When was the last time you looked at Apple's RAM prices? They're an outright insult!
You obviously haven't built many IBM-compats in your time. You can EASILY build an IBM-compat that performs BETTER than a similarily priced Mac Pro in all respects.
You can upgrade? Sure, you can upgrade from an old bottom-end card (the 7300) to an old top-end card (x1900). I hardly call that an upgrade, as you're going from old to old & still not getting good performance!
Xeons aren't really that much better than C2Ds, except in limited situations;
> You have PCI-X or 64bit PCI cards AND
> You need more than one dual core Intel CPU OR
> You need more than two PCI Express slots with more than x4 lanes per slot
For the average, non-workstation user, all the Xeons do are up the price of RAM considerably, as they need FB-DIMMs.
Not getting good performance with the X1900? Sorry, I can't let you get away with that. There's a bit of a disconnect between what you're saying and what you mean, I hope.
If you mean to say that the X1900 is not the fastest video card on the market, you'd be right. If you mean to say that current shipping games on a Mac Pro running the X1900 won't scream and be silvery smooth? You'd be dead wrong. You're still getting 50+ fps on most new games maxed out at high resolution. Some games and settings top out over 100 fps, so how does this make the X1900 not a good performer in a Mac Pro?
Google bare feats and X1900 for what I mean. Quake 4 maxed at 1900 x 1200 runs 54 fps! Doom 3 at the same settings runs 73 fps! The Halo Ub runs 88 fps (even though it's an older game), the two main UT2K4 demos, inferno flyby runs 198 fps at the same settings, and the inferno botmatch runs 95 fps!
How does that hinder even a hardcore player's enjoyment of the game? Come on, I'm all for more speed here, but let's put it in perpsective. It's great, FAR greater than we were getting years back.
Here's the funny thing. If you're gaming, there's NO need to ever spring for the 3 GHz options. At all.
<http://www.barefeats.com/quad10.html>
(netdemo001)
Q4 at 19 x 12 on the 2.66 and the 3 GHz MP w/ x1900 both run 53 fps.
Q4 at 1280 x 800 on the 2.66 runs 81 and the 3 GHz runs 82 fps.
(Demo1)
Doom3 at 19 x 12 on the 2.66 runs 71 and the 3 GHz runs 73 fps.
Doom3 at 1280 x 800 on the 2.66 runs 106 and the 3 GHz runs 120 fps.
UT Inferno Botmatch
UT2k4 at 19 x 12 on the 2.66 runs 80 and the 3 GHz runs 95 fps.
UT2K4 at 1280 x 800 on the 2.66 runs ? and the 3 GHz runs only 99 fps.
A Note from Barefeats.com:
"You can use Graphiccelerator 1.3.2 to change the ROM code so it runs at "normal" speeds or even better. (The memory clock is rated up to 900MHz.) For example, one user has his X1900 XT running at 650MHz core clock and 775MHz memory clock speed -- which turns it into an XTX. Of course, that may cause the X1900's fan to run more often."
Oh, and since Quake 4 caps framerate at 60 fps, you'll never see the "higher performance" anyway. In effect, if all you play is Q4, you're paying for performance you can't experience. Huh?
