Yes I saw that the
$3250 MacPro in this discussion is a strange configuration. It is a single 4-core processor with an expensive 4870 and expensive 1TB drive additions (as I said in post #18)
I am talking about a different MacPro configuration. There is a
standard $3299 (different number) configuration on the Mac store for a dual processor machine with 6GB RAM, an Nvidia GTS120, and a single 640GB drive. If you need me to make a screen grab I will do this.
For
$3299 one can buy a dual processor MacPro and this machine is not comparable to a single processor x58 build. It is more comparable to what I and newtekie1 and Willie E are talking about. Today, for serious video editing/encoding a dual-processor machine is better than a single-processor machine (until the GPU/Cuda/OpenCL code gets into mainstream software). Badaboom is cool and the way forward, but we don't know what software this guy is using and he might not be using software that has upgraded to Cuda/OpenCL/GPU yet.
I am sorry I did not make this clearer. We are talking different MacPro configurations here. Yes Apple is expensive but there are very few dual-processor machines out there. It is a niche market aimed mostly at the video-editing, content-creation professional.
The basic dual-processor MacPro (the $3299 standard configuration) is a good machine for the price. If we want a fair comparison we should be comparing a good MacPro build against a similar PC build. The MacPro in this discussion is not a good build (apple charges $400 for those two 1TB drives and $200 for the 4870). Mac people know this. One should buy a standard mac from Apple and buy memory and harddrives after-market. The single-processor MacPro is expensive and like I recommended....
... if one can get away with a single-processor machine then a PC build is a better choice. If one needs a dual-processor machine for serious work, then the dual-processor $3299 MacPro is a good choice. Most people do not need a dual-processor machine.
Actually it is good to wait right now because there will be the autumn Mac refresh coming soon, prices will drop and configurations will change. Likely the MacPro will get the GTS220 or GT240 cards Nvidia just released very soon. There might even be an i5 lynnfield MacPro coming soon. For my workplace, we use computing clusters and simple desktop machines (laptops, iMacs or PCs) and skip the dual-processor boxes.
I apologize for not hating Mac's and being computer agnostic. I hope this post clarifies my point. しょうがない