You don't think Apple's subtle nudging in the opposing direction (1,1 dual package $2300, 3,1 cto one socket bare $2300, 4,1 and on single package cpu part $2500) is somewhat contrived and actually driven by costs or a desire to space out pricing tiers?
Contrived? Implying the notion of being artificial, no. As a deliberate structure, yes.
Apple does have pricing barriers. The Mac mini is clearly bracketed by the $999 barrier. The iMac clearly starts at $1,000 and stops $1,999. (minus BTO options )
Given that the Mac Pro's zone should start around slightly over $2,000.
Similarly Mac laptops don't drop below $999. The 13" models are all muddled this year but there probably will be some models terminated this year. I don't expect that overlap to continue much longer.
iPods structured a very similar way. ( overlapping in options but not base prices except for odd ball products. e.g. iPod classic ).
iPad 2 is an anomaly and probably terminated after iPad mini fully gets its feet under it.
You can line up Apple's related product lines (smallest/cheapest to biggest) from left to right and just see the prices progress incrementally from left to right. The pricing is structured on "get more, pay more" guideline.
The gap between the iMac and Mac Pro is bigger than any of the others. It somewhat looks like that is on purpose to give more separation between the upper end BTO options (boost i7 and/or GPU ) for the iMac and Mac Pro. If so, that was a mistake that contributed to the mess that the Mac Pro is in now.
Short term it is a gimmick to goose margins on entry Mac Pro and grow iMac sales. Long term, growth is what matters. Shuffling deck chairs on Mac Pro and iMac won't help. The iMac isn't as competitive inside of its own range. Shrinking Mac Pro sales will just attract internal folks looking to kill it off so resources can be redistributed to their projects. That latter is what appears to be what exactly happened. Someone got the Mac Pro turned off. Not permanently but for a while.
I have always assumed it be this way, although I agree it would sell at that $1999. It's not like the 5770 was an amazing default option even in 2010.
Relative to previous "entry" cards the 5770 was a better "floor" under the performance levels. ( the GT120 of the 2009 mac pro for example was much lower in Nvidia's line up at the time. )
Edit: I can't think of anything that could be embedded here at low cost as E/EP lacks an IGP.
When the MBP 15" needed a dGPU at the 9400M -> Intel chipset transition they just bumped the price by $100. It is doable.
If you are trying to do it with a 5770 like performance level, no. However, pulling a 650M and VRAM out of MBP 15" models and the upper level 21.5" iMac will result in pretty good volume discounts. Similarly, I think an AMD 8750M (or 8770M ) would work well since only have 8x PCI-e v3.0 interfaces ( since the single package E5 1600 has lane constraints if want to provide 4 physical PCI slots of similar width to current Mac Pro. ). They wouldn't get the scale on the GPU with other current Mac models, but the VRAM buys would overlap.
Somewhere around $130 should cover GPU+VRAM+Heatpipe+misc to hook to Thunderbolt. That's lower than the CPU costs for a E5 1620.
If someone needs PCI-e GPU "workstation" 3D graphics they can just buy a card. If no monitors are hooked to the embedded GPU it is "free" source of 600 GFLOPs of processing power that could be put to use. Heavy duty 3D isn't what this embedded GPU needs to cover. Those running modest 3D or most 2D work this will work just fine. There are lots of happy people with MBP 15" and iMacs. (gamers no, but people doing work yes).
