Mathematica 7 and Microsoft Excel 2007

The popular Mathematica kernel has finally become completely multi-core friendly. Therefore, from now on we are going to use a standard benchmark running within a single kernel.

However, the new testing approach didn’t really change the picture. Quad-core AMD processors still lose to Intel solutions, and Phenom II X4 940 only manages to catch up with Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 CPU.

AMD processors cope even worse with numeric calculations in Excel. Intel Core i7-920 appears almost twice as fast as the new Phenom II X4 940. Even a cheaper Core 2 Quad Q8300 is still ahead of our hero in this test.