy with what I have. (but i am accepting free mac pros if you want to give me one) (oh yeah and a ferrari, but only if you pay for the insurance, gas, and repairs when I crash it going 200mph down I-95
No....but please hurry off and buy a PC yourself so we don't have to endure these insufferable questions.
S-
If you want to whine, Apple isn't the one you should whine too, but Intel. Mac Pros were always the best priced workstation until now. They use server grade processor, approching around 750$ each, depending of the clock rate. Considering the processors are actually more expensive then the last Xeon generation, Apple still are a great offering, IF you need it, which I assume you don't. You're very likely not a Pro, and a Mac mini would be a lot better for you.
Let's start over.
If you find the price of a Mac Pro to be too much, the next best option would be a Hackintosh with a Bloomfield (Core i7) processor, or an iMac if you want a straight Apple product.
If you find the price of a Mac Pro to be too much, the next best option would be a Hackintosh with a Bloomfield (Core i7) processor, or an iMac if you want a straight Apple product.
They will be out soon enough. Until then Apple has two Mac Pro's that are quads and spec'ed almost identically to currently available Corei7 machines - which are faster and cheaper.
I would never buy a Wintel box but putting OS X or Linux on one of those would be fun and affordable.
.
Wait until dual nehalem workstations come out from the other manufacturers like Dell and HP, then get back to us about price complaints. Restricting this to the low end Mac Pro and you got somewhat of a point but Apple exacts a price for the expandability, design, and quality that we pay and for the ability to run MacOS X and the apps that run under it.
Nope, just bought a new Mac Pro, but thanks for asking! I found price vs. performance to be quite in line - thanks Apple Educational Discounts!
Now if it would just get here faster!!!
I've not switched to a Mac Pro yet in the first place. I was planning to on the previous generation (early 08) given the education discount but for various reasons (such as FB-DIMM prices in the UK) didn't and then I thought I'd wait for Nehalem. I now seem to have missed the boat. Once again Mac Pros are a very expensive proposition on top of which they seem to be not very expandable (just 4 RAM slots per processor) so I'm waiting to see what a self-build will cost when the chips are released at the end of the month.
I suspect that DELL will be even more expensive than Apple, even on the DELL outlet site (where I've previously bought 3 laptops at very good discounts) but a single 4 core self-build with 12GB of RAM etc will be (I reckon) at least £400 or £500 cheaper than Apple even with the student discount.
Dell do have some student purchasing schemes with certain schools so you might want to look in to that if you go that route.
Yeah I'm gonna throw all my mac software in the bin and buy en emachine, or some other such piece of junk.
But seriously, I am gonna try my hands at a hackintosh, I find the base MacPro to be overpriced/under-specced, or at least not as good value in comparison to last years models (of which the UK seems to have none), and the higher end mac pros are truly expensive, yet they are beasts and I don't not need all that power.
I don't Like iMacs, as all in ones are a bit of a false economy for my personal needs, mac minis wouldn't cut the mustard with Logic Pro or Pro Tools.
If my attempt at a hackintosh fails, it'll still be a kick ass gaming rig, that I can also use for some audio software that isn't available on the mac, and then I'll just wait/save for the next refresh, whichever way I win, and Apple don't get any of my money... for a little while at least
P.S. If anyone is gonna switch to windows I can always give their now obsolete macs a good home.
Let's quit spreading FUD about Intel's pricing for the chips in the new Mac Pros, shall we?
They're drastically cheaper than the previous generation of XEON chips.
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=7253929#post7253929
That may be an option in a year or so but at present the 4GB RAM modules are so expensive that it would probably be cheaper to buy two computers instead. If you want to stick with tri-channel RAM and given that 2GB modules are the maximum that are sensibly affordable then even for the Octo Mac Pro you're limited to 12GB. Upping it to 16GB is ok but it is annoying to have the resultant reduced memory access speed (as per Barefeats). I would guess that most dual processor boards for the 5500 series Xeons will offer a total of 12 RAM slots rather than 8.
I'm not particularly a Windows fan - I've just not yet switched to OS-X so I don't have any investment in OS-X software, unlike most people on this forum who have a substantial existing investment in software. The main software I want to use is open source (so doesn't cost anything) and will run on either Linux or OS-X. I currently run it on Linux and use Windows for stuff like word processing and fairly short C-programs that I write in Visual Studio (which was also free as I'm a student).