Is that the 2.71 test build on the Blender site in daily builds. Wed. May 21. Sure seems faster.
It is slower for me in terms of rendering speed (CPU) - 1:58 for BMW benchmark in official 2.70, 2:12+ in all recent builds of 2.70.5…
Kinda disappointed…
SORRY OBVIOUSLY IT WAS NOT. We had one release you would have thought was in the ‘Witness Protection Program’ so I was just wondering.
@swene GPU renders felt faster without any testing as such. But, I now see they haven’t had any significant changes since May 14. Hopefully the new test release will be a pleasant surprise for you in the next several days. Most of my renders are also done in the CPU.
After disabling it, it is even slower - 2:17 for newest Blender, 1:56 for the official 2.70. That is a huge step backwards in terms of rendering speeds. I really hope it is going to be at least as fast as it was, not slower, when 2.71 comes out.
edit: also tried out ‘fastest build’ from graphicall - 2:19… 
That is almost a 25% decrease in rendering speeds for CPUs.
weird what cpu do you have
:edit:
i saw on my cpu benchmark you have a 2600k
i have no idea what could be the problem everyone should have a speed up. maybe contact dingto
Weird indeed! You are right, I have an i7 [email protected].
Perhaps somebody else can also run the two benchmarks (official 2.70 and 2.70.5)?