Evaluating Performance of a Xeon 5355-based Mac Pro

par Lionel - 20/02/2007

Thanks to Intel, we could install two Xeon 5355 in a Mac Pro - Is the 8 cores-based architecture faster than the 4 cores-based one?

Cinebench 9.6 Test
This benchmarking application is a also an excellent one as it provides information concerning the video capabilities of the machines, while allowing the comparison of results between Macs and PCs.

We were a bit disappointed by the result of this test. While the 8 core based Mac Pro won the multiprocessor test with 2064, the rendering factor was only 4.72x vs. 3.24 for the 4 core based Mac Pro.
It might be due to the application itself, we're not sure whether the tasks are efficiently distributed over the 8 cores, or if completion of the test might simply be too fast to unveil the real power of the Xeon 5355-based Mac Pro.