I took the plunge and ordered a quad core Q8300 and fitted it to replace my E6300 dual core. I do a lot of video rework and wanted multiple cores.

The older dual core is 2.8GHz, the newer quad core is 2.5Ghz. I figured the slight loss in outright speed is made up by the fact I now have four cores. I know I can overclock CPU's but that is absolutely not on the cards, so it'll stay at 2.5Ghz.

I benchmarked the dual core first.

Summary

Section Description Score Geekbench Score
Geekbench 2.1.6 for Mac OS X x86 (32-bit)
Integer Processor integer performance 3249 3979
Floating Point Processor floating point performance 5838
Memory Memory performance 2897
Stream Memory bandwidth performance 2194
System Information

Operating System Mac OS X 10.6.3 (Build 10D578)
Model Hackintosh Motherboard Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L x.x
Processor Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E6300 @ 2.80GHz
Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10
Processors 1 Threads 2
Cores 2 Memory 4.00 GB 1066 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Processor Frequency 2.83 GHz Bus Frequency 1.06 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache 32.0 KB L1 Data Cache 32.0 KB
L2 Cache 2.00 MB L3 Cache 0.00 B
BIOS Apple Computer, Inc. MP31.88Z.006C.B05.0802291410
Integer Section

Section Score 3249

Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 1964
86.3 MB/sec

Blowfish
multi-threaded scalar 4141
169.7 MB/sec

Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 2182
6.98 MB/sec

Text Compress
multi-threaded scalar 4113
13.5 MB/sec

Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1976
8.12 MB/sec

Text Decompress
multi-threaded scalar 3929
15.7 MB/sec

Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1999
16.5 Mpixels/sec

Image Compress
multi-threaded scalar 3790
31.9 Mpixels/sec

Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1756
29.5 Mpixels/sec

Image Decompress
multi-threaded scalar 3561
58.1 Mpixels/sec

Lua
single-threaded scalar 3220
1.24 Mnodes/sec

Lua
multi-threaded scalar 6363
2.45 Mnodes/sec

Floating Point Section

Section Score 5838

Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 2091
1.39 Gflops

Mandelbrot
multi-threaded scalar 4192
2.74 Gflops

Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 3833
1.85 Gflops

Dot Product
multi-threaded scalar 7993
3.64 Gflops

Dot Product
single-threaded vector 3065
3.67 Gflops

Dot Product
multi-threaded vector 7044
7.33 Gflops

LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 808
719.6 Mflops

LU Decomposition
multi-threaded scalar 1628
1.43 Gflops

Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 4599
687.0 Mflops

Primality Test
multi-threaded scalar 6982
1.30 Gflops

Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 5868
13.7 Mpixels/sec

Sharpen Image
multi-threaded scalar 11668
26.9 Mpixels/sec

Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 7389
5.85 Mpixels/sec

Blur Image
multi-threaded scalar 14580
11.5 Mpixels/sec

Memory Section

Section Score 2897

Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 3653
4.47 GB/sec

Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 3183
2.18 GB/sec

Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 2503
9.34 Mallocs/sec

Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 2536
5.25 GB/sec

Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 2610
2.69 GB/sec

Stream Section

Section Score 2194

Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 2137
2.92 GB/sec

Stream Copy
single-threaded vector 2365
3.07 GB/sec

Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 2274
2.95 GB/sec

Stream Scale
single-threaded vector 2269
3.06 GB/sec

Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 1959
2.96 GB/sec

Stream Add
single-threaded vector 2526
3.51 GB/sec

Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 2153
2.98 GB/sec

Stream Triad
single-threaded vector 1874
3.51 GB/sec

and then benchmarked the quadcore, same hardware expect the CPU

Summary

Section Description Score Geekbench Score
Geekbench 2.1.6 for Mac OS X x86 (32-bit)
Integer Processor integer performance 4489 5417
Floating Point Processor floating point performance 8575
Memory Memory performance 3065
Stream Memory bandwidth performance 2324
System Information

Operating System Mac OS X 10.6.3 (Build 10D578)
Model Hackintosh Motherboard Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L x.x
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8300 @ 2.50GHz
Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10
Processors 1 Threads 4
Cores 4 Memory 4.00 GB 1066 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Processor Frequency 2.56 GHz Bus Frequency 1.33 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache 32.0 KB L1 Data Cache 32.0 KB
L2 Cache 2.00 MB L3 Cache 0.00 B
BIOS Apple Computer, Inc. MP31.88Z.006C.B05.0802291410
Integer Section

Section Score 4489

Blowfish
single-threaded scalar 1760
77.3 MB/sec

Blowfish
multi-threaded scalar 7378
302.4 MB/sec

Text Compress
single-threaded scalar 1946
6.22 MB/sec

Text Compress
multi-threaded scalar 7270
23.8 MB/sec

Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1759
7.23 MB/sec

Text Decompress
multi-threaded scalar 7028
28.0 MB/sec

Image Compress
single-threaded scalar 1784
14.7 Mpixels/sec

Image Compress
multi-threaded scalar 6846
57.6 Mpixels/sec

Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar 1550
26.0 Mpixels/sec

Image Decompress
multi-threaded scalar 5837
95.2 Mpixels/sec

Lua
single-threaded scalar 2886
1.11 Mnodes/sec

Lua
multi-threaded scalar 7831
3.01 Mnodes/sec

Floating Point Section

Section Score 8575

Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar 1867
1.24 Gflops

Mandelbrot
multi-threaded scalar 7476
4.89 Gflops

Dot Product
single-threaded scalar 3420
1.65 Gflops

Dot Product
multi-threaded scalar 14288
6.51 Gflops

Dot Product
single-threaded vector 2732
3.27 Gflops

Dot Product
multi-threaded vector 12267
12.8 Gflops

LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar 733
652.9 Mflops

LU Decomposition
multi-threaded scalar 2714
2.38 Gflops

Primality Test
single-threaded scalar 4103
612.8 Mflops

Primality Test
multi-threaded scalar 12516
2.32 Gflops

Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar 5223
12.2 Mpixels/sec

Sharpen Image
multi-threaded scalar 20498
47.2 Mpixels/sec

Blur Image
single-threaded scalar 6564
5.19 Mpixels/sec

Blur Image
multi-threaded scalar 25653
20.2 Mpixels/sec

Memory Section

Section Score 3065

Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar 3604
4.41 GB/sec

Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar 3581
2.45 GB/sec

Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar 2236
8.35 Mallocs/sec

Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar 3087
6.39 GB/sec

Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar 2818
2.91 GB/sec

Stream Section

Section Score 2324

Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar 2473
3.38 GB/sec

Stream Copy
single-threaded vector 2628
3.41 GB/sec

Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar 2350
3.05 GB/sec

Stream Scale
single-threaded vector 2569
3.47 GB/sec

Stream Add
single-threaded scalar 1835
2.77 GB/sec

Stream Add
single-threaded vector 2787
3.88 GB/sec

Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar 1978
2.73 GB/sec

Stream Triad
single-threaded vector 1975
3.70 GB/sec

As can be seen the single threaded stuff is all slightly slower on the quad core as the CPU speed is slightly slower, and the multi threaded stuff is a lot, lot faster as I have two more cores to play with.

There doesn't appear to be any major different in me using the quad core, nothing appears any quicker on the user interface, which is much as I'd expect. I hope Final Cut and Handbrake see the benefit though. If not then the quad core will go into a VMWare esxi server and I'll drop the dual core back in.

Hope this helps somebody,

Rob.