As for Mr. Dell not being famous, who cares?  We’re talking about computers not owners.  Hell I don’t even know who owns the San Antonio Spurs!

Sigh. Does the owner of the Spurs sign your season tickets?

And if you put your head next to this system after getting out of the shower, it dries your hair in 15 seconds.

I wonder how fast this renders AE, Cinema, Maya, 3DS compared to a dual Opteron 280.

Some of these systems are so expensive (four Opteron 280s, for example) that it’s better to get render nodes instead.

Yeah, I know. And that’s really a joke to me. However, I’m curious how fast it would be for content creation apps.

Liam,

$10k for a PC is a serious toy for the rich and professionals.  I believe there are probably many of them in the US who can also afford $500k cars.  The dual core system itself only cost $1000, its the graphic cards that is taking up the bulk of the cost.  Add in the super 30” LCD monitor and you have pretty much the ultimate gaming and media system on the planet.

Would I buy one? No.

Would I make one? Probably.

informer,

Can you do me a favor and price that system as DIY?

Liam, I understand your point. I’m just saying that as a gaming system, I view this like I view gold bath tubs. But as a system for doing work on, I’m just curious how fast it is, that’s all.

But as a gaming system, I wonder how much faster it is too.

If I were to get such an expensive system I’d diy because I would want to pick out the EXACT parts for that kind of money.  Although you probably can get more for your money too.  Any argument against this is probably compensating for something.

Although you probably can get more for your money too.  Any argument against this is probably compensating for something.

I don’t argue against that, but I don’t take that statement as fact. I’d take it as fact if you priced a DIY with the same specs for less.

I was once told that to even think a G5 Mac was less expensive than a DIY Opteron PC with similar specs was lunacy. I then asked someone to price it. The DIY dual Opteron cost more than the Mac.

I buy the “pick the components I want” point of view. That is the most compelling aspect. But I don’t buy the “it’s always cheaper no matter what you are comparing” viewpoint.

I was once told that to even think a G5 Mac was less expensive than a DIY Opteron PC with similar specs was lunacy. I then asked someone to price it. The DIY dual Opteron cost more than the Mac.

G5’s typically don’t have similar specs to DIY Opteron systems.  Nearly every Opteron system will have hardware RAID chips, 6+ SATA port, 6+ USB’s, Surround sound audio, and many more things that Macs don’t have.

It’s actually quite easy to beat the price of the PowerMac G5 (any config) today.  Even 2 2.6Ghz dual core Opterons plus the mobo only run about $2300.

The single processor models can be beat by DIY (A64’s or P4’s) machines costing a little over a third of what Apple is charging.

And of course, overclocking the Opteron’s makes the system hundreds of dollars cheaper.

That doesn’t change the fact that last year, nobody could do it.

And yes, those motherboards come with crap I don’t need. That goes against the whole “You can get exactly what you need and nothing more” argument. Why am I forced to pay for hardware RAID? I don’t need it.

Go ahead and price a dual Opteron 285 using new components configured like the “Quad” Mac G5:

2 dual core 2.5 Ghz G5 processors
Quadro FX 4500 two dual link ports
512 meg RAM
250 gig SATA HD
16X DL DVDRW
FireWire 800
FireWire 400
USB 2
Optical digital audio in/out
gigabit ethernet
OS X Tiger
$4,949

And don’t make this a “The PC comes with things the Mac doesn’t” debate. This is a “I can always build a PC with the same specs for less money” argument.

And don’t make this a “The PC comes with things the Mac doesn’t� debate. This is a “I can always build a PC with the same specs for less money� argument.

Watch, it’ll turn into one anyway… :|

Who would buy a “supercomputer” with only 512mb of RAM????  The specs are shocking for that kind of money and with the kind of crap available on a Mac, this system will bore me to death (I will need to folk out another $2000 to get a console buy a tv, couch, games etc etc).

I think KD summed it up already, so no need to continue a lost cause because no one on earth would buy this Mac to run mathematica.

informer,

What’s the URL of your site?

Who would buy a “supercomputer� with only 512mb of RAM????

I’d buy the RAM from the same place you buy yours, so it’s a wash.

The specs are shocking for that kind of money and with the kind of crap available on a Mac

OK, I’ll take that as you can’t build a comparable system for less.

no need to continue a lost cause because no one on earth would buy this Mac to run mathematica

Why wouldn’t they?

Hmm… I haven’t priced out a super computer since the dual-core Opties have been out… Let’s give it a whir, courtesy of Newegg.com - and it’ll match the G5 feature for feature for these purposes.

2x Opteron 280 $1,800 approx
2.4 Ghz, so giving away 100 Mhz in processor speed, but gaining MUCH better SMP with HT links between the two processors and on-die crossbars that allow the cores to talk at full speed. No other architecture has shown, as has AMD’s, that a dual-core processor performs notably better than two processors.

ASUS K8N Dual-proc NF4 $220 approx
GigE
SATA RAID
6 DDR slots for up to 24 GB of memory
Onboard 8-channel audio (optical)

512 MB ECC DDR 400 (Kingston) $45 approx
512 ain’t enough. That’s ok, I can add more and still be below the cost of the G5.

250 GB Maxtor NCQ 16MB cache HDD $95 approx
Want to match this one to the Apple one, but Apple doesn’t like to say whether it’s 16 MB or 8 MB cache or if it has NCQ, which makes a world of difference. *shrug* I’ll splurge here. The cost allows it.

