NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GTX officially launched, officially fast

If you checked into those NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX benchmarks and felt they met with your high standards, now you can actually get one (or a bunch) into your rig. According to reports, the brain-laser of a graphics card can now be had (in various iterations) for the low, low price of $329.99 (at least from Newegg). And before you ask -- Crysis: Yes. Doom: Yes. Overlords: Welcome. Will blend: Yes. Russia: Benchmarks you.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 1st 2008 9:12PM]

Zak, you say the following:

Is that true? Not even close. Your PC still manages to come out to be more expensive, and the cost of Windows alone pushes it even higher. OS X is included for free on all Macs. And in the end, yours is still a home built machine, and the Mac Pro is not. It's designed really, really well. And it runs nearly silently, something you can't really say about your PC. As far as gaming, these two machines would be nearly identical. The Mac Pro has a faster FSB, the PC has a slightly more powerful video card.

In the end, the difference is about negligible and so is the price. You can't build a PC that's close to the Mac Pro for half as much money, and that was my point. Thank you for proving it for me.

*****************************************************************************************************************************


1. The difference is $2,254.00 between the system I configured using the link you posted and the system I listed. PERIOD. No, it's not half the price, but it's significantly cheaper.

2. ASUS MAKES MANY of Apples boards. I'm an ASUS vendor. I learned this lovely fact recently from one of the higher ups at a recent ASUS conference we had. As you may or may not know, they also make a certain number of notebooks for Apple, DELL, HP....etc.

3. Who said anything about Windows? OSX is based on FreeBSD. I could slap FreeBSD on that box. OR, I could put on Gentoo Linux. Neither of which have ANY cost associated with them.

4. Mine is a "home built" machine, assembled by somebody who has been doing this for 15 years, with parts that have a three year warranty from their manufacturer WHO MAKES MANY OF THE PARTS FOR APPLE!!!! Want to know the difference? The difference is the person assembling MY system (me) has been doing it FAR LONGER and will take MUCH more care than the 12 year old kid throwing together your MAC to "apple specs" in some third world country!!! And my parts won't be compromised to boost a certain integrator's (after all, it's not like Apple MAKES their hardware for these systems) bottom line.

5. Obviously you have ZERO PC building experience. I can make that server system just as quiet as your MAC. Hell, we are using basically the same video card, the same CPU family with the same cooling solution, the likely only difference in noise is going to be PSU choice. And it's not like your Western Digital 500GB is going to magically quieter than my 500GB Western Digital hard drive; It just costs more for the same part.

And did I mention the $2,254.00 difference?

[xValentine Posted Apr 1st 2008 11:53PM]

And now we only have to wait for the 9800GT and move on with our lives and wait for the 10series.

:)

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 2nd 2008 3:22AM]

Overkill: "1. The difference is $2,254.00 between the system I configured using the link you posted and the system I listed. PERIOD. No, it's not half the price, but it's significantly cheaper."

I really hope that you are just playing dumb with that conclusion.

Adding 8GB from Apple is $1500, no one in their right mind would do that. Even though you are specking out a Mac Pro, you don't have to choose the ram from Apple. It's the same with Dell and HP who overcharge for ram and HDD's, you obviously purchase the ram from a 3rd party, which would be a little less than $400. You honestly can't play dumb and pretend like you have to configure the Mac Pro with overpriced apple ram.

So buying things like ram and HDD's from a third party (which you would do regardless of it being Mac or PC), the Mac Pro would be about the same price as your PC (your $2200 difference comes from choosing apple ram and HDD's, and Zak made it clear that he did not do that with the system he purchased), more than proving Zak's point about it being impossible to build an equivalent PC for less (actually, it was a fanboyish claim of 1/2 the price...).

Yes, Apple does charge a "tax", but that tax is usually only evident in ram and HDD costs, which PC manufacturers do as well. So this tax is something that both mac and pc users face, and it's also something that we can avoid, and the smart consumers do avoid it. Just because it is a Mac, it doesn't mean you cannot purchase 3rd party components, which any wise consumer would do.

