Spexx, does this mean the hash rate will be a bit less; I thought people are getting division by 2.5 or so.
The figure compared to the original algo would be closer to divide by 2.9 by my reckoning. However, the CPU Passmark ratings are only a guide and some actual results with the miner may be disappointing. The miner is a maths-intensive CPU-bound process which is not necessarily the type of benchmark used to gain the Passmark ratings.
I noticed in particular that laptop and notebook CPUs would run about 20 percent slower than the Passmark ratings would suggest, which is probably something to do with CPU throttling to avoid overheating but that is only a guess. I have not managed to fry any CPUs yet but they will certainly run hot. Those people who are inclined to overclock their CPUs would be well-advised to keep an eye on temperatures and to make sure their heatsinks, fans and airways are cleaned frequently.
When compiling the miner code for Windows x86_64-w64-mingw32 (gcc version 4.9.1), I noticed that experimenting with CFLAGS etc made no difference at all in most cases. Code compiled with -mtune=generic differed from code compiled with -march=native (or -march=anything else which is valid) in only 7 bytes which were clearly some sort of bitmask. The actual hashrates obtained were identical and ran on any 64 bit CPU no matter what -march was used, which was a bit of a surprise really.
The only CFLAG which made any measurable difference was -fomit-frame-pointer which gave a 0.06 percent increase in hashrate - right on the limit of measurement uncertainty.
Running the miner as multiple instances/single thread as opposed to single instance/multiple threads gives a speed advantage of around 0.5 percent. Not a lot, but measurable.