stevel

Not being a techie (obviously!), your advice would be appreciated!

Would there be a significant difference between dual 2.0 Xeons and the same at 2.50?

Thanks!

AJLynn

25%.

stevel

That's significant. I'm trying to watch the budget--the Dell I'm looking at comes with one Xeon 2.0. Would dual 2.0's be a reliable system (I'll be doing projects like large houses, condos, banks, smaller shopping centers, etc.)?

AJLynn

Reliable? Yes. Price efficient? You'll have to do your own math.

baker1444

If you looking at dual processors get a Mac Pro. Its a lot better deal. you get dual 2.8ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors for a lot less than Dell, check it out. http://www.apple.com/macpro/

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"Its so easy to be critical"

Slinger

And that $2799.00 is bare-bones...wow, you may get 2 Xeon quads, but you only get 2gigs of ram, a crappy graphics card, 1 hdd, and no monitor for that. On top of that, your buying a Mac.
The only good thing about that set up is the case---but Apple messes that up by plastering that big ass apple on the side.

BTW, you can configure a Dell workstation with almost exactly the same specs as the mac for the same price, so I am not sure how you think it's a much better deal going with a Mac.

AJLynn

How did you get that to happen? If I configure a Dell T5400 with dual-quad 2.83's, 2GB RAM, 320GB HD, it comes to $3800. Compare to $2800 for the Apple. That's "a lot less" by my calculations. And it's a Dell, not an Apple, you can't run MacOS without hacking.

If I want the Apple to have a decent video card, it will be an 8800GTS for an extra $150. If I want the Dell to have a decent video card, the cheapest option is an FX1700 for an extra $400. So now if I want value I need to go 3rd party and I haven't even got a chance to use it yet.

Oh, right, the Dell price includes the low end 19" monitor. Dell won't sell you the computer without the monitor.

So what's with the Apple hating anyway? You jealous of my MBP?

Ky Lane

I swear by the dual zeon quad mac. Been using one about a year now, and its dreamy. get 4GB ram, get another 500gb drive, get a 8800GT... and you have my system, and can vouch its FAST and reliable.

Have a XPS720 at home, gorgeous gaming machine, not so speedy on rendering (then again, Im used to 8 cores).

baker1444

The beauty of a Mac is that you can have the best of both worlds. You can have the Mac OS and run windows on it. Sounds like the ultimate machine to me.

Yeh I don't know how you got the Dell to price cheaper than the Mac every time I goto dell and configure one it ends up about a $1000 more. Plus the expandability of the Mac is almost endless.

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"Its so easy to be critical"

AJLynn

To be fair, they're pretty much equally expandable - the Mac has a nicer system for adding hard drives but the Dell can take almost anything the Mac can, and there are a bunch of aftermarket video cards the Dell can take that the Mac won't run in OSX without some hacking.

One nice thing the Mac will do that the Dell won't is run Elgato products - they make HDTV tuners and the software to deal with them, and they allow most useful edits and file format conversions while ignoring the broadcast flag restrictions, which it turns out are voluntary though Microsoft would never tell you that.