What makes the newer Mac Pro's faster than ones from two years ago?

[budha]

This may sound like a dumb question, but I'm a bit confused on computer speeds. I know a higher clock speed will be faster, but...

Lets say the Intel model from two years ago was a 2.8 Octo. For single threaded tasks, would a brand new 2.8 Quad be faster? Why or why not?

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Hellhammer]

It's a lot more than just core count and frequency. 2009 and 2010 Mac Pros use newer Nehalem microarchitecture which is faster at same core count and frequency. Nehalem also introduced Turbo Boost which means that when running CPU intensive single-threaded tasks, the CPU can overclock some of its cores. For example, the W3530 (2.8GHz quad in Mac Pro) can OC itself to 3.06GHz.

As you can see in the attachment, new one is faster in most tasks (see the 2.66GHz quad, it's similar)

 

[budha]

Thanks Hammer!

 

[jared_kipe]

As always, feel free to spend a lot of time looking around barefeats.com

 

[C. Alan]

As always, feel free to spend a lot of time looking around barefeats.com

Cool... I haven't seen that sight before.