'Big Mac' supercomputer one of world's fastest

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Apple may die because of your high-price-support.

Just a CPU upgrade for a Mac:

Sonnet
ENCORE / ZIF G4 1.0Ghz for Beige G3 1MB / 250 MHz
Processor Upgrade Board
$489.00

And how many upgrades you can have for a PC for $489.00
?

Read your link again:
http://www.osviews.com/
modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=
338&mode=thread&order=0&thold=

Taking a look at the same Fry's Electronics ad that lists
the $2999 G5, I see these other items advertised today:

1) Athlon XP 2400+ processor/ECS K7VTA3 motherboard
combo, $89 (note that this processor runs at about the
same clock speed as the ones in the $3000 G5)

2) 200 GB UDMA/100 Western Digital hard drive with 8MB
buffer, $119 (bigger capacity than the $3000 G5)

3) Polaroid DVD +/-RW/+/-R / CD-RW drive, $149

4) 512 MB PC 2700 DDR memory, $59

5) Mid Tower ATX case w. 350W power suply, $49

I could not find a Radeon 9600 Pro in today's Fry's
Electronics ad, so I found one on PriceWatch.com :

6)Radeon 9600 pro ez 128mb 8x AGP DVI+CRT+TV out,
$124 + shipping
(from House of Computers, 714-680-3788 Brea , CA)
-------------------------------------------------
Total cost = $589

Throw in $50 for a wireless network card, and another $50
for IDE cables and so on, and you'll still come in under
$700. Use any of the excellent free Linux distributions out
there as the operating system, and the only added cost is
the download time and a couple of CD-R's. Or use FreeBSD,
the core of which powers MacOS X.

Very likely the hypothetical $700 PC above will not match
the G5's prowess at, say, floating point intensive
computational work. However, to the average user doing
average things, there will be no perceptible difference in
performance. The difference in price, however is HUGE; the
PC costs less than a quarter of the money you'd need to
spend on the G5.

Posted by: Vily Clay   Posted on: 10/26/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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