Primate Labs’ cross-platform (iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux) measuring tool, Geekbench, was last updated in 2019 benchmarking application. In our tests, we usually use Geekbench 5, which as of February 15 can no longer be considered the latest version, as it made available the Geekbench 6by the developer. The consequence of this is that our readers will also see these measurement results in our tests – initially from the middle category upwards. For end users, the program is free for private use, but for business use or extra functions — automation of tests via the command line, use of a portable version, offline management of results — you need to buy the Pro version, which costs $80 at the time of release.
Geekbench 6 scores on a 2020 MacBook Air. [+]
Geekbench 5 introduced a separate test for multi-core CPU performance, in version 6 the multi-threaded CPU test and its scoring were updated so that the result better reflects the task sharing of chips using more performance and efficiency cores. In addition, the updated software already tries to avoid relying on single-threaded CPU processes, instead, more emphasis is placed on processes using machine learning. According to the developer, the Geekbench 6 GPU test also benefits from this and is more accurate cross-platform results are achieved with it. OpenCL, CUDA, Metal, and Vulkan support remained for measuring graphics performance, but workflows were updated, according to the developer, for example, ray tracing, horizon detection, or navigation better reflect real modern workloads.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and iPhone 14 Pro test results under Geekbench 6. (source: Mobilearena) [+]
In order for the test to more realistically simulate modern hardware and applications, the testing dataset has also been changed: during its run, it works with higher resolution photos captured by phones (48 MP instead of 12 MP) from a larger photo library. The size of the used map and PDFs has also increased, and the tested tool needs to compile more code using Clang. Updated HTML and PDF workloads with a more modern design. Completely new to Geekbench 6 is an attempt to simulate things like background blurring during video calls, AI-based object recognition, high-resolution photo and video filtering, and text processing for analysis and import.
Geekbench 6 results on an iPhone 13 Mini. (source: Mobilearena) [+]
A larger data set and more tasks come at a price, which is the time it takes for the benchmark to run. Compared to version 5, Geekbench 6 takes almost twice as long to complete the test. The results are still a On Geekbench Browser you can browse through, the data of versions 5 and 6 are listed separately, and since the scoring system has changed, it is not worth comparing the measured results of the two programs.
