> I agree with you to a large degree; however, it seems the first line many people pull out in the Mac vs. PC wars is that PCs are cheaper.

I would argue that is an uninformed statement as a PC with same level of components and warranty will cost about the same as Mac.

PCs offer a better bang for the buck because of the expanded CPU options. E.G. You can’t get a Sandy Bridge E system from Apple. For less than half the price of dual socket 12 core Mac (or HP or Dell Precision Workstation), you can get a 6-core Sandy-Bridge E configured to the max with 32 or 48 GB or RAM.

That box will run AE 75% to 80% of 12-core box, but you can buy two plus a better video and storage with your savings. Two machines for a small shop or power user is much faster, more productive environment than one big iron. I’ve run two boxes for years this way.

For AE users, the only time a 12 core box with run much faster is on certain renders optimized for many threads, but at least half of the time, it’s raw CPU, GPU and storage power that determine speed. And to max out RAM on a 12 core is financially brutal – pushing you 3X or more the price of Sandy Bridge E system.

If you do a lot of 3D, then 12-cores does offer an advantage, but so does a cheap ass render farm of a couple of simple boxes with multicores  - as a 3D render works best when it’s using 100% of the boxes resources.

If Apple simply offer a Mac Pro system with high-end desktop 6-core CPU rather than or in addition to a single Xeon, the PC world would not have such a big price/performance advantage for AE users.