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A friend and I have chatted about Mac pricing off and on over the years, and gone to the online stores to configure the closeset head-to-head competitors we could. The conclusion was basically always this: Macs are usually price competitive with the most closely configured computer, but if you don't like that configuration, Apple offers very few options and nothing low-end.

From 10/s7/08:

I remembered that last time you told me to spec a dell vs a mac pro, and I
remember the dell being more. And I was thinking about your comment that
the mac pro delta has seemingly jumped. I was thinking instead that the
Mac Pro, tied to "server/high end workstation class" hardware, seemed to
be in the process of being overtaken by low cost gaming gear.
Workstation/Mac Pro level hardware always contains those intangibles, like
ECC memory and super high io bus speed, raid support, and two processor
sockets - changes that always require your entire hardware setup to "jump
class" and be redesigned from the ground up.

So I went out again to price a comparable Dell.

www.dell.com/precision/
http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/precndt?c=us&l=en&s=bsd

Looking at the Mac Pro it's running two 2.8Ghz "Harpertown" Xeon's, the
Dell site uses different lingo, but I selected the same chip, the E5440.
Apple's minimum RAM was 2G, so I matched that on the Dell as well. This is
important because ECC 1066 ram is still incredibly expensive.

Dell's version of the Mac Pro instantly rang up as... $3800. A full $1200
more than the Mac Pro.

So, Macs are still way cheaper. By an ever increasing gap. The cheapest
online price for an E5440 is $700. That means the two chips in a Mac Pro
are $1400 street value, and the Intel s5000XVN motherboard has a street
value of about $550. That makes the rest of the computer worth $850 -
workstation class graphics card, fully buffered ECC ram, case, psu, os,
hard drive. It's dirt cheap. I'm convinced you could bulk buy Mac Pro's at
edu discount and make a margin parting them out on ebay.

So who other than dell is making a dual xeon workstation?

http://www.swt.com/cgi-bin/calc_linux?hdc=x802&cpu=x28&xxcpu=x440&s8fram1=f2k&scsicard=no&fsaraid=no&hd1=sat1&hd2=no&hd3=no&hd4=no&hd5=no&hd6=no&hd7=no&hd8=no&cdmult=dvd&pevideo=onb&ipmi3=no&monitor=no&monito2=no&fd=no&pen1=no&x8case=atx&x8rail=no&multi_mouse=none&multi_keybd=none&spkm=nospkr&printers=no&modem=none&netcard=none&wirel=no&firew=no&tuner=no&taped1=none&taped2=none&power_protect=none&lxx=fe&Quote=Calculate+total%2C+keep+price+increment+information
Base price: Dual Xeon Workstation: $1599.00
Two Xeon E5440 quad-core CPUs, 2.83GHz, 12MB, 1333MHz FSB, 80W:
+=$1295.00
Supermicro X7DWA-N dual Xeon motherboard w/ 2 Gbit LAN ports
IO port: 6 x USB, 1 x Parallel, 2 x Serial, 2 x PS2
2GB DDR2-667 PC2-5300 FB-DIMM, 2 DIMMs
80GB SATA 3Gb/s drive

Total price: $2894.00 (plus shipping)

So a shit-label linux part

Of course, you can still purchase a $3299 computer and spend an extra $9340 to max out your RAM (at 16 GB).

Admittedly, if you bought the RAM separately it'd be cheaper- but 8 sticks of the cheapest available on pricewatch would be about 4k, still more expensive than the computer.

Dual Opteron 2U Server:
Two AMD Opteron 246 CPUs each w/ 1mb cache
MSI K8D Master-F MS-9131 dual motherboard w/ 2 NICs
4096mb PC2700 DDR333 SDRAM, Registered ECC, 4 DIMMs
3ware Escalade 8506-4 SATA RAID controllre, 4 ports
2 x WD 2500JD Caviar 250gb SATA drive, 7200RPM
ATI Rage XL graphics card
2U rackmount chassis with sliding mounting rail kit, 420W power
Teac 1.44mb floppy drive
Built-in two Gigabit network cards
Linux pre-configured, w/ CDs/Docs
Two year replacement warranty

Price: $4917.00 (plus shipping)

If you really want a DVD/CD drive, you can get one in the above for another $250, but I don't see why a supercomputer node would need one.

