Penryn? Penryn Processors are 45 nm Core2 processors. The Xeons the Mac Pro are using now are codenamed "Harpertown"

Well I think I will order a 2.8 and 8800 card and wait for the card. This info was useful to me.

I thought someone explained that Penryn is the codename for the newest class of CPUs, and that Harpertown is one of the Penryn CPUs.

Interesting result from the 32 versus 64 bit...I've seen tons of FUD from people who are adamant that apps shouldn't be updated to 64 bit code because they think it will cut performance in half.

Yeah, I think you are right, it appears to be referring to ALL of the 45nm ones. Sorry.

Can someone pit a Core 2 Duo Mac Mini against a first gen 800MHz iMac G4? I want to psych myself up for my next purchase...

..and make myself less depressed about not being able to afford a Mac Pro.

-Clive

Looks like they got a dud 3.0GHz unit.

Why would most of the performance data for the 3.0GHz not be in the middle between the 2.8 and 3.2? Nearly all 3.0GHz data is close to the 2.8GHz numbers, and for memory throughput the numbers for the 3.0GHz are actually worse than the 2.8GHz.

Either they got a bad unit, or they got their configurations messed up. Pity really, was looking at getting the 3.0GHz, now I've got some FUD!

The compiler generates machine code that uses more registers in 64-bit mode. It would be nice if more app developers included a 64-bit binary in their app bundle. Even the iMac would benefit.

http://www.barefeats.com/mincd.html

1.42 G4 Mini vs 1.83 Core Duo Mini.

Should be close enough for your purposes. Hope you don't play games...I really wish the mini would get the GMA X3100.

Not in half, but moving to 64 bits can significantly decrease an applications performance, all things being equal. If we'd stayed on PowerPC, moving to 64-bits probably would have decreased performance. However, on the x86 instruction set the move from 32 bits to 64 bits doesn't just change the register file's width. They also cleaned up the ISA, doubled the number of registers, and streamlined the design, so it's not just about the bits.

In addition, specific operations do benefit from 64-bits, including ones that require more than 4GB of RAM, ones that deal in numbers higher than 2^32 regularly, ones that process bitstreams in the CPU instead of SIMD or GPU, and a few others. Browsing a web or using MS Word or your "typical" desktop app doesn't benefit from the extra bits (but it still benefits from the ISA cleanup noted above on x86.)