Right; which is why I was surprised that OS X stacks up as favorably as it does. But I wouldn't call it a great value since it's still much more expensive than a traditional rack mount setup. From a density perspective it's really not bad at all, which is a testament to how well-engineered the Mac Pro is.
In fairness, 4 socket servers are pretty serious money. Just the difference in cost for 4 socket capable Xeons alone puts them out of reach for many use cases.
E5-2658 v2 (dual cpu): $1440 per part
E5-4650 v2 (quad cpu): $3616 per part
As a result, I stick to 2 socket servers for Linux machines. I think the scaling out paradigm just works out a lot better, particularly for Internet services.
Yeah, except IBM's x86 hardware has always been stupid expensive for no good reason other than it's IBM. And didn't they spin off their xSeries server business to Lenovo once the market settled on HP systems that cost half what IBM's did?
Also the DL980 G7 is an unholy piece of crap. HP doesn't know how to build or fix them. I've gone through countless service requests on just a dozen machines or thereabouts.
It's the worst piece of any kind of hardware I've ever used, hands down.
