Friday, August 18, 2006

Mac Pro vs. Dell Precision: A price comparison (Updated)

There's been a lot of baloney published online about the pricing of Apple's Mac Pro lately. I've had numerous emails from readers curious why I won't "admit" that the Mac Pro is not only competitive with a certain Dell workstation, but it's actually quite a bit cheaper. I think Apple's done a commendable job with the Mac Pro. But seriously, Apples are still more expensive than PCs across the board. They just are.

But let's focus on the Mac Pro. It's a fine machine. It's attractively priced, for a workstation. It appears to compete nicely with a particular Dell workstation that Apple used in its WWDC keynote example. What's really going on here?

First, these are workstations, not PCs. That means they are not sold in volume, like PCs, and come with much more expensive parts (like Xeon chips). Logically, we could assume that Apple would be more competitive with workstations than with PCs, because Dell's pricing advantage won't be as pronounced in a non-volume market. That appears to be the case here.

Second, Dell is the Crazy Eddie of PC sales online. If you're an individual looking for insane low-cost deals, there are entire Web sites dedicated to Dell coupon codes and Dell specials. Apple is Apple and there's pretty much one price (OK, Apple has educational prices and no doubt offers volume discounts). Dell has different prices every day and a very well established volume licensing program for businesses of all sizes.

Third, Dell offers far more configuration options than Apple. Steve Jobs made a big deal out of explaining the millions of potential configurations available with the Mac Pro. But the possibilities with any Dell workstation or PC are infinitely higher. Put simply, the range of options and prices you can get with Dell are far better than what's possible with Apple. You can get very inexpensive Dells (less expensive than Apple, but less powerful) or very full-featured Dells (more powerful than anything Apple offers).

But whatever. The real reason I didn't compare the Mac Pro with a Dell workstation is that I just didn't care. I didn't see the point. I thought it was clear that Apple was competitive. But your emails have convinced me. So I took a look. And Apple does beat Dell's pricing. (I made a mistake in my initial configuration, in which Dell beat the Mac Pro.)

Here's what I did, and I think this is where most Mac Pro/Dell workstations comparisons go wrong. I tried to configure two nearly identical systems as cheaply as possible. That is, I upgraded the video card in each to be the same exact video card. I got the same hard drive. The same memory. The same processors. And I used the Dell workstation model that most closely matched the Mac Pro. Here's how it came out:

Systems
Dell Precision Workstation 490 (32-bit) = $5,530
Apple Mac Pro = $4949
Apple price advantage = $581

Processor(s)
Two 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Advantage: Toss-up. While Apple offers only dual 2, 2.66, and 3 GHz processors, Dell offers single or dual 1.6, 1.86, 2, 2.33, 2.66, 3, 3.2, and 3.7 GHz processors. As configured, Dell's system is more expensive than Apple's, and that's what we're looking at here primarily. In terms of pure machine-to-machine comparison, Apple comes out ahead. But I still think the far wider range of choices on the Dell side will put that over the top for most users. (Note that the 3.2 and 3.7 GHz processors are actually previous generation Xeons and are likely not as fast as the newer model 3 GHz processors Apple uses.)

Operating system
Dell: Windows XP Professional (32-bit)
Apple: Mac OS X Tiger for Intel
Advantage: Well, we all have opinions. Note: A number of readers suggested I configure the Dell as a 64-bit workstation. While that's possible, that's not exactly a mainstream configuration these days on the Windows side.

Graphics card
Dell: 512MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 4500, Dual DVI or Dual VGA or DVI + VGA
Apple: NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB, Stereo 3D (2 x dual-link DVI)
Advantage: Apple. Apple's video card is a dual-link DVI that makes the Apple 30-inch display possible. Dell's card is dual DVI, which cannot drive a display like the 30-incher.

Memory:
Dell: 1GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (2 DIMMS)
Apple: 1GB (2 x 512MB) 667MHz DDR2 fully buffered ECC RAM
Advantage: n/a

Hard drive
Dell: 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM NCQ Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst Cache
Apple: 250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
Advantage: Apple. The Dell can only be only be configured with 3 hard drives. Apple can hold up to four.

Display
Dell: None
Apple: None
Advantage: Dell, unless you want a 30-inch screen. Dell's widescreen LCDs are still cheaper than Apple's. The 20-inch Dell is $459, compared to $699 for Apple. The 24-inch Dell is $879, compared to $999 for Apple's 23-incher.

Optical drive
Dell: 16X DVD+/-RW
Apple: 16x double-layer SuperDrive
Advantage: n/a ... It turns out the Dell drive is a dual-layer model as well.

Wireless and modem options
Dell: None
Apple: None
Advantage: n/a

Warranty
Dell: 3 years with lifetime phone support
Apple: 1 year
Advantage: Dell. You can purchase a 3 year AppleCare package for the Mac Pro for $249. You can also save $109 on the Dell by choosing a "3 year economy plan." It doesn't take a math whiz to understand that these choices impact Apple's price advantage.

Based on feedback, I've updated this to include the correct processor types in the Dell, which indeed made the Dell system more expensive than the Apple. I won't make any excuses here (though adding a display lowers the price difference), as my point orginally wasn't to "prove" that Dell was cheaper, only to logically compare the two systems in ways I don't feel were done accurately online previously.

It's worth noting that you can also configure a Dell that's almost identically priced to the Mac Pro: Just add in AppleCare support to match Dell's standard warranty (which one might argue is fair), and a 20-inch display for both systems, and the score comes out to $5897 for the Mac Pro and $5989 for the Dell. That's just $90 different. So yeah, Apple still comes out ahead. Exciting, eh?

So sure enough, you can configure an Apple workstation that is cheaper than a Dell. There you go.

[ Posted at 3:32 AM | Permalink ]

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Friday, August 18, 2006

Mac Pro vs. Dell Precision: A price comparison (Updated)

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