Mac Pro: The ultimate in desktop computing?

[Timotheos]

I was reading the review featured on apples website from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14553650/.

they say "the Mac Pro is the computer equivalent of a Ferrari, Maserati or Porsche." which i strongly beleive in, all macs are the equivalent of a sports car in their design but is the Mac Pro really the most poweful consumer desktop out there. The review says theres a $12k mac pro with all the features but i have been wondering since the release wether any other 'main stream' companys offer equal or more powerful machines?

[davebz]

As far as I've been reading, you can configure a Dell workstation to similar specs. But at least here in the US, the Dell would cost at least $1000 extra or more. The other disadvantage to the Dell is the fact that only 4 GB of ram is the maximum allowed for the machine. The mac pro supports up to 16 GB of ram and who else has an easy system of adding or removing hard drives? Nobody. So, there you have it. BTW: Recent tests confirm that the mac pro is infact up to twice as fast as the G5 quad. A half hour of video was converted to quicktime in Final Cut Pro and only took 4 minutes to complete. The same test took 10 on the G5.

[Timotheos]

Isnt that $1000 price gap on the 3 grand (or there abouts) Mac Pro.

Im talking about a fully maxed out $12k (i guess with the 16GB ram, all hard drives and video cards etc) one meantioned in the review, if the dell can only support 4GB ram i guess there wouldnt be much competition for the $12k mac right?

[Sunnz]

May I ask, just how "upgradable" is the Mac Pro? And I mean everything: Mobo, CPU, Ram, HDD, Graphics card, etc... do you have to buy upgrade parts from Apple?

[fryke]

You can't just pop in a PC motherboard, because of the way Apple makes sure you can't install OS X on the "any PC". You could of course buy CPUs separately, just like you can buy RAM, harddrives, graphics cards. Don't have to buy _those_ from Apple.

[Tommo]

It certainly looks very fast, I'm sure you could spec a PC to match it for speed though it would be expensive, most Dells I have looked at come with a screen which might explain the $1000 difference.

Can't see the the Porsche, Ferrari Masarati comparison though, you could never compare the G5 or the Mac Pro to a sports car as they are fast and LIGHT, something you could never accuse either of those systems of being. Maybe a Range Rover Sport :-)

[lurk]

Nope, no screen on the Dell in question.

[Sunnz]

Originally Posted by fryke

You can't just pop in a PC motherboard, because of the way Apple makes sure you can't install OS X on the "any PC". You could of course buy CPUs separately, just like you can buy RAM, harddrives, graphics cards. Don't have to buy _those_ from Apple.

No offence... but you don't necessarily have to use OSX now, right?

So how does the OSX DRM thing work? It only works on Apple mobo but can be any CPU and fit on an Apple mobo is fine? So one could install an AMD chip on a MacPro and still running OSX?

It is not that I don't want to run OSX; but if I were to consider to buy one, I'd like to know exactly what I can do with it.