Geekbench 7 brings redesigned multi-core testing and CUDA

Geekbench 7 Unleashes a New Era of Performance Benchmarking

Primate Labs has just rolled out Geekbench 7, ushering in a significant overhaul of cross-platform performance testing that aims to mirror how modern applications actually demand processing power. This updated benchmark suite is now available across Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux, providing a much more realistic snapshot of hardware capabilities.

The updates dive deep into real-world media processing for CPU workloads. Instead of abstract theoretical tests, Geekbench 7 focuses on tasks that matter to daily life. This includes measuring the performance involved in sophisticated operations like AV1 video encoding required for seamless screen-sharing, efficient Opus audio compression, and advanced Whisper speech recognition used in live captioning.

Beyond standard media handling, Primate Labs integrated specialized workloads to test new features. They introduced a Game Physics workload built on the Jolt Physics engine, ensuring that game performance is evaluated more accurately. Furthermore, image processing capabilities have been expanded, allowing testers to assess support for cutting-edge formats like JPEG XL and DNG within the Photo Library.

One of the most notable structural changes is in multi-core testing. The new system intelligently assesses multi-threaded capability, ensuring that workloads only run in a multi-threaded context if the corresponding real-world applications truly utilize parallel processing. This refines scoring by excluding single-threaded tasks, such as those found in the HTML5 Browser test, resulting in a more accurate reflection of overall system efficiency.

The GPU benchmarks also underwent a major transformation, shifting the focus toward machine learning and creative rendering. GPU testing now emphasizes complex creation tasks, including demanding features like face tracking, super-resolution upscaling, background blurring, RAW processing, path tracing, and fluid simulation.

To further empower developers, Primate Labs made a significant move by integrating CUDA into the ecosystem, bringing it in line with OpenCL, Vulkan, and Metal as a natively supported GPU API. This integration is a game-changer for developers looking to harness the full power of their hardware.

Finally, the underlying datasets were also refreshed across various tests, including File Compression and PDF Viewer, ensuring that benchmarks handle larger and more demanding file processing scenarios effectively. Geekbench 7 isn’t just a score increase; it’s a comprehensive refresh designed to accurately reflect the complex, real-world demands placed on modern CPUs and GPUs.