I just did a quick UK comparison between the base Mac Pro and a Dell Precision workstation.

Mac Pro: £2,221.00
Dell: £1,248.00

I don't know enough about GPUs to know how they compare exactly, 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5770 in the Mac vs 1 GB NVIDIA Quadro 600 in the Dell. But I'm guessing that picking a properly equivalent* GPU in the Dell would only add another couple of hundred (it would appear that the 5770 can be had for <£100 for example).

So a fair premium.

Don't get me wrong, I love my new MacBook Pro and am happy that I paid a premium over an "equivalent" PC laptop. But the relative prices of Mac Pros are anything but close to the "equivalent" spec Wintel PC.


* the Dell site overs a bewildering array of other GPU options, but I have no idea how they compare to each other