# godDAMN, Macs are EXPENSIVE!!!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamn-macs-are-expensive/393009>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [February 20, 2007, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamn-macs-are-expensive/393009 "2007-02-20T19:40:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 6

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**Author:** ![anamnesis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@anamnesis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anamnesis)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamn-macs-are-expensive/393009/101 "2007-02-23T00:42:52Z")

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VCO3, there are people here who don’t even know that much about computers who are telling you you’re an idiot. The people who do know about computers think you’re a retard. The fact that Apple charges a bit of a premium on their configurator is a given, but ancillary to the point. You are comparing apples to oranges and you don’t even seem to be aware of it. After having been asked by virtually everyone here for a comprehensive, itemized list of the components of this unsurpassed $1,000 Windows machine, you went and showed us how you configured a $7,000 Mac and threw it at us suggesting that we’d told you it wasn’t possible. How did you like the taste of those ranch-flavored paint chips that you had for lunch?

_For the umpteenth time, what we want to see are the Windows machine specs which are comparable to a $7,000 Mac that you can build for $1,000._

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**Author:** ![MrJackboots](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MrJackboots](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrJackboots)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamn-macs-are-expensive/393009/102 "2007-02-23T02:40:51Z")

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[QUOTE=pulykamell]  
Also, why price out two 3.0 GHz Dual Cores? Why not two 2.0 GHz dual cores? Would that not be a fairer comparison with a single 3.0 dual core? (I actually do not know the answer to this question, but somebody with a better understanding of computer architecture could hopefully comment on whether two slower duals are better than one faster dual).  
[/QUOTE]

As is unfortunately the case with so many things, “it depends”. The desktop (Kentsfield or Conroe) chips have bigger caches, but the Woodcrest has faster I/O. Even if we call them even, some tasks don’t take well to multiprocessing; some tasks do extremely well. A problem that is very long (has a lot of steps) will probably be easier on the fast dual, while a problem that is short but very wide (doing a few things many times) will be faster on two (relatively) slow duals.

Audiovisual processing tends to be a lot wider than it is long, so, not having benchmarks handy, I’m going to lean towards saying that the two 2GHz dual-cores will have a little bit of an advantage over one 3GHz (ish) dual, or at least be competitive, for these specific tasks.

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