Geekbench, the popular cross-platform benchmark, has received a major update. According to Primate Labs, the new Geekbench 6 benchmarks better reflect real-world workloads that a user might encounter.

In general, compared to Geekbench 5 released in 2019, the new version of the program uses a larger amount of data for testing. Test photos have a higher resolution and are used in a larger number. Maps and PDF files have also become larger, and the tested device will have to compile more code with Clang. Data has received some quality updates: HTML and PDF workloads have a more modern design.

There are new tests designed to simulate the effect of background blur in video conferencing apps, AI object detection like photo cataloging apps do, applying filters to photos, and more. Updated the existing navigation, ray tracing and horizon detection tests.

The company says that Geekbench 6’s graphics test results should be more comparable across platforms and devices, and that it will better take advantage of graphics hardware in benchmarks, which is an important metric as more and more real-world applications use machine learning. Multi-threaded CPU performance testing has also been updated to better reflect the performance of CPUs with high-performance and energy-efficient cores – Apple’s M1 and M2 ARM chips and the latest Intel processors.

In accordance with the growth of the load, the testing time also increased. The Geekbench 5 CPU test on the MacBook Pro M1 takes just under 2 minutes, while the Geekbench 6 test takes more than 3 minutes.

Primate Labs offers the app’s features free of charge for non-commercial testing. For a fee, there are opportunities to automate testing, use a portable version of the program, and manage results offline. Geekbench 6 Pro is priced at $79 for the next two weeks, which is 20% off its regular price of around $100.

Truly popular benchmarks reflecting real computer performance

Source: The Verge