My fairly new machine is much faster than my 2004 rig, even running on one thread. More megaHz, more pipelining, 64-bit OS, and faster RAM. Not to mention faster HD, being a SSD, and more RAM so less swapping in the first place.

Gotta be careful though. My first attempt melted down when I ran Prime95 at 4.2GHz. Lousy "open-box" deal... but that's why we test, right?

I know per-thread it's faster than stuff put together in 2007 and 2008, which is my direct comparison. And that was a lot faster than what came before it.