12-12-2011, 04:06 PM
Back to the original question, which is faster is going to depend a lot on what you are processing. The i7's have a later, more efficient CPU core than the Xeon 5400's used in the 2008 Mac Pro's. But, with only 4 cores versus 8, there are only 4 FPU's for processing floating point calculations. The hyper-threading can help keep them more fully utilized, but if you have a lot of FP calculations the 8 cores will beat out the 4 at similar clock speeds. For other mixes the i7 will be a bit faster. In any case, both will be a definite improvement over your 4 core Mac Pro.