Apple is Now Cheaper, More Flexible and Just as Powerful

Yes. It appears that the age-old adage that Macs are slicker looking, more thoughtfully designed, and more integrated computers than regular PCs but cost lots more appears to be finally false. Yes, all that is true, except the more expensive part.

Mac Pros are Fast and Cheaper

Robert Weston of the Associated Press wrote an interesting story on how the new Mac Pro beats Dell on price. You can read the price comparison story here for some background but I'll tell you now I repeated Robert's exercise and did so from the perspective of building the ultimate CAD workstation at two different market points (low and high).

What we have below is a decisive victory on price for the Apple Mac Pro. Surprise surprise! These prices were taken from both Apple and Dell online stores on August, 28, 2006. So without further ado, let's look at the details.

The Ultimate Low End 3D/CAD Workstation

Ideal for 2D and light 3D CAD, the following configurations compare a Mac Pro and similarly equipped Dell Precision 490 workstation machine (see chart below). The Mac beats the Dell by $274USD or the cost of an upgraded ATI X1900 XT 512BM graphics card and about seventy five more bucks. But with that card the Mac Pro would trounce the Dell 490 completely in all CAD and 3D comparisons.

Another way of thinking about that $274 savings with the Mac Pro is to use it to buy a copy of Parallels ($79USD) with Windows XP Home Edition ($195USD) and add another operating system to your system. Now your new workstation is both a powerful UNIX/Mac OS X and Windows XP workstation. And you can run both at the same time. With the cost of more memory you can add more virtual computers to your Mac Pro -- such as Sun's Solaris.

Okay, now that I've decided I can take my nearly three hundred dollar savings and add Windows XP to my Mac Pro workstation, thereby making two computers into one, let's look at what else comes with the Mac Pro.

First off, the Mac Pro is beautiful. And the design of its internal compartment has no equal in the world. Adding new memory or drives is much easier in the Mac Pro than the Dell 490. So those are additional pluses. What about software? The PC comes with some items, but not much. I can add MS Office to both systems for similar costs. I don't have to really worry about spyware and malware on the Mac Pro so that saves me about $70 USD which I must pay if I want a top product like Norton SystemWorks 2006 for the PC (which I do) and need.

The Dell 490 doesn't come with anything like Apple's famous iLife digital life-style software suite. So that is another plus. I don't have to download iTunes either (it comes on the Mac Pro). The Mac Pro also comes with Omni Outliner (a nifty app) and test versions of iWork and FileMaker Pro 8.5. The Mac Pro also has more external ports and FireWire 800 ports both on the front and back.

In the end at the low end the price comparison is close ($274USD). We can argue that the Nvidia Quadro is a real workstation card while the GeForce 7300 GT is not. But that is the only serious point of contention in this match up.

The High End CAD Workstation

For the highest performing 3D CAD workstation (this is meant for 3D CAD or 3D DCC) what we need is extreme performance components. The dual core Xeon clearly gives us that but we need to boost the other components up. Does the Mac still keep its best price advantages?

The answer is it gets even better.

To the tune of nearly $2000.USD. Yes, as you ramp up the Mac Pro the price advantage over Dell gets huge very quickly. And remember, Dell is the discount volume player. So a comparison to HP and others might fare far worse.

In the chart below we have an exact match-up of components. Yes, the graphics cards are exactly the same -- Nvidia's extreme performance Quadro FX 4500 card.

For the $5,248 USD, you get a monster of a CAD or DCC (digital content creation) workstation with four (4) 64-bit Xeon cores on two physical microchips. You get Intel's fastest bus architecture, using the industry's fastest 667Mhz ECC RAM. And you get 1000 GB's on two hard drives.

With that substantial savings over the Dell 490, identically configured, you can load up on more RAM, more hard drive bays or software.

For the $5,248 USD, you get a monster of a CAD or DCC (digital content creation) workstation with four (4) 64-bit Xeon cores on two physical microchips. You get Intel's fastest bus architecture, using the industry's fastest 667Mhz ECC RAM. And you get 1000 GB's on two hard drives.

With that substantial savings over the Dell 490, identically configured, you can load up on more RAM, more hard drive bays or software.

Where Does Apple Beat Dell?

Apple is beating Dell on price right at the processor selection stage. When pricing a Dell 490 workstation, when you choose a single 3Ghz Xeon 5160 dual-core processor Dell sets the price at $2,409USD. Once you add the second matching processor the price jumps to $3,688. Compare that to the base price of $3,299 for the Mac Pro with those same chips.

Apple then continues to beat Dell on price as you scale up the specs of the workstation. For example, right off the bat, Apple provides you one 250GB SATA drive. Dell gives you a 80 GB SATA drive. To match the Apple's base configuration you must add another $90. Now Apple is ahead by $500.

Apple also provides a better base on graphics, costing the Dell another $71 to match the Apple's base configuration (see top chart).

To make things worse, Apple's Mac Pro comes with not just Firewire 400 ports but also Firewire 800 ports. Apple's system comes with a SuperDrive, the Dell just comes with a CD-ROM. After you begin to add these equal components, the Dell just gets more and more expensive compared to the Apple Mac Pro.

Eventually the Apple Mac Pro costs thousands less than the Dell 490 when configured as a powerhouse, and yet that still doesn't give you options like Firewire 800. I guess Windows CAD users just have to settle for paying thousands more and limiting themselves to USB 2.0's 480 mbps rather than Firewire 800's 800 mbps.

Closing Comments

Both at the low end of the Xeon 5160 workstation market and especially at the higher end, Apple is beating Dell -- the industry price leader -- on the price of cutting edge workstation technology. That is the conclusion today.

To make matters worse for Dell, Apple Mac Pro users get more, period. They get things like Apple's fabulous iLife digital media suite of software. They get Firewire 800, they get a far easier box to work inside of and they get a beautiful, award-winning industrial design.

And if that wouldn't normally seal a deal, Apple Mac Pro users also get to add Windows XP and Sun's Solaris to their Mac OS X operating system mix, complements of Parallel's virtualization software.

At this point, it is very fair to say, that Apple now produces the ultimate Xeon 5160-based dual-core CAD/3D workstations at the best prices.

Feedback? Email me at: anthony{at}architosh{dot}com