To match those specs even more closely (except for a better graphics card and the faster Opteron processors, or course) here's this:

Dual Opteron Workstation:
Two AMD Opteron 246 CPUs each w/ 1mb cache
Tyan S2875ANRF Tiger K8W motherboard w/ Gbit, FireWire
IO port: 2 x USB, 1 x Parallel, 1 x Serial, 1 x PS2 keyboard, 1 x PS2 mouse
4096mb PC2700 DDR333 SDRAM, Registered ECC, 4 DIMMs
3ware Escalade 8506-4 SATA RAID controllre, 4 ports
2 x WD 2500JD Caviar 250gb SATA drive, 7200RPM
NEC ND-1300A DVD-RW/DVD+RW/CD-RW drive, ATAPI
nVidia Quadro4 750 XGL graphics card, 128mb, dual head w/ DVI
Teac 1.44mb floppy drive
Pedestal case with 11 drive bays, 450W power supply
Logitech 3 button mouse
IBM 104-key PS/2 keyboard
Built-in two Gigabit network cards
Linux pre-configured, w/ CDs/Docs
MS Windows XP Professional installed for multi-boot, w/ CD/docs

Price: $5581.00

Yes, the Mac is more expensive for this type of system.

Dual Opteron 2U Server:
Two AMD Opteron 246 CPUs each w/ 1mb cache
MSI K8D Master-F MS-9131 dual motherboard w/ 2 NICs
4096mb PC2700 DDR333 SDRAM, Registered ECC, 4 DIMMs
3ware Escalade 8506-4 SATA RAID controllre, 4 ports
2 x WD 2500JD Caviar 250gb SATA drive, 7200RPM
ATI Rage XL graphics card
2U rackmount chassis with sliding mounting rail kit, 420W power
Teac 1.44mb floppy drive
Built-in two Gigabit network cards
Linux pre-configured, w/ CDs/Docs
Two year replacement warranty

Price: $4917.00 (plus shipping)

If you really want a DVD/CD drive, you can get one in the above for another $250, but I don't see why a supercomputer node would need one.

To match those specs even more closely (except for a better graphics card and the faster Opteron processors, or course) here's this:

Dual Opteron Workstation:
Two AMD Opteron 246 CPUs each w/ 1mb cache
Tyan S2875ANRF Tiger K8W motherboard w/ Gbit, FireWire
IO port: 2 x USB, 1 x Parallel, 1 x Serial, 1 x PS2 keyboard, 1 x PS2 mouse
4096mb PC2700 DDR333 SDRAM, Registered ECC, 4 DIMMs
3ware Escalade 8506-4 SATA RAID controllre, 4 ports
2 x WD 2500JD Caviar 250gb SATA drive, 7200RPM
NEC ND-1300A DVD-RW/DVD+RW/CD-RW drive, ATAPI
nVidia Quadro4 750 XGL graphics card, 128mb, dual head w/ DVI
Teac 1.44mb floppy drive
Pedestal case with 11 drive bays, 450W power supply
Logitech 3 button mouse
IBM 104-key PS/2 keyboard
Built-in two Gigabit network cards
Linux pre-configured, w/ CDs/Docs
MS Windows XP Professional installed for multi-boot, w/ CD/docs

Price: $5581.00

Yes, the Mac is more expensive for this type of system.

Well for $15k you could get a Quad Opteron server with 8GB of RAM, 4x1.6GHz CPUs and UPS here.

Dual 2GHz Opteron with 8GB of memory would cost less than $6k.

Those $0.5M servers are usually bought for heavy duty database work. You don't need a much power for web-server.

Well for $15k you could get a Quad Opteron server with 8GB of RAM, 4x1.6GHz CPUs and UPS here.

Dual 2GHz Opteron with 8GB of memory would cost less than $6k.

Those $0.5M servers are usually bought for heavy duty database work. You don't need a much power for web-server.

• http://www.microway.com/
• http://www.aspsys.com/
• http://www.swt.com/

Here's my shortlist of vendors who preload Linux on laptops:

• Advanced Systems Labs
• Southwest Technologies

I encourage other posters to add to the list.

I am going to look into buying one, and see what these folks say in response to my inquiry...

However, the limitation of 256MB/512MB RAM/node is a bit off-putting (one part of the site says the cap is 256, the other, 512)... The system starts at $14,900 they say... It will be interesting to see where it goes from there. A Quad Xeon with 1GB from SWT costs $20400 (less if you buy in quantity), and the PPC-based IBM RS-6000 4CPU/4GB is $56,000... so theoretically this rack could be pretty competitively priced for a Linux server...

For my company, the RAM limitation could be a limiting factor (and I don't see why it needs to be limited to 512MB/CPU, the PPC is, after all, a 64bit architecture - the "low end" RS-6000s can take up to 1GB/CPU, more on the big iron)... hopefully versions will come out that at least get 1GB/CPU...

Also, since there is no apparent option for SCSI disks, this may not be your ideal file or image server... but there are obviously some good uses for - though I'd like to know more on pricing of the G4 version and RAM upgrades...

By the way, 8 video ports is pretty amusing... They don't mention the resolution, I wonder if you could make an 8 person QuakeStation out of it ;->