GT120 and GT130 also arrived today

Actually building a system that is equivalent to the Mac Pro, it ends up close, aslong as you don't get extra memory or hard drives or graphcis cards directly from Apple, the additions are where they make the money, the system itself is a decent price, there is some mark up but not much.

 

I have a HP nx9420 which is the same system as the old Macbook Pro with X1600 (both made by Compal)

Buying a same spec machine in 2006 would have a $1300 "Apple Markup" on it.
Options are where everyone makes their money, the problem is that Apple is both manufacturer, dealer and reseller so any form of discount is lost along the way.

 

Yes I noticed how expensive the upgrades are. But if you upgrade it yourself, does it void your warranty ?

The base dual Xeons look decent for the price. But I need to upgrade it from base that's for sure. I am going to compare the cost when the new Xeons are out for the PC at the end of this month.

 

nope user upgradable parts don't, things like cpu upgrades will though.

 

Macbooks and there desktops have alot of mark up compared to other companies with compariable notebooks, MacPros don't, thats the only reason I bought one a year ago, the price difference for me to build one with the dual quad core cpu, came out to around 2400, where I got the base MacPro for 2800 (then had a corporate discount, got a free 2 year warrenty and 25% off), then all the upgrades I got through Newegg.

But you're right Mac have no consumer discounts, while other companies do have every now and then.

 

Don't forget form factor.

You shouldn't only be looking at specifications. People who are fond of Apple do not buy based solely on specification but also design and form factor, to name a few besides the obvious runs Mac OS X natively.

 

There are differences, true, but they can not replace black/anthracite plastic with white plastic and charge you $1300 for it.. well.. they can, but it's more like a "I don't want a PC" buy-off fee.

 

So HDD, RAM extra PCE devices are alright, but things like CPU and GPU are no go ?

 

GPUs are fine too, anything that you don't need to any major changes to whats already there is ok.

 

There is more than that.

You should perhaps look at total cost of ownership, which many have done and they come out surprisingly close (brand name PCs and Macs).

 

What other costs aside from the purchase price are there? And why would they be any higher for a PC than a Mac?

 

I don't buy the TCO argument. The proprietary nature of Macs makes them far more expensive to service than the average PC. We're talking hardware replacement here, of course. Software can be corrected with a reload.

 

The idea is if you frame a study with certain assumptions you can get any answer you want. If you buy a PC you have to by symantec AV (ignore avast, avg, etc), if you buy a pc you have to waste time doing um stuff... If you buy a mac angels in a genius bar float down from heaven and fix it for free and it takes no time. If you make those assumptions then the TOC for a mac is less

 

Lol, thats what I suspected.

 

Wait, what? Are there GT120 and GT130? Have I been living under the rock for far too long?

 

No, nVidia just keeps throwing new rocks down.


Netkas (netkas.org, savior of OSX86 graphics) says he got the new Macs, so they definitely have shipped I think.

They do. The new ones definitely do.

I can get an 8-core Gainestown- with a 4870 and likely better HDD choices, for about 2400-2500USD, which is the price of a single core Nehalem Bloomfield Mac Pro.

 

Bloomsfield is i7, thats not in the MacPro, whats in the MacPro is Gainestown anyways hows that possible each x5570 cpus (gainestown 2.93 ghz) is $1600 or so, thats $3200 just for the CPU's . Granted the base price of a Macpro with 2.93 dual CPU starts at $5900, but add the case, thats 250-300, power supply 250-300, harddisk 120, 500 or so for the motherboard, and then memory 1 stick of 6 gigs which isn't available outside of Apple, would probably run 300, a system like this will run around $4800.

The main price difference is the addition of the 2nd CPU, which Apple takes a heafity $1000 or so extra over the retail price.

 

GT130 - http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gt_130_us.html

What the hell? 48 sp's on a 192-bit bus? We've never seen that before right? The two versions of the 9600gso were 96/192 and 48/256 IIRC. Is Nvidia's inventory situation in such a mess that they have to create all these frankenstein variations in order to move product?