Apple Mac Pro (2x 2.8GHz Quad Core Xeon, 2GB RAM)
The Mac Pro is still near the pinnacle of workstation machines, elegantly fusing style, power and features.
Upside
The Mac Pro has long been held in esteem as a drool-worthy system for PC heads and Mac fans alike. Beautiful styling, immaculate interiors, near silent operation and a ridiculous amount of grunt worthy of a workstation.
At the list price of AU$3,999, the Mac Pro's default setup features dual quad core Xeons at 2.8GHz, 2GB DDR2 800MHZ ECC RAM, a 320GB 7,200RPM hard drive, ATI Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB, a DVD+-RW drive, Mighty Mouse and keyboard.
While it doesn't offer the fastest graphics available, the default Radeon HD 2600 XT should be fine for most 3D work. You can add up to another three 2600 XTs, although this won't improve your performance, nor does CrossFire work in OS X — rather it's reserved for the domain of those who need multiple monitors.
If you need more grunt, a GeForce 8800GT is available for AU$220 extra, and for pure workstation oomph, a Quadro FX 5600 will cost an additional AU$4,050.
Communications are also excellent, with Bluetooth 2.0, two firewire 400 ports, two firewire 800 ports, five USB ports, dual gigabit ethernet, and optional 802.11n.
Downside
Apple's biggest issue is price — specifically, overcharging on its hardware upgrades.
A bump to dual 3.0GHz Xeons costs AU$1,140 extra. At the time of writing, the price difference between the same socket 771 CPUs on the PC side is around AU$800. Increase another 200MHz to 3.2GHz, and you get slugged for a ludicrous AU$2,270 extra on top of the intial price — although this is more a pass-on cost from Intel, and so we can't blame Apple here. Nonetheless, somewhere there will be someone who absolutely needs that top of the line processor, where that extra 200MHz per core will make all the difference in their project. We just wish we had their cashflow.
Apple's RAM prices are similarly notorious, but options up to 32GB RAM are available, should you wish to spend an extra AU$12,900. The upgrade to 4GB ECC FB-DIMM will only set you back AU$710 by comparison, but considering Kingston memory modules of the same specs are available elsewhere for AU$250, it's all a bit silly.
A RAID card option is available (and mandatory for the 15,000RPM SAS hard drive options) for the truly power hungry, and 500GB, 750GB and 1TB 7,200RPM hard drive options are also available, but once again massively overpriced. You can choose to add three additional drives, for a total of four hard drives in your Mac Pro system.
Fortunately DIY upgrades for memory, storage and PCI-Express cards are fully supported by Apple and step-by-step procedures for doing so are in the manual. Processor replacement or addition is not mentioned at all, and as such you may be at risk of voiding your warranty if you attempt it. If you're happy with the default dual 2.8GHz setup though, you still get plenty of power for what you pay for.
Outlook
The Mac Pro is still near the pinnacle of workstation machines, elegantly fusing style, power and features. The production suite of OSX from both a video and audio standpoint is also amazingly strong, and with the ability to boot into Windows natively thanks to the Intel-based hardware, there's very few negatives indeed.
The default model is certainly worth every dollar, but if you need to expand a little more, make sure you investigate third party channels before throwing more money than is necessary at Apple.