Geekbench is a cross-platform utility for
benchmarking the
central processing unit
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just Processor (computing), processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes Instruction (computing), instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU per ...
of computers. Geekbench began as a benchmark for Mac OS X and Windows and was created by John Poole who ran the now-defunct Geek Patrol website, which reviewed hardware and software designed for Macs, and featured editorials and interviews of interest to the Mac community.
History
Starting with version 4, Geekbench also measures GPU performance in areas such as image processing and
computer vision.
Starting with version 5, Geekbench dropped support for
x86-32
IA-32 (short for "Intel Architecture, 32-bit", commonly called i386) is the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture, designed by Intel and first implemented in the 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarnation o ...
.
Usage
It uses a scoring system that separates single-core and
multi-core performance,
and workloads that supposedly simulate real-world scenarios. The software benchmark is available for
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
,
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...
,
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
,
Android and
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
.
The usefulness of Geekbench scores from earlier versions (up to Versions 3) were heavily disputed by Linus Torvalds because Geekbench combined disparate benchmarks into a single score. Later revisions starting with Geekbench 4 addressed these concerns by splitting integer, floating point, and crypto into sub-scores, which while Linus regards as improvements, still notes that they can be misleading and can be gamed to artificially inflate one CPU platform over another.
References
External links
*
Benchmarks (computing)
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