We compare eight threads vs. four threads vs. the performance obtained from a Q6600-based quad. All measurements are in nanoseconds per day and were made with an SMP-aware executable of NAMD 2.7b1 using the flags '+setcpuaffinity +LBSameCpus'. Details of the examples used can be found here.

i7 with 1033 MHz memory

	i7, eight threads	i7, four threads	Q6600-based quad	Percent faster
100K (ApoA1)	0.65	0.51	0.37	75%
60K atoms	1.61	1.45	0.95	69%
25K atoms	4.35	3.85	2.53	72%
6.5K atoms	15.4	15.4	9.8	57%
1.6K atoms	79.4	75.2	48	65%
0.9K atoms	145	125	82	76%

Changing the memory to triple-channel at 1333 MHz didn't make much difference unfortunately (approximately 5% faster) as I should have expected given the small memory footprint of MD jobs.