For £2500 I'd expect more than a 640GB HDD and a GT120.

There's not much to compare it to at the moment but some of the new HP workstations coming out would hammer the specs for similar money (but don't look anywhere as nice).

If Snow Leopard supports bluray & other graphics cards etc then the mac pro is on my shopping list (the imac isn't an upgrade from what I've got already and I want to option of playing games/folding if I bootcamp in to WIndows)

So, at the moment a similarly prices PC would NOT make it look "mid range"

Sure it is expensive but a bigger hard drive is not enough to differentiate high end from mid range surely? If there is not much to compare it too is it not therefore high end?

CC

As I have said many times before, when I can afford one, I will be looking at a Mac Pro, mainly for it's grunt. It should be fairly future proof. I like OS X over Windows, so a Mac is my only true option, and I can run Windows in it. With the amount of RAM these things take I can upgrade over time, and I can add hard drives if and when I please.
As sas pointed out, if snow Leopard (or indeed future versions of Mac OS) support more generic components such as graphics cards, then that's all the more future proofing for me.

I think we are looking at boundaries again. You are looking at computers, many people will be looking at it from a component level. I'm guessing for a similar price you could build a much more powerful PC than the Mac Pro.

I've read rumours that it might do away with the need for Mac-specific GFX cards. We live in hopes.

Have a look at http://www.scan.co.uk and their 3sx systems mebbe.

I suppose you can argue dual xeon vs a core i7.Iunno, how do they compare? Guess it also depends on what you want it to do.

Also, I'm in agreement that you need a qualifying phrase to define what you are comparing it to: e.g. it's high end for a netbook, it's high end for a gaming pc, it's high end for a supercomputer.

Again, we're comparing 2 different (but similar) markets. A PC with a quad core and better gfx, more RAM & HDD etc would cost £1500 or less (not many PC progs use more than 4 cores) but wouldn't have to be high end.

Depends if you use prices or the actual hardware for comparason.

I'm not sure how this could ever be decided as a lot of it is objective (I think that's the word I wanted, or is it subjective. Whatever one means different people have different opinions).

It's a strange scenario as it's a workstation but comes with a low/mid-range consumer graphics card. PC workstations come with CAD optimised graphics cards.

So what do mac users do when they want to do cad/3d stuff?

A recent benchtest of dual Nehalem machines (I think Apple, Dell, HP, FJS and Lenovo), the Apple was in the middle of the field on price, but was around 10% slower than the average machine.

To me, it has nothing to do with gaming - I don't do computer gaming these days. But the combination of the high-end hardware. The 15" MacBook Pros, for example, use high-mid-range processors and low-mid-range graphics chipsets.

The Mac Pro is the same. It uses high-end processors, on a poorly performning motherboard, combined with either outdated or entry level graphics cards.

The iMac? Where are the quad cores? Where are the i7 based versions? And the graphics cards are low-end...

Combine that with a lack of Blu-Ray and the Macs really can't be classed as high-end at the moment.

As saspro said, the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro are high end Macs, but they can't compete with high end PCs from other manufacturers, because they don't use high-end components in many places.

I would say, for high end 15" notebook:
Core 2 Quad Extreme
8GB RAM
Quadro graphics (or dual consumer chipsets in Crossfire or SLi)
1680x1050 display
Blu-Ray player with DL-DVD write capability
>500GB HD, possibly dual drives in RAID 0 or a high performance SSD.
Triple antenne Wi-Fi with 802.11n (draft) support
Bluetooth
Express card slot

The MacBook Pro ticks some of the boxes, but it misses out in a few key areas to be considered high-end at the moment.

I would not know where to start.


Sure I am looking at computers. Manufacturers buy components I buy computers. Apple sell computers Dell sell computers, high end, mid range, and low end.

A few manufactures may sell ultra high end computers that make the Mac Pro look mid range but it must be a small percentage because I can't find any. I am not saying the Mac Pro is worth the money I am just saying that as a shop bought computer it looks pretty high end to me.

CC

I would say that for £2500, you could build something to kick the Mac Pro in to touch. I like it but it's not good value. I'd still say the Mac Pro was high end though, there's nothing Apple that compares to it and PCs can't really run OS X so there isn't anything to stop the Mac Pro being high end as a Mac. As a PC, I'd say it was on the lower end of high end, the case is relatively bland and its spec is a little bit lacking for something at that price point.

Vigil, there used to be a Quadro graphics option but now, they have to put up with what they have/can get. It's stupid that Apple don't allow any graphics card to be put in a Mac. Right now, on the new Mac Pro, you can get 1 to 4 GT120s or 1 Radeon HD4870 - hardly a mindblowing choice for performance or options.

CC, VoodooPC used to make some truly epic machines, as did Vadim. Sadly, both of those eras are now gone. Check out Armari and Cryo if you're serious about performance

Autocad doesn't run on OSX. That is the CAD programme most widely used. They would have to dual boot Windows.
They (Apple) used to offer Quaddro and Fire GL options but they don't now. Although mainstream cards will take advantage of CS4 and the like they will never be certified (drive wise) for use in Autocad.

The best graphics option for the PRO right now is pretty oudated. That card, the 512mb 4870 was superseeded largely by the 1gb version which works loads better at higher res and then replaced somewhat by the 4890.

The Nvidia option is 'low end' at best, and them offering the GTX275 might be something I'd expect to see soon.

For the most part I think they are out of luck. The hardware is not optimised for it and the leading software is not available for it. Or so I understand.

CC

You can render a lot using CUDA on the included cards but quadro is where the big boys work. (I assume rendering is dished out to dedicated render farms for large projects)

I doubt I could. Maybe you could. However if it is such poor value why are there not loads of high street boxes that can "kick it"