Comparing prices: Killer gaming rig vs Medium spec MacPro
 

I was looking at this website http://www.wired2fire.co.uk/ which is a site that lets you make custom gaming rigs. So just to see how much their top rig was i customized it to the max specs. I then looked at the price and thought hmm, I wonder what the mac equivalent in specs would cost? So i went to apple and tried to make a sorta equal rig. Here are the specs of the 2 machines

Apple mac Pro: 2x 3ghz cpu, 4gb ram, 4x nvidia 256mb graphics cards, 2x 750gb Hds, 2x superdrives, and 1 30" display and 3 year apple care. By no means is this a weak computer, in fact its overkill for most. The price £4934.02 Expensive isnt it? Well lets compare with the gaming rig on wired2fire:

Core2extreme quad 3ghz cpu, 4gb ram, 2x GeForce 8800 Ultra OC 768MB in sli, 2x 750gb hds, A toshiba hd-dvd drive, pioneer blu-ray/dvd writer, Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty sound card, logitech z-5500 5.1 speakers, Dell 30" display, a 128mb ageia physics card, 3 games, Vista Ultimate and 3 years full warranty. The price just over £5000

Comparing the specs, i felt ripped off by apple, even though it was a windows machine, I would rather have that than the equivalent mac pro.

I have 2 questions, the first is why is a medium spec mac pro such a "rip off" compared to this really high end gaming pc, what is in it that makes it so expensive? And if it was your money what would you rather have, the gaming rig or the mac pro.

That MacPro you spec'ed out is an eight-core Xeon box, right? It's a massive 64-bit workstation, not a gaming rig. Ten bucks says the compile times on that box blow away the gaming machine's.

Also, save your money, SLI is a marketing scheme. Plus everyone knows eventually, the video card industry will release dual core GPU cards.

No its the 2x dual core one, not the quad. I know they are different machines, but it just seems that im getting so much more on the gaming rig, i mean a set of one of the best 5.1 speakers for pcs money can buy, A display that is as good as apples but for a fraction of the price. I can only wish that at some point, apple make a gaming line of macs...

Dont worry I wont have that much money for long time.... Im still in high school. Dual core gpu cards, that sounds awesome, but they will be really expensive right? and require more power? Do you think they will make dual and even quad core gpu cards that can run in sli lol? (just imagine, a dual quadcore 8800 gtx ...by my calculations, that will be the minimum required graphics card for crysis 2 :D)

Nope, you got to realize that the Mac Pro runs dual Xeons, where as the desktop gaming rig runs Core 2 extreme processors. Different technology and both are used in different application.

oooh ok, gottcha, But are they that different? sure the xeon is going to a lot better at certain apps, but the cpu's wont be that bad at gaming?

It isn't just the processors. OS X is worth more than Windows, and it will cost less to operate and maintain, unless you're a certified Windows tech.

The Mac hasn't been a gaming platform since before it was introduced. IT techs in the early 80s referred to the Apple II as a toy that was only good for games. Funny, because it had a 16 bit command line OS, just like the PC. Anyway, that caused Apple to discourage games on the Mac, and even now, it just can't be an apples to apples comparison.

to give you a very general idea, the xeons are built to take on many tasks at once and distribute between them, handling many things at once, stability is key here. Core2, is end user so performance is key. You sacrifice stability for performance sometimes, and even though the Xeons are work horses, they obviously won't out perform on certain things like gaming, but when it calls for lots of work at once (say 3D rendering) they will out perform.

There is way more to it, but that is a very basic explanination.

To give a more visual example of what tlarkin is saying, try and imagine a Ferrari and a Drag Racer. Yes, a Drag racer will run down the line faster than a Ferrari, much faster, but that's all it will do. Where as the Ferrari might not be able to beat the Drag Racer at a drag race, but it will beat it on a twisty road corse, a big oval or at the perhaps more mundane task of driving you to work.

That PC gaming rig will do games just fine, but as far as high end programs go, that's about all it will do. So, it's like the drag racer. The MacPro, on the other hand, will do games pretty well and a host of other things (like movie editing, Music Editing, Photoshop, etc) exceptionally.

But the point, really, is this. If you want to drag race, buy a Drag Racer. If you want a car that does everything else, buy the Ferrari. Meaning: If you want to play a lot of games, buy the gaming system, and if you want to do everything else well, buy the Mac.

You people make everything so simple, thank you, i never thought of it like that,

Ferrari were always my dream car...

I have my eyes on a 612 at the moment, all I need to do is save up another $266,000 or so...

Gee, I hope you have some sort of super college degree where you get that 2.5 million signing bonus at your first job:D If you do, hire me to be your IT manager!

Oh, I will. If get a job for 2.5 million right out of college, with a history degree, then everyone on this forum is due for some position in my company.

Great, but I'm going to want a Mac Pro at my desk, and a MBP for when I'm away from it. Oh, and an iPhone while I'm pushing my luck!

If I'm making that much money, I'll even through in an AppleTV, Airport Extreme base station (for home and office use), a Zune for a paper weight and the world most expensive iPod accessory, the BMW 535i.

Oh, and our building, it's totally going to have a glass cube entry way.

Edit: this is getting me pretty excited, I'd better get to work on my next killer app, eh? If only I could get Run Log to show up in XCode...

aswell as paper weights, can we just have crates full of zunes to smash :) just for fun..

Only for you kel101, only for you ;).

My dear friend, i, and im sure everyone else, is at your service :D

I used to struggle with Mac gaming for years, and I just decided it wasn't worth it anymore. I spent about $2000 built a pretty high end gaming machine with a 23 inch widescreen LCD. I still use my dual G5 tower, and MacBook for everything that is not a game though. I still find myself looking to see if a game is Mac compatible sometimes, and then I remember I don't care anymore hehe.

Oddly, I find this attitude perfectly acceptable at this point, but hey, what are you going to do? I have high hopes that Apple will really get into gaming at some point, but all indications are that it will have to wait a bit longer.

One thing I do find interesting though is the recent addition of Core Animation, it's an API that allows for simpler code to create 3D animations. It claims to be for user interfaces more than anything else...but with a bit of work I wonder if it could function in the same way that DirextX does for Windows.

My understanding of Core Animation, is that is also allows direct access to the GPU via the API. So, yes in some ways it could be a lot like direct X. The biggest issue would be to get developers to take advantage of it.