8-Core Mac Pro Benchmarks

Barefeats has published performance benchmarks for Apple's latest 8-Core Mac Pro.

The initial report compares the 8-Core to the Quad-Core Mac Pro in Cinebench, GeekBench, Photoshop CS3, Aperture 1.5 and Quicktime 7.1.5 Exports.

A second report compares gaming frame rates between the two machines. They tested Doom 3, Quake 4, Halo, UT2004, World of Warcraft and Prey.

The 8-Core Mac Pro came out up to 40-55% faster on some tasks, such as Cinebench 9.5, GeekBench, and Quicktime Export speeds, but provided little advantage in the limited Photoshop CS3 and Aperture testing. The 8-Core also proved to be no faster across the board in the Gaming tests.

Barefeats speculates that the 8-Core Mac Pro maybe bottlenecked by the memory bus and also considers the possibility that Mac OS X Tiger may not be well optimized for the 8-Core Mac Pros.

Obviously some applications will be better suited to take advantage of multi-core Macs, so your mileage may vary, and decisions on 8-Core performance should be made based on the applications you use.

Related Roundup: Mac Pro
Buyer's Guide: Mac Pro (Caution)
Related Forum: Mac Pro

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