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Those workstations were substantially different (and faster) than commodity x86 hardware at the time. Today you can buy a latest-gen 8-core CPU for $300 or so.
by llampx 7y ago
Those workstations were substantially different (and faster) than commodity x86 hardware at the time. Today you can buy a latest-gen 8-core CPU for $300 or so.
- jandrese 7y agoThe sad truth is they really weren't that much faster. Sun workstations were using the same 68k processors that Macs were using. There is a reason the Unix Workstation market didn't survive. That said, this Mac is not as overpriced as it appears on the surface. A server class motherboard with ECC RAM support and an 8 core Xeon aren't cheap components. I'm guessing they aren't using the bottom of the barrel SSDs either. 32GB of ECC memory aren't exactly free either. I wouldn't be surprised if the BoM on this was over $3k.
- eMSF 7y agoWhen I last checked, ECC RAM was hardly more expensive than non-ECC RAM. 8-core Xeons have a huge price range. I would be quite surprised if the BoM of the base model was even half of that.
- bdowling 7y agoSun's mid-1990's SPARCstation models used a SPARC CPU (hence the name). The single-core workstations were a bit faster than the top of the line 386 or 486 available at the time. As I understand it, the draw was the CPU and OS compatibility with Sun's million dollar servers.
- jwr 7y agoNot necessarily that much faster. What people mostly paid for was not the hardware itself, but the whole package, including the operating system. Which is exactly what people pay for when getting Macs, especially on the high end. You can get an Intel CPU in a box for cheap, if that's what you're looking for.