I tested on 2 INTEL Xeon E5410 (4 cores each, 2.33GHz, 2x 6MB L2 cache). This is a total of 8 cores, I think that this is very close to your configuration (with "8 cpus" you mean 8 cores I guess).
I am getting ~4000 pps on this cpu. So there is definitely something wrong with your setup.
First, try to compile and install GMP yourself:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get remove libgmp3 libgmp3-dev
wget ftp://ftp.gmplib.org/pub/gmp/gmp-5.1.2.tar.bz2
tar jxvf gmp-5.1.2.tar.bz2
cd gmp-5.1.2
make
sudo make install
cd ..
Then, you should compile mikaelh2's high-performance primecoind:
wget http://sourcefwget http://sourceforge.net/projects/primecoin-hp/files/0.1.1-hp4/primecoin-0.1.1-hp4.tar.bz2/download -O primecoin-0.1.1-hp4.tar.bz2
tar jxvf primecoin-0.1.1-hp4.tar.bz2
cd primecoin-0.1.1-hp4/src
CFLAGS="-O2" CPPFLAGS="-O2" make -f makefile.unix USE_UPNP="-"
strip primecoind
cp primecoind
Use this for your primecoin.conf:
rpcuser=
rpcpassword=
sievesize=2000000
daemon=1
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
gen=-1
server=1
Now you should have exactly the same setup as my test setup - except that you have some Ghz more. Let me know if this works for you! As I said, ~4000 pps.