Apple Mac Pros currently rule the world with dual Xeon Nehalem processors (2.53 GHz: 2 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads), starting at $3,299, but the processors are already out and on "sale" (for broad definitions of "sale") and Hp has already announced their Z Workstations (but they aren't available yet). As of TODAY, the only way to get Mac Pro performance without buying a Mac is to build it yourself. Some people actually enjoy doing this, the same way some people enjoy souping up their car or building their own furniture. To each his own, I guess.

Here's what we are seeing on the test bench right now. While the Mac Pros top out at 2.93 GHz ($5,899), the home-built boys with bragging rights are basically starting at 3.2 GHz with Intel Xeon W5580 parts. Minimum entry cost? Try $1,700 a piece or $3,400. We're more than halfway to a high-end Mac Pro already without even thinking about a brushed aluminum case, not to mention RAM, power supply, motherboard, video card, operating system and all those little details that let you actually boot up a computer. I think $5,000 is a very reasonable number for a moderately well-equipped home-built machine today, say with 12 GB of RAM.

Oh, but the rewards of doing it yourself for $5,000 are manifest. Even with just stock parts, benchmarks are showing 50-100% speed improvements for video rendering over Intel's last-gen parts. Yes: double the speed. And if you toss in a Tyan S7012 motherboard with 9 DIMM slots per processor (18 total) with 2 GB per DIMM, that's 36 GB. Of RAM. Reasonable price for the RAM might be $1,000, so we are approaching $6,000, which really isn't bad. If you used new 8 GB sticks to push this beast to 144 GB, you are talking a cool $12,000 just for the RAM, so your system is easily approaching $20K now. Still, if you want to go for the ultimate system, it makes Apple's pathetic 32 GB of memory seem, well, pathetic. (Hp is rumored to be looking at 16 GB sticks to be released in May to give their system 192 GB - the Tyan here would then support 288 GB of RAM. That's just nuts.)

Now no DIY hardware hacker in her right mind leaves everything with stock settings and early reports are showing the processors are easily overclocking to 4.5 Ghz with decent air cooling. Yes, 2 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads running at 4.5 GHz being fed by triple channel RAM. Holy crap! And once the water cooling block and even refrigerated systems are hooked up, speculation is that these might go to 6 GHz. I'll believe it when I see it.

Now for those of you that don't want to roll your own... just wait a couple of days. Hp Z Workstations have been announced and higher end models will have a water cooling option. How cool is that? It'll be interesting to see if they can squeeze the price in under $5,000... stay tuned.

References:
* Intel i7 core - The Extreme at Extremities (h/t to Jeff Whitley)
* Intel's Xeon W5580 processors