[Sudetenland]

If there was a great a reliability difference between commercial chips and server grade chips and the QPI made much of a "real world" defference and if Apple was building their Macs the same way I built my PC, you might be right, but there's not, it doesn't, and I'm paying retail prices for all of my hardware, they are paying wholesale prices...huge difference.

Their profit margin is well over 100% on each machine.

OH yeah, BTW the XEON is a Nehalem architecture chip and thus is an i7 based chip. You are right that it is a different die, 45nm. and thus lower power consumption, but the same basic chip.

[Swordmaker]

If there was a great a reliability difference between commercial chips and server grade chips and the QPI made much of a "real world" defference and if Apple was building their Macs the same way I built my PC, you might be right, but there's not, it doesn't, and I'm paying retail prices for all of my hardware, they are paying wholesale prices...huge difference.

Show me a commercial outfit with mission critical work that would install a Sudetenland i7 computer in preference to the Mac Pro.

Their profit margin is well over 100% on each machine.

That's BS, Sudetenland. You might come up with that only if you use YOUR selection of hardware. Apple makes no bones about the margin of profit. It's public information. It's about 30%.

OH yeah, BTW the XEON is a Nehalem architecture chip and thus is an i7 based chip. You are right that it is a different die, 45nm. and thus lower power consumption, but the same basic chip.

The difference between the two chips power consumption is 35 Watts. That's a lot of heat that has to be handled. That adds costs and even more power consumption. The Xeon is not an i7 based chip... it is more proper to say that both this Xeon and the i7 are in the same Nehalem family... but they are different chips with quite a difference in pricing.

If I were running a server farm, 35 Watts makes a BIG difference in my power bill... and the heat I have to dispose of.

That said, I would like to see Apple offer a mid priced headless tower based on the i7s. I think there is a market for it. I doubt it would happen because I think it would cannibalize their Mac Pro line.