Interesting comment about MacPro single thread performance

[NickK]

Exactly. I'm really surprised by the single threaded scores. Most consumer grade apps struggle to use more than one core so it's interesting to see my 3.2GHz 2008 mac pro beat the 2.26GHz 2009 mac pro in every single theaded benchmark by quite a margin.

2008 3.2Ghz 8 Core Mac Pro
Blowfish single threaded scalar: 2341
Text Compress single-threaded scalar: 2858
Image Compress single-threaded scalar: 2579
Lua single-threaded scalar: 5441

2009 2.26GHz 8 Core Mac Pro
Blowfish single threaded scalar: 1353
Text Compress single-threaded scalar: 1659
Image Compress single-threaded scalar: 1473
Lua single-threaded scalar: 2388

Basically. If you use multi-core apps the 2009 2.26 Mac Pro is on par with the 2008 3.2Ghz Mac Pro. If you use apps that only use a single core, like most consumer based apps as well as pro apps like Adobe Illustrator the 2008 3.2GHz Mac Pro whips its ass (in my opinion)

Still LOVING my 2008 Mac Pro

Internetz Sauce: Thread/Review of the 2009 MP..


Judging by the comments - the 2009 is not as fast as a 2008 until you start multi-threading in a big way. It sounds like the 2009 MP is the first desktop computer to move away from supporting single threaded apps and move to support multithreaded.
Although that said - the appearance of HT may play a role in the performance drop..

 

[Slogan]

I don't think the support for multi-core is that surprising. I imagine Snow Leopard and upcoming apps will start to take real advantage of all the cores and that is a good thing - even as someone with a 2008 Mac Pro.