CPU upgrade AES instructions?

[Mike Richardson]

If I upgrade my MacPro5,1 with a processor that has AES instructions, will the Mac OS take advantage of those instructions for the purposes of whole drive encryption, as it does on my MacBook Air with the Core i7?

I am seeing a lot of CPU usage in the kernel_task during heavy disk access which I believe is due to the encryption. On the MBA I do not see any increase in CPU usage accessing the exact same disk (external USB 3.0 - I have a USB 3.0 card in the Mac Pro).

 

[ActionableMango]

I cannot speak for your specific use case, and I would not promise anything. However, in this thread someone did see dramatic improvement when switching from Nehalem to Westmere CPU. Westmere adds AES support.

Yes there was also a slight speed increase (3.33 to 3.46) for his CPU upgrade, but that's not nearly enough to account for the improvement.