Re: Mac vs. PC System Shootouts - $3,200 Workstations

Looking at only the amount of RAM and the support of dual link DVI in
the video cards and ignoring the GPU is not selecting a similar feature
set. It just comes down to the video cards are not comparable. It is
no different that thinking that the 2.66 Mac Pro will perform the same
as the 3.0 Mac Pro because the RAM, HDD, and optical drives are all the
same.

geforce 7300 gt:
128 bit memory interface
memory bandwidth: 10.7 GB/sec
fill rate: 2.8 billion pixels/sec
350 million vertices/sec

quadra 3450 FX:
256 bit memory interface
memory bandwidth: 32 GB/sec
4.2 Billion texels/sec (textured pixels)
150 million triangles per second
(I'm a little sketchy on this one, but I'm assuming a triangle contains

3 vertices, thus 450 million vertices per second)

Again the MacWorld article points out the difficulty in doing a
comparison. While both video cards support dual link dvi and have 256
megs of ram they are not comparable in performance. If someone is
wanting to run games at the highest resolution and frame rate they
would select the Geforce. If you are running CAD\CAM and producing 3d
models and need to render, pan, zoom and hope to limit your screen
refreshes you select a Quadro or Ati FireGL.

I don't have any fault with the logic of selecting the FX3450 because
it was the least expensive choice offered by Dell that included 256megs
of ram and supported 1 dual link DVI.

However, the author went out of his way to point out the $1,000 price
difference but inferred he wasn't sure where the extra cost was in the
Dell. He speculated that Dell was charging a premium for the second
processor ($895 option). He failed to inform the casual reader that he
had selected the 1kw chassis ($600 option) and that the video card in
the Dell was a higher performance card ($585 option).

Again, this article demonstrates the difficulty in trying to compare
computers that are targeted at differing user industries.

Brent

Tim Adams wrote:
IF the Apple ships with a graphic card that supports "256MB, 1 dual-link, 1
single" should you not have that same feature available in the other computer in
order to do a reasonable price comparison based on _comparable_ systems, or do
you, when you compare systems, add as much RAM as possible in one, add in the
most expensive video card, add in as many, and the largest HD's available and
strip all of those items out of the other to get your price points?


.

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