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journal: mac
I’ll Take The Fast One, Not the Fastest One
It costs $1,600 to go from the Fast Mac Pro to the Fastest one, for a 10% speed increase.
I’ve been a Mac user since around 1987. The first Mac I purchased was a Mac SE/30 followed by a IIci.
I create graphics and animation for corporate clients, which involves a lot of rendering of video/3D and encoding. This all takes a lot of time. So for many years now, I have been upgrading my own personal workstation about every three years and I would normally just get the fastest Mac workstation available at the time. I think this year, I will pick the slower one.
For years, Apple would offer three main configurations of their professional Mac for people to purchase. They would typically be Fast, Faster, Fastest based on the speed of the CPU included in each configuration. They have also been known to offer a single processor version at various times, creating a forth and slowest version.
Recently, Apple has announced updates to their Mac Pro line. These include:
| Slower | Fast | Faster | Fastest |
|---|---|---|---|
| One 2.8 Ghz quad core Intel processor | Two 2.8 Ghz quad core Intel processors | Two 3 Ghz quad core Intel processors | Two 3.2 Ghz quad core Intel processors |
| $2,299 | $2,799 | $3,599 | $4,399 |
So if I were to repeat my purchasing behavior from the last ten or so years, I would just go and order the Mac Pro with two 3.2 Ghz quad core processors from Apple at $4,399 and then buy RAM from someone else.
But I recently realized that the Fastest dual 3.2 Ghz quad core Mac Pro costs $1,600 more than the Fast Mac Pro with two 2.8 Ghz quad core processors and that the speed difference is only around 10%, based on the benchmarks I’ve seen. $1,600 for a computer that is roughly 10% faster? Surely that’s what I would do in the past, right? No, not even close.
In the recent past, the Mac workstations would typically be priced between $1,999 for the Fast version and $2,999 for the Fastest version. That’s a $1,000 difference versus $1,600 for today’s Mac Pro. On top of that, the speed difference between Fast and Fastest used to be much greater.
Let’s take a look at the configurations going back to 2003:
In January, 2003, Apple announced Power Mac G4s:
| Fast | Faster | Fastest |
|---|---|---|
| One 1 Ghz G4 | Two 1.25 Ghz G4 | Two 1.42 Ghz G4 |
| $1,499 | $1,999 | $2,699 |
In June of 2003, Apple announced the first Power Mac G5s:
| Fast | Faster | Fastest |
|---|---|---|
| One 1.6 Ghz G5 | One 1.8 Ghz G5 | Two 2 Ghz G5 |
| $1,999 | $2,399 | $2,999 |
In June of 2004, Apple updated the Power Mac G5:
| Fast | Faster | Fastest |
|---|---|---|
| Two 1.8 Ghz G5 | Two 2 Ghz G5 | Two 2.5 Ghz G5 |
| $1,999 | $2,499 | $2,999 |
In August of 2006, Apple announced the Mac Pro:
| Fast | Faster | Fastest |
|---|---|---|
| Two 2 Ghz dual core Xeon processors | Two 2.66 Ghz dual core Xeon processors | Two 3 Ghz dual core Xeon processors |
| $1,999 | $2,499 | $2,999 |
So last month, Apple announced the latest Mac Pros:
| Fast | Faster | Fastest |
|---|---|---|
| Two 2.8 Ghz quad core Intel Xeon processors | Two 3 Ghz quad core Intel Xeon processors | Two 3.2 Ghz quad core Intel Xeon processors |
| $2,799 | $3,599 | $4,399!!!! |
It’s $1,600 to go from the Fast to the Fastest with the current Mac Pros. That’s a big jump from the $1,000 we had seen over the years with the previous systems. And what’s worse, the speed increase from Fast to Fastest is a lot smaller than it was in just 2006, where $1,000 jumped you up from 2 Ghz to 3 Ghz. Now you have to pay $1,600 to jump from 2.8 ghz to 3.2 Ghz.
So I’m not going to buy the fastest Mac this time around. I can’t justify $1,600 for a roughly 10% speed increase. On top of that, the software I use a lot now uses the GPU and not the CPU, so the performance I’ll see in Motion 3 will be essentially the same between the 2.8 Ghz and 3.2 Ghz Mac Pros because I’ll have the same nVidia GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB video card.
I’m not really interested in the reasons why the prices are so different. That’s not really relevant to me, the consumer. And I’m not saying Apple’s price structure is unfair or overpriced. A similarly configured Dell workstation costs a lot more than the Mac Pro.
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4 | 5312 |
| comments | views |
thinkback
I need the Mac Pro for the video card and RAM.
I’m probably going to get an iMac soon for the family. As you say, the resale value of Macs is really good. I can take my old Mac workstation and sell it on Craigslist for what a new iMac costs.
| Feb. 07, 2008 | ||
| 11:04 am |
one notable quality you are missing in your analysis is that the 1,600 bucks gets you a quad core as opposed to a dual core processor. while the physical clock speed increase may be 10%, you have to multiply that by 4. Also, you must factor in the cost associated with quad core processors as opposed to dual-core processors, which are now mainstream.
No, it’s two quad core 2.8 Ghz processors. And the 10% speed increase is the total increase, not per processor.
| Feb. 07, 2008 | ||
| 5:46 pm |
1.
We take that analysis one step further and buy the fastest iMacs. For many tasks, the performance hit is minimal as compared to the Mac Pro.
You get to use a very fast computer for a few years and the resale is great. We’ve had no trouble unloading our used iMacs swiftly into appreciative hands.
When you net it out, the iMac offers incredible bang for the buck.
As you’ve noted above, the premium for bleeding-edge is increasing.