PNY QuadroFX 4500 PCI-E Dual link $1,800
Hot damn! Think those gaming cards are expensive? Sheesh! I’d never, ever, ever spend this much on a video card unless I had someone to help pay for it for work purposes - but for this comparison, I’ll go ahead and slap it in there.

Laser Logitech mouse and Kensington keyboard $69
No need to skimp here!

FW 800 addon card $40
Want to make sure feature for feature is matched, of course.

Aspire X-Dreamer II black case $60
I like this one, say what you will…

NEC 16X DL DVD-R/-RW...+R/+RW $40
Why not two? Cost only $40.

Windows XP 64-bit edition $146 approx
For $9 less I could go with XP SP2 for compatibility reasons, but might as well get funky with the performance

GRAND TOTAL COST: $4,301.18 Hell, add $75, the cost of most standard builds, to that for the hour of hardware labor and 45 minutes of software labor. Might as well, we are $600 under budget.

If you want to match costs more closely to see what the Windows box can add, we can do that gladly and add a lot of goodness to an already incredible machine.

---- Go with 4 GB of Ram (in dual channels, for better performacne to boot) to bring cost up to $4,500.
---- Go with another 250 GB HDD in RAID 0 for 500 GB of storage to bring it to $4,700
---- Go with two WD Raptors at 36 GB apiece in RAID for system/paging to make the costs even…

Total cost of the machine with 4 GB of ram, two 10,000 RPM drives in RAID for system/paging and 500 GB of HDD in RAID for storage: $4,965.32

So I get 4 GB of RAM compared to 512 MB
500 GB of storage at nearly twice the speed compared to 250 GB
74 GB system RAID 0 partition for ultimate speed and program responsiveness…

I’m actually pretty impressed. A while back, it was hard to make this happen. Methinks AMD really is in a good, good place…

This, again, was all done at Newegg.com. Took about 15 minutes.

I had to hold myself back, though. I’m SOOOO close to dropping the $290 for a dual-core Athlon 64. Damn. I have a single 1.8 now, and it screams (much, much faster than my 1.8 G5 at work) - and I am looking forward to multitasking like a sumbizzle.

OK, being I’m sick of this, the next person who dares to bring up Mac vs. PC in this topic will find their comment deleted. There is a time and a place for it. This is neither the time nor the place. This is not XvsXP. Specing out a Mac or a PC? OK. Stuff like Informer’s comment above? Not OK.

If you want to have a Mac vs. PC war, take it here: http://www.dtgeeks.com/index.php/forums/vie wforum/13/

Get it? Got it? Good.

Nick, be more consistent and you won’t have to scare people off the site.  This is not the first time you threaten non-mac people after their posts.  What are you so afraid of?  This is blogging isn’t it?

KD, well done but I have a feeling that Macfan wants 285s not 280 *rolleyes*.

What am I afraid of? I am afraid of people running this place over and turning it into open warfare--open warfare which I regrettably have participated in. You’re not the only one, but you posted a convenient example above. I’d name names--both Mac and PC users, but I’d probably incite a riot or be burned in effigy or something. OK, maybe not, but it would probably be a bad idea regardless.

I’m sorry if you feel I’m targeting you.

Everytime a PC user posts on a forum the fact that DIY is the way to go when you want to go apeshit with buying a computer a Mac user asks the PC user to prove that DIY is cheaper than a comparable Mac model, and then when the PC user does it the Mac user crys foul because the PC doesn’t some port or something that most people (and by people I mean people with lots of computer experience)could care less about.  All turning the topic of some souped up Cray-Like gaming computer into a mindless argument over the price and performance of a PC versus a Mac, each being benchmarked with applications that aren’t designed for the system to make the other system look much better and cheaper.

How much you want to bet if we took this to the forum it would follow this form almost precisely?

If I were to buy a system that was ~$10000, I’d build it myself so I could get the stuff I want, and not the stuff Dell wanted to sell me, because my stuff would be less expensive or of a higher quality (do you know how many problems Dell has had with power supplies?).  If you DIY you can take the time to route the cables properly instead of ending up with the rat’s nest that most PC manufacturers tend to produce.  You can use a case that’s actually accessible with standard sliding panels and not some psycotic magical switch that makes all the panels fall on the floor when you press it (as I have found to be true of Sony VIAOs).  You don’t end up with a bunch of propriatary chipsets that end up makeing your system incompatible anything but the latest and most bloated version of Windows released.  There aren’t any weird riser cards that you plug your PCI cards into because the mfr. thinks they are cute and want to save a little space (compaq and digital were good at this).  The system isn’t bolted togethor with screws that can only be unscrewed with a special screwdriver that is ~$100 by phone order only (IBM comes to mind).  I could go on and on with the annoyances of maintaining a prefab computer but I need to go to sleep.

Nick, I must politely disagree.

If this wasn’t about Mac vs. PC, then why the reference to Apple’s Cinema Display followed by comments about Michael Dell’s popularity?

I mean, I know you aren’t purposely pitting the two platforms against each other, but that doesn’t preclude the sheer, simple fact that Apple doesn’t have anything to do with this “news” item (as so labeled above the story and on the links). News is factual, straightforward reporting, not commentary.

Clarification!!!

When I say “you” in “I know you aren’t pitting”, I mean the site’s editorial staff in general, not you or Liam individually.