Steve Jobs is iDead

[Arkhan]

Way more than 1000$.

[Joe Redifer]

A Mac version of similar specs is over $6,000, so I just want to see what the difference is.  Obviously the PC will cost less, I just want to know how much less.  The prices for Macs seem to have gone up in recent years as well.  They've always been more expensive, but not THAT much more expensive.

[Arkhan]

Well, last I remember, the board alone is around 250$ and the CPUs are like, 1000$ each.  Something like that.  Those CPUs are crazy expensive. (and I have one in my computer at work! =P)

So to be safe, like 2500$ for the board + CPU.

The rest of it is probably around 800$ depending what brands you get for RAM/Lights/drives. 

So, probably about half as much for the same functionality.   Par for the course with mac vs. pc pricing...

[Opethian]

what exactly is shitty about the home version? If you dont need to connect to a domain but you still need media center why waste money on ultimate? seriously does any one on a home machine use drive encryption?

[Necromancer]

Approximately how much would it cost me to build the following Windows machine with these specs:

Prices culled from newegg:

$2884  -Two 2.93 Ghz 6-core processors
$115  -12 GB DDR3 ECC SDRAM ¹
$55  -At least 1 TB hard drive.
$120  -ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB (or better)
$200  -Phuggin' wicked-ass sound card (full duplex with digital in and out... can be on motherboard) ²
$20 (take your pick)  -DVD or Blu-ray burner ³
$580  -Appropriate motherboard, CPU fans/heat sink, etc
$140  -Windows 7 64-bit (not the shitty home version, the full thing) ⁴
$300 and up  -Case, power supply, mouse, and keyboard ⁵
$4114 grand total

So Apple is charging you nearly $2000 to put it all together for you.  Is it overpriced?  Perhaps, but not any worse than other workstation manufacturers; a comparably equipped Dell T5500 is $5969, an HP Z600 is $7206 , and a Xi workstation is $5433 (all three rape you on the processors and memory).

¹ - 8GB can't be done unless you want to forgo the speed benefit of DDR3 (requires groups of three).
² - Do you mean two digital ports?  This one has just one in/out port, and I don't know of any cards that have a pair; if there are any, they're probably not any more expensive than this beast.
³ - Bluray's about $70 more.
⁴ - If you want bitlocker (does OSX have such a feature?), add $50 for Win7 Ultimate.
⁵ - The sky's the limit here, but that price will get you a decent aluminum case, smallish power supply, and basic wired mouse/keyboard.

[nodtveidt]

Sure... you're buying Intel processors. That will f*ck you every time. Isn't there a comparable AMD version?

[Arkhan]

what exactly is shitty about the home version? If you dont need to connect to a domain but you still need media center why waste money on ultimate? seriously does any one on a home machine use drive encryption?

You have RAM capacity limits in Home.  iirc.   I have Pro Ultimate, so I didn't look too far into it , lol

AMD ftw. Screw Intel!

[Necromancer]

Sure... you're buying Intel processors. That will f*ck you every time.

That's only true when you're buying one of their flagship processors, as they're price competitive for equally performing processors and blow AMD's doors off when overclocking capabilities are factored in.

Isn't there a comparable AMD version?

The fastest six core Opteron is $640 for a pair, but it'd get thumped bad by the Xeons listed.  The only way Opterons can compete is with more cores, but those get pricey and lose clock speed - it'd take a pair of 6174s (12 cores at 2.2ghz) at a cost of $2560 to even approach the Xeons.

[Joe Redifer]

Thanks for doing that, Necro.  I find the sound card interesting.  It only has one set of inputs/outputs.  You can't have inputs and outputs connected at the same time?  My Mac has two digital TOS-link optical connections, one for in, one for out.  It also has line in and line out but I don't think it has any of that microphone nonsense (who needs that any more?)

The cases never have to be fancy, just good enough to allow for the needed air flow.  And honestly, no internal lights because I am not a complete tool.  The keyboard and mouse can be pretty standard.  Don't need to game on this thing.

[BlueBMW]

And now I'm reminded why I never buy top of the line stuff   Still running my old cheap intel Q6700 cpu here with two radeon 6850s, plays everything just fine except when I run on the triple screen at 3840x1024, but that's.. excessive

In other news, I picked up my friends old iphone 4 on the cheap (since he got the new one of course  )  and so far, comparing it side by side with my droid x... I'll stick with the droid thank you