Lenovo Workstations with Xeon 5500, 3500
There was talk 'round here about the value of the Mac Pro. Some of us were told to wait and see what the PC vendors would be selling their comparable hardware for. Well Toto...it ain't looking too good.
Lenovo Workstation with Xeon 5500 and 3500 starting at 1500 and 1070 dollars.
Sigh..that "powerful" $2499 Quad Mac Pro must be made of gold.
Lenovo Workstation with Xeon 5500 and 3500 starting at 1500 and 1070 dollars.
Quote:
Turbo-Charged Performance
Turbo-charged for performance, Lenovo's latest workstations can even be configured for personal supercomputing, helping enable professionals to innovate faster and reduce the time between an idea and a product. Adding the NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPU platform to the workstations offers 240 additional cores of dedicated math processing power to help speed up calculations dramatically. In addition to this super performance boost and quieter computing experience over previous Lenovo workstations, the new workstations also feature the latest, high performance technologies including:
Turbo-Charged Performance
Turbo-charged for performance, Lenovo's latest workstations can even be configured for personal supercomputing, helping enable professionals to innovate faster and reduce the time between an idea and a product. Adding the NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPU platform to the workstations offers 240 additional cores of dedicated math processing power to help speed up calculations dramatically. In addition to this super performance boost and quieter computing experience over previous Lenovo workstations, the new workstations also feature the latest, high performance technologies including:
Sigh..that "powerful" $2499 Quad Mac Pro must be made of gold.
Comments
everyone knows that there is no value in Apple hardware wheres the news here??
There was talk 'round here about the value of the Mac Pro. Some of us were told to wait and see what the PC vendors would be selling their comparable hardware for. Well Toto...it ain't looking too good.
Lenovo Workstation with Xeon 5500 and 3500 starting at 1500 and 1070 dollars.
Sigh..that "powerful" $2499 Quad Mac Pro must be made of gold.
somehow, once you've configured the a S20 or D20 system to have a Quad core processor (in the third tier category) like the one in the Macpro, you'll be quite far from the 1500 and 1070$ price points. The same thing applies to the basic graphic card in those systems which only have 256MB of video memory. Once these new systems appear on the lenovo website with the actual pricing for the upgrades, I'm sure it'll be pretty close to or over 2500$ to get a comparable system.
somehow, once you've configured the a S20 or D20 system to have a Quad core processor (in the third tier category) like the one in the Macpro, you'll be quite far from the 1500 and 1070$ price points. The same thing applies to the basic graphic card in those systems which only have 256MB of video memory. Once these new systems appear on the lenovo website with the actual pricing for the upgrades, I'm sure it'll be pretty close to or over 2500$ to get a comparable system.
Too bad you can't configure a lower-spec Mac Pro. Oh, wait, you can- buy one of these and install OSX on it.
I do like that Lenovo has put 6 and 12 RAM slots in their workstations. The QC Mac Pro's 4 slots is chintzy and doesn't fully take advantage of triple channel memory.
i'm not for against either way, it's a personal option. i've built Core2Duos running OSX that run faster than any Pro out there... the only thing they lag behind in is encoding. the reason being not because it's not a Mac... but because the new Intel Xeon CPUs are just that much better.
i think aesthetically the Mac Pro is a beautiful machine, and the hardware inside is good quality (but not the best, Xeon processor aside). i think for certain consumers it just makes sense. it's a very well designed package at a premium price. if your like me it just doesn't make sense to ever buy one. calling it a crappy over-priced machine is rediculous... but so is calling it the best thing available.
it's a nice computer, with a hefty premium. if you got the money and have no interest in assembling your own computer... this is one hell of a machine.
it's a nice computer, with a hefty premium. if you got the money and have no interest in assembling your own computer... this is one hell of a machine.
I tend not to assign blanket accusations against Apple for their pricing.
I find that their Macbook lineup is sensibly priced. You only need feel the unibody enclosure to know it exudes nothing but quality.
I think Apple is going to do fine competitively with the dual socket Mac Pro but the Quad Core single socket Mac Pro is simply a poor value and I don't think Apple has plans to sell that many relative to the SMP Mac Pro.
