i know, but you are talking of a few percent +/- performance here. i'm sure the performance differences are way under 5% unless you compare the mac pro with a no brand super cheap motherboard bought for $50 in an asian flea market. the mac pro has a xeon motherboard and if you compare it to a quality pc xeon motherboard, it will be hard to measure markable performance differences.No, not all multi-core motherboards are equally fast. There’s a lot of signal integrity analysis and design, and careful placement and routing of components and interconnect, involved in board design. Apple traditionally does a very good job of it, better than most of the competition. Two-sided boards, high quality dielectrics and metallization, additional metallization layers to reduce interconnect length and avoid congestion, ground and power planes to reduce inductance, etc. are all places that Apple puts in extra effort but the competition often does not, in order to reduce cost.
its not that i dont value apple. but with those 5-6 i have bought that quality case.
if i want a 28core xeon in it, i wont pay an extra 10k to apple, if i can order it for 3.5k online.