Apple thrashes Dell on Mac Pro pricing

THE MAC PRO was unveiled at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference ( WDCC) a couple of days ago. It's a formidable system, based around a two Intel Xeon 'Woodcrest' processor dual core system, similar to what Dell is offering within the Dell Precision 490 range for small businesses.

We thought it would be interesting to compare pricing between similarly specced systems from Dell and Apple, and were gobsmacked at the results - this should be very good reading for Apple advocates after our previous commentary, which discussed the poor showing from Apple at this year's WDCC.

Let's get the base specifications out of the way first, so it's clear the systems are very similarly specified. Considering the recent Apple move towards Intel architecture, the specs are almost indistinguishable:

• Dell base specs
• Dell Precision 490
• Graphics Card - 128MB PCIe nVidia Quadro NVS 285
• Memory - 1GB, DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz, ECC (2x512MB DIMMS)
• HDD - 160GB 7200RPM S-ATA
• Optical - 16X DVD+/-RW drive
• KB/Mouse - USB Entry Quietkey, Dell standard USB 2-Button Optical Mouse
• Sound and Firewire- Onboard AC97 sound and 1394a Controller Card
• No monitor
• Three year onsite economy service & support

• Apple base specs
• Mac Pro
• NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB
• Memory - 1GB, DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz, ECC (2x512MB DIMMS)
• HDD - 160GB 7200RPM S-ATA
• Optical - Superdrive dual-layer DVD+/-RW drive
• KB/Mouse - Apple Keyboard and Apple Mighty Mouse
• Sound and Firewire - FireWire 800/400 and sound with various I/O inc. optical
• No monitor
• One year standard AppleCare

Now let's take a look at different processor configurations and the resulting pricing from the US stores.

Dual Core Intel Xeon 2GHz x 2 (4MB shared L2 cache)
Dell: $2,086.00 (with a $200 discount for small business)
Apple: $2,124.00

Dual Core Intel Xeon 2.66GHz x 2 (4MB shared L2 cache)
Dell: $2,866.00 (with a $200 discount for small business)
Apple: $2,424.00

Dual Core Intel Xeon 3GHz x 2 (4MB shared L2 cache)
Dell: $3,686.00 (with a $200 discount for small business)
Apple: $3,224.00

You can see Dell pips Apple by a tiny $38 for the 2GHz option, but then is whipped into shape by Apple with a $442 saving on the 2.66GHz option and a similarly large margin with the 3ghz processors - $462 per system. It must be noted that the machine from Dell does have a three year on-site warranty whereas the Apple has only the one year, but this is less important to small businesses who have their own IT support, and consumers who wish to get the cheapest deal - something Dell usually wins hands down.

This is quite incredible. Any major OEM has trouble matching pricing with Dell, considering the massive volume discount Dell gets from Intel. But Apple aren't only matching them on the lower specs, they're thrashing them on the higher specced systems - relatively huge margins of pricing difference.

You have to wonder what sort of discounts Apple are getting from Intel, and if this is why Dell is now holding hands with AMD. µ

See Also
Apple lacks lustre
Dell sticks AMD chips in laptops
AMD Dell deal is a big Dell deal indeed
AMD and Dell sign deal for millions of chips

*Update A few readers have pointed out that the Dell comes with a NVidia Quadro graphics card. This model is in fact a very, very cheap entry-level Quadro that retails for only £5-£10 more than then the GeForce 7300 included in the Mac Pro, and isn''t comparable to the £1600 Quadro upgrade that Apple offer!