[Swordmaker]

But then again, I have hacked MacOS on to my $900 PC that’s faster than the $2000+ Mac Pro ;)

I'm curious... exactly what processor are you using in your $900 machine that is the equivalent of the 8 core 2.8GHz Intel Xeon processors in the Mac Pro?

[antiRepublicrat]

I'm curious... exactly what processor are you using in your $900 machine that is the equivalent of the 8 core 2.8GHz Intel Xeon processors in the Mac Pro?

Doesn't one of those two processors alone cost almost as much as his whole system?

[jack_napier]

OK, let me make a few points:

#1: Having 8 CPUs does not make you eight times faster than someone with one. How multi-threaded does a non-server need to be? I do development work all day; including running development instances of application servers. I don't really see that often a situation where more CPUs than the two I have would help. For running a single-threaded application (which most are), YES, a 3.2GHz Core 2 Duo will be faster than 8 Xeons. And for right now, your applications like a word processor or a web browser are...you guessed it, single threaded.

#2: I put together my PC right after the Core 2 Duos came out. There were no quad core machines, or dual quad core machines. I was speaking relative to the timeline. I didn't make that at all clear.

#3: IO, the hard drive is usually the speed bottleneck, not the CPU. Apple has the standard drives or the expensive SCSI option. I have 10k RPM SATA drives. They're noticably faster than the standard; sometimes just as fast as the SCSI options. But certainly cheaper.

#4: Overclocking.