Mac Pro Performance Redux (January 2008)

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the performance of the new Mac Pros. Unfortunately I only had Geekbench 2 results for the eight-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro. I thought I'd follow up on that post with Geekbench 2 results for all three eight-core Mac Pros.

Setup

  • Mac Pro (Early 2008)
    • Two quad-core Intel Xeons @ 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz, or 3.2GHz
    • 2.00 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
    • Mac OS X 10.5.1 (Build 9B2117)

If you're not familiar with Geekbench 2, benchmarks are scored against a baseline, where a score of 1000 represents the performance of a Power Mac G5 @ 1.6GHz. Higher is better.

Results

Overall Performance

Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.2GHz (64-bit)
9602
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.2GHz (32-bit)
8083
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.0GHz (64-bit)
9110
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.0GHz (32-bit)
7742
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 2.8GHz (64-bit)
8978
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 2.8GHz (32-bit)
7595
 

Integer Performance

Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.2GHz (64-bit)
10859
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.2GHz (32-bit)
8678
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.0GHz (64-bit)
10087
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.0GHz (32-bit)
8071
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 2.8GHz (64-bit)
9911
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 2.8GHz (32-bit)
7374
 

Floating Point Performance

Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.2GHz (64-bit)
14408
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.2GHz (32-bit)
12353
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.0GHz (64-bit)
13977
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.0GHz (32-bit)
12306
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 2.8GHz (64-bit)
13618
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 2.8GHz (32-bit)
12317
 

Memory Performance

Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.2GHz (64-bit)
2749
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.2GHz (32-bit)
2588
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.0GHz (64-bit)
2660
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.0GHz (32-bit)
2509
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 2.8GHz (64-bit)
2681
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 2.8GHz (32-bit)
2517
 

Stream Performance

Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.2GHz (64-bit)
2089
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.2GHz (32-bit)
2052
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.0GHz (64-bit)
2064
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 3.0GHz (32-bit)
2031
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 2.8GHz (64-bit)
2071
 
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
Intel Xeon @ 2.8GHz (32-bit)
2001
 

Conclusions

What's interesting about the above charts is that the performance difference between the 2.8GHz and 3.2GHz Mac Pro isn't as great as the difference between running 32-bit code and 64-bit code. In fact, the 2.8GHz Mac Pro running 64-bit code is faster than the 3.2GHz Mac Pro running 32-bit code!

Really, though, if you're using a new Mac Pro you're got a ridiculous amount of processing performance at your disposal (even if you're "stuck" with a 2.8GHz model running 32-bit code).


 
John Poole is the founder of Primate Labs and lives in Toronto, Ontario with his wife Deborah. You can find John on Twitter or .