It does not make sense to compare a home built system, which the smartest consumer would do, to a Mac with overpriced apple components like ram/hdd's, which a dumb consumer would do. You obviously purposely chose apple ram and HDD's to increase the cost of the Mac, and to act oblivious and claim you proved him wrong is pretty childish. I had respect for you while reading your posts, but lost it all when I realized that you did that.

The Mac Pro I purchased was $2779 before tax (same confiq as Zak and your PC) with education discount. The additional 8 GB of ram was 400 (for a total of 10 GB, 2 coming with the base model) and the two 500 GB HDD's was 240 (all from OWC online store). That's $3419 for my Mac Pro before tax. That's 25$ more than the PC you specked. TWENTY-FIVE US DOLLARS. Please people, wake up, an equivalent PC is only $25 cheaper than a Mac Pro.

Everyone is quick to call Zak a troll, but everyone's blind hate for apple is preventing them from realizing they are trolls themselves. Hopefully your price spec will wake a few people up, as you indeed just showed that a PC equivalent to a Mac Pro is the SAME price.

So get over it, your attempt to prove him wrong ended up proving his point. No need for name calling and such.

Now I believe I was very logical in my posts and provided sufficient evidence (which I believe Zak did as well). If I get called a fanboy after this post, then I seriously give up on humanity.

(PS: if you are too lazy to read my entire post, key points: My Mac Pro is $25 more than an equivalent PC, thanks)

[Decoy Posted Apr 2nd 2008 5:14PM]

So non-mac parts are signifigantly cheaper?
Can you buy third party mac-mobos?

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 2nd 2008 3:08AM]

zak, you're a complete fucking retard. PCs ABSOLUTELY DESTROY (!!!) macs in terms of price, performance, aesthetics, reliability... it goes on. Where exactly do macs shine? I'll tell you - in a gullible trendwhore's bedroom. There is absolutely nothing, NOTHING, you can't do on a PC for faster and cheaper.

PC - the left brained choice.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 2nd 2008 4:54PM]

i have the strong feeling that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

i know it's weird, but some people like to make informed decisions, as opposed to just spouting off nonsense opinion with total disregard to "fact". ...but to each his own. do what you want.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 2nd 2008 6:43PM]

I don't know about 3rd party mobo's, probably not.

But Overkill's comparison showed that that is not necessary. He configured a a self-built PC and the price was only 25$ cheaper than my Mac Pro, showing that Apple does not make its "tax" on the primary parts, but moreso the readily available 3rd party parts like ram and HDD's.

So Overkill's post defended Apple in many ways, quite interesting.

[Decoy Posted Apr 2nd 2008 7:45PM]

Oh ok, thx. (V. true this thread is way off base now)

I've never bought a Mac so I'm not sure how it works, it take it they don't sell the mobos and cases separately? Can you buy a bare bones Mac without ram, HDD, etc?

The Apple store doesn't allow me to configure a Mac Pro without Ram, for example.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 2nd 2008 7:49PM]

Yeah, you cannot purchase it barebones, they haven't opened the platform up like that yet.

The only way would be to purchase it used and gut it.

[Decoy Posted Apr 3rd 2008 4:16AM]

So when I buy a mac new they will force my hand to buy the apple-taxed ram, hdd?

At present, granted. Are they opening up the platform?

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 2nd 2008 6:44PM]

It's just too bad that I came to this post when the argument was already beaten to death.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 3rd 2008 3:02PM]

Dangit! They took all the stupid posts that I usually say.

um...

Last post!

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 3rd 2008 3:26PM]

No, the 2GB ram and 320GB hdd that comes with the base model doesn't have much of a "tax". This was proven by overkill's post where the home-built PC came out to the same price.

So the "tax" is only there when you're buying additional ram and hdd's, so buy those from a third party website like http://www.macsales.com/

Going that route, you will be paying the same as a custom built PC with equivalent parts, as shown by Overkill.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 18th 2008 9:59PM]

ahhh...the farther down i go the longer the comments...i think im gonna go play metroid prime. because i don't need a card that expensive to be amazed. plus it's still in the mail. =]