Quad macintel woodcrest vs quad PC woodcrest:

Assuming you were in the market for a beefy workstation which you are gonna do lots of audio related stuff with, you wonder sometimes whether to do mac or PC(assuming you're an ameteur, cuz most of your "industry" types are on mac by default). You want a lot of disk and cpu for an audio station, the mac site suggested 2 500gb hard drives and 2 3GhZ woodcrest cpu's. It was driving me crazy, so I had to do it, I newegged a parts list which as far as I can tell comes close to being a mac pro, and costs about the same as what I would pay with the student discount, so here goes:

Lian Li PC-201B Black Case - $269.99
X7DA8-O Dual Socket 771 Intel 5000X Motherboard - $549.99
ASUS EN7600GT SILENT Video Card - $209.99
Antec Phantom 500 Power Supply - $159.99
2 X Intel Xeon 5160 Woodcrest - $1,833.98
4 X Crucial 1GB DDR2 FB-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) - $777.96
2 X Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB Hard Drive - $579.98
Logitech Ultra X Wired Standard Keyboard - $21.99
Logitech MX518 PS/2 Optical Mouse - $39.99
Pioneer 16X DVD±R DVD Burner - $31.99
TOTAL: $4,405
(excludes OS, support, monitor, etc)

The MAC for comparison:
power mac case
mac pro motherbard (5000x chipset as far as I can tell)
Nvidia 7300gt(slower than the pc version)
apple PSU
2 X 3GhZ woodcrest
4GB Mystery RAM
2 X 500Gb Mystery HD
Apple Keyboard
Apple MightyMouse
"Superdrive" DVD burner
TOTAL: 4,549 (with academic discount, includes OS and support, no monitor)

I tried to pick the PC parts that would result in a quad woodcrest for the same price as the mac(secretly hoping that the pc I specced out would be the obvious better deal for the money, but I was surprised), but there are more variables here, like cooling devices, OS cost, etc. It still is really surprising, the mac pro looks like a good deal compared to this thing I picked out, with the added convenience of knowing for sure that it will already work for doing the audio stuff(on the PC side quad woodcrest audio workstations are still very experimental type things from what the forums have been saying) (though there are problems with things like protools on a mac at the moment as well). You can put multiple video cards in the mac pro but there is only 1 pcie x16 slot in the pc board, but for the money you can put a nicer video card in the pc(which I did, with the fanless 7600gt). It would be neat to have these side by side, to compare their noise, I tried to pick out parts that would keep the pc close to the mac in noise but I have no way of knowing for sure. (wish somebody would get this stuff and write an article for me, except with better comparisons)

Also the macs come with firewire, some sort of fancy heat spreaders on the RAM, a warranty, and you might could argue a better motherboard, despite it not supporting as many video cards. Usually I can make a system that easily has better parts than mac for the same money, but this one is quite a different situation. If I were rich enough I might consider getting one.

Although, giving the PC some credit, i didnt get any academic discount on the pc parts so I might could pick better ones if we factored that in(but I didn't because it reflects the reality of most people here who are considering mac from the bookstore vs pc from newegg).

Can you guys help me come up with some better comparisons, mainly based on what hardware you get for your money? You think the pc I listed or the mac would be the superior machine?

[Edited on August 11, 2006 at 3:29 PM. Reason : typos]

8/11/2006 3:23:23 PM

Huh, what with the support coming with the mac... I'd get that and an oem copy of windows XP... and maybe a better graphics card.

I'd bet you that you could find much cheaper pc parts though if you looked... It shouldn't be that close for a mac at all.

[Edited on August 11, 2006 at 3:30 PM. Reason : ]

8/11/2006 3:29:12 PM

I usually do when I am actually buying something, my orders are like half from zipzoomfly, half from random obscure stores, and maybe 1 or 2 from newegg, but I use newegg the most cuz you can narrow down the catalog quite nicely.

I just ordered a conroe rig for about 2K, so this is all hypothetical really, I doubt I will have $5500 to spend on a fancy computer any time soon.

But is is really surprising, how close they come in cost, and you can kinda assume you'd end up paying that $150 difference for the pc with your copy of windows and your random shit like cables and fans and stuff anyway. Usually when you spec out a mac that you want, you can take that same money and find parts to make a pc with obviously better stuff in it. (assuming you dont care about apple's many little "value added" things)

[Edited on August 11, 2006 at 3:38 PM. Reason : spelling]

8/11/2006 3:35:29 PM

Yeah, I guess apple got a real sweetheart deal for switching over to intel processors after all.

8/11/2006 3:46:07 PM

for 1, ram is not that expensive, nor should your psu, nor should the drives cost that much. anyway, I really don't think you need 4 processors for sound editting, since as it is most apps can't utilize 2 very well. do as wish, I'd choose a pc, dual boot it with osx if you have to.

8/11/2006 3:46:20 PM

The fb-dimm ram costs more, and you gotta have this special kind to run on these quad xeon boards. The power supply is a really fancy one, how much do you think one would cost that is equivalent to the mac pro's? The 500 gig drives do cost alot but I kinda trust seagate and wouldn't buy a samsung or a toshiba and trust it with my work.

This is all just for fun really, I'm not buying anything but have always wanted one of these quadzilla rigs with dual dual core cpu's in them. You can never have enough cpu when you are running a bunch of noise generating programs at the same time.

8/11/2006 4:05:38 PM

Intel is suppose to be releasing quad-core procs that are drop in replacements for the Woodcrests by the end of this year or early next. Supposedly, when these are released, the Mac Pros (and your comparable PC workstations) will have a dual-quad option.

8/11/2006 4:30:51 PM

woot,

good thing im not buying one right now then!

8/11/2006 4:32:02 PM

Quote :

"I really don't think you need 4 processors for sound editting, since as it is most apps can't utilize 2 very well"

A lot of apps utilize multiple cores well. Pretty much all the major content creation apps in 3D and video do, and so does a lot of photoshop filters. Plus, the OS itself is multithreaded, and with some of the new features in OS X, it helps a lot to have extra cores. I bet when Vista comes out there will even be a noticeable difference between 2 cores and 4 cores in day-to-day use.

8/11/2006 4:35:25 PM

You can cut the cost of the mac down more if you bought your extra RAM and drives elsewhere. Never buy manufacture upgrades like that.

8/11/2006 4:57:25 PM

The only thing you are really going to save $$ on upgrading yourself on a Mac Pro is the hard drives.

FB-DDR2 memory is insanely expensive right now.

That said, the Mac Pro is INCREDIBLY priced for what you are getting. Dell's system is only about 10% less comparatively, if that.

I just hope to god they put in more video options, because the Quadro they offer pretty much blows and the other two video options are pretty strange.

8/11/2006 6:11:50 PM

looks like the HD's would be 200 bux saved if you bought them later, shame you can't get one of these with zero hard drive in it at all.

If i pick a single 160 HD, buy the 500's later, I get about 200 saved plus an extra 160gb.
Really makes the mac seem just as good a deal as a list of parts, i think its really impreassive, now if only they could do that for a ~2000 budget machine.

8/12/2006 3:00:55 AM