yvg1900 has made huge optimizations to the CPU miners - upto 400% on the latest processors, putting CPUs back on an equal footing with GPUs - more here
Yeah, the new CPU miner is better than GPU mining. I'm getting a 320% performance boost with my i7 3770k. Infact, my 3770k is outperforming my 7950 GPU, while using around 33% of the power. Amazing.