You must realize, that video gaming cards are only good for one thing, video games. They don't really improve performance anywhere else once you hit a certain model. DVD play back, or any video play back, internet usage, Open GL desktop window managers, etc all don't require the most hefty cards. A lot of people have the misconception that a high end video card kicks ass in every application, where in fact, they only really help video games.
That being said, the Mac Pro is for someone who is serious about what they do for a living. It is meant for the professional. Video editing, audio recording, distributed processing, high end graphic design, high end development, so on and so forth. The Mac Pro is not meant for your average home user, the iMac is meant for that.
You also must consider what a Mac comes with, and if you compare that mac pro to a Dell with the same specs (dual xeons) the mac is sometimes actually cheaper. I know it is hard to believe, and I even called someone on it once so they told me to go to Dell's website and build an exact spec for spec copy of a Mac pro. The Mac pro ended up being $150.00 cheaper. It is a closed platform, with a secure OS, and out of the box it can do lots more than a PC can. PCs rely heavily on third party to accomplish the same things. So, a PC can do everything a Mac can do and vice versa, but out of the box with no third party, a Mac does way more.
They are just higher end machines. Since they are designed both on a hardware and software level from the ground up, you know you are going to have more quality.
All of you should take a step back and look at where the Mac was in the year 2000. With OS X 10.0 just coming out and the switch to Unix, all the way up to 2 years ago when they did the intel switch and now with the release of Leopard 10.5. I mean Apple has accomplished a lot in a very short period of time, and their products keep getting better and better. Their market share is growing and growing too. I think that once they gain more of a market share you will see more competitive pricing (even though Macs now are competitively priced IMO). They are getting more and more compatible with each OS release. I can bind my Mac clients in 10.4 or 10.5 to an Active Directory environment more easily than ever before. This gives them the stepping stone of being integrated into a windows environment.
Just wait 5 years from now and see how much they have progressed, I think it will be very interesting to see how things pan out.
...oh yeah i would dual boot windows/OS X Leopard on that baby