The iMacs are good values . My hope is that I can transition my mother into a 24" iMac in a few years. I'll start her off with a mini and see if I can reel here in. She'd have little problem with the $1499 iMac as long as she knows the value of OS X and the workflow.
I'd like to see Apple reign in the iMac and get it out of the $1600+ range for all but the most beefy configs and let the Mac Pro assume the $1899 and up range.
The iMacs are good values . .
I think the iMacs are a poor value right now.
A $1500 iMac comes with a dual core processor and integrated graphics. That's just piss poor value in my book. The $1800 and $2200 iMacs are more expensive, quite a bit more, than nehalem pc systems.
I can't find much value in the Apple desktop lineup right now.
I think the iMacs are a poor value right now.
A $1500 iMac comes with a dual core processor and integrated graphics. That's just piss poor value in my book. The $1800 and $2200 iMacs are more expensive, quite a bit more, than nehalem pc systems.
I can't find much value in the Apple desktop lineup right now.
But it comes with a nice IPS monitor and for that I've gotta give Apple due credit.
I think that would be the most my mother would pay for a computer as she's used to buying the Costco special for roughly $999 with monitor. The thing is those computers seem to always have problems though that's likely due to the hodge podge of software she runs.
I'm tired of seeing today's iMac masquerading as a $2000 computer system. At that pricing we need an enthusiast system ...beefy GPU, PCI-Express expansion Quad Core procs. If you wanna call it xMac sobeit.
Yes
First, the single processor, quad-core Mac Pro: Xeon adds no practical value for this system. It is essentially the same as any other desktop Core i7 system out there in terms of performance. Yes, you do get a better designed enclosure, and better software, but I don't understand how Apple can justify charging $2500 for this system when you can get a comparably configured system from Dell/Gateway (and now Lenovo) in the $1K range. And most of these vendors do not give you a retarded graphics card like the NVidia 120, on top of that, they usually have some kind of a promotion going on where you can get extra 3GB of memory for free (for a total of 6GB)...
When Apple introduced the first Intel Mac Pros, pricing was actually quite competitive against comparable products from vendors like Dell. This was partly because the Xeon processors and chipset that supported SMP configuration was very pricey and therefore only available in high end workstation class platforms.
I think it would be fair for Apple to claim some premium over the generic PC workstation given the much better enclosure design and excellent software, but a reasonable cap for this premium should be in the 50% range. If I can get a XPS 435 with a single 2.66GHz Core i7, 6GB, 750GB HD, ATI 4670 graphics for $1099 (sale price), a similarly configured Mac Pro should not cost more than $1599-$1699. $2499 is a ridiculous price in today's market. If Apple wanted to maintain $2499 as an entry price, they should have offered the 2.93GHz processor, 6GB memory, 1TB HD and Radeon 4670 as the base configuration.
As for the dual processor model, the entry level processor choice of the 2.26GHz Core i7 Xeons is ridiculous. This model clearly has lower performance than the dual 2.8GHz Xeon Mac Pro it is replacing in almost all applications despite the higher price tag. The new dual processor Mac Pro should have been priced at $2999 and should have included dual 2.66GHz quad-core Core i7 processors, 6GB RAM, 1TB HD and ATI 4870 graphics. It is shameful that Apple puts a 640GB HD in a $3299 system to save maybe $20 cost when you can get 1TB HDs for $90 at retail.
Intel is going to do a major price adjustment in May and July of this year and introduce faster Core i7 chips. It would be interesting to see if Apple updates the entry level single processor Mac Pro to 2.93GHz and entry level the dual processor Mac Pro to 2.66GHz at that time while maintaining the price point.
As for the dual processor model, the entry level processor choice of the 2.26GHz Core i7 Xeons is ridiculous. This model clearly has lower performance than the dual 2.8GHz Xeon Mac Pro it is replacing in almost all applications despite the higher price tag.
Can you point to those tests that show the old 2.8 beating the new 2.26 because the ones I have seen show that the 2.26 is faster than the old 3.2?
http://www.barefeats.com/nehal04.html