We have redone he same test using a first generation - 4 core Mac Pro
Running with a single core at the same frequency, the new machine does better; with multiple core, it is almost exactly twice as good (due to twice the number of cores). Even though this last result seems mathematically trivial, it is not so - since the efficiency of each core decreases as one adds more cores. The Mac Pro 4 x 3 GHz has an efficiency of 0.7775 per core, while the 8 x 3 GHz losses relatively little with an efficiency of 0.72375.
These excellent results are due partly to the improvement of the CPU architecture but more so to the new architecture of the faster memory bus.
Note: as far as we know the software used for these tests has not been optimised for the SSE 4 instruction set.
