Busting the Myth Part 1: Workstations
There’s a long held belief that Apple Mac’s are more expensive than their name-brand PC cousins. That may have once been true, but it’s now a myth. It’s easy to disprove this myth: simply price out competing systems on the web. To make the comparison fair, you’ll need to make the systems as equal as possible. I’m going to begin by pitting two top-of-the-line workstation computers against each other: the Apple Mac Pro and the Dell Precision 690.
Workstation computers are used by professionals that need raw computing power: generally graphics and video professionals, but really anyone needing a high end desktop computer. This is a comparison I did for myself when the Mac Pro was first announced, but I’m only now posting the results.
Systemshootouts.org has already posted a similar comparison between these two machines, however they opted to outfit each system to hit a price point of $3,200. My comparison will make the two machines as similar in configuration as possible, with what I believe are the true minimum specifications of a workstation computer. Let’s get started…
