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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

This seems insane. I just built a PC for $600 that has an 8 core Ryzen 7, 16 GB RAM, 500 GB EVO 970 and a Radeon 570 8 GB. I just cannot fathom how this can cost literally 10x as much for _marginally_ better specs.

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You can't really compare that build to a mac pro. On the low end, you're mostly paying for the platform:

  - Full-sized, machined metal case
  - *Huge*, complex, dual-socket Xeon motherboard
   - 12 memory slots, 6 memory channels
   - "MPX" slots
   - Custom video acceleration card support
   - Dual 10 GBit Ethernet, Thunderbolt
   - A lot more PCI-e lanes
  - 1.4 kW power supply + cooling capacity

Unfortunately, despite of the price, it is a single-socket motherboard. That means, the 28 cores is already the top of the line configuration. Which is not very much in the age of 64-core AMDs, with dual sockets even 128 cores.

My mistake.. maybe I assumed because of that 1.5 TB memory capacity.

The processor alone here is $7,000+. That's just the processor.

Intel, at least, doesn't think that means, "marginally better specs."

So Apple is selling the base model at a $1000 loss? That doesn't seem right. Plus Intel pricing has nothing to do with performance.

Prove to me an 8-core Xeon W blows an 8-core Ryzen 7 out of the water.

It does blow Ryzen out of the water in PCIe slots and DIMM slots. The Mac Pro is optimized for the high end so you should probably compare against an 8-core Epyc.

That's more a limitation of the motherboard than the Ryzen, no? You would buy a motherboard with however many PCIe and DIMM slots you need for the desired specs.

Yes, instead of designing several different motherboards Apple just has one very expensive, very high-end motherboard. This hurts customers who don't need all those capabilities.

Sure, but your rig doesn't run OS X.

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