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0 pointsaurareturn1y ago0 comments

Here's GB6: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/6339005?baselin...

Note: M3 Max is a 40w CPU maximum, while 7950x is a 230w CPU maximum. The stated 170w max is usually deceptive from AMD.

Source for 7950x power consumption: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17641/lighter-touch-cpu-power....

Note that the M3 Max leads in ST in Cinebench 2024 and 2-3x better in perf/watt. It does lose in MT in Cinebench 2024 but wins in GB6 MT.

Cinebench is usually x86 favored as it favors AVX over NEON as well as having extremely long dependency chains, bottlenecked by caches and partly memory. This is why you get a huge SMT yield from it and why it scales very highly if you throw lots of "weak" cores at it.

This is why Cinebench is a poor CPU benchmark in general as the vast majority of applications do not behave like Cinebench.

Geekbench and SPEC are more predictive of CPU speed.

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zigzag3121y ago

It the end, what matters is real-world performance and different workloads have different bottlenecks. For people who use Cinema 4D, Cinebench is the most accurate measurement of hardware capabilities they can get. It's very hard to generalize what will matter for the vast majority of people. I find it's best to look at benchmarks for the same applications or similar workloads to what you'll be doing. Single score benchmark like Geekbench are fun and quick way to get some general idea about CPU capabilities, but most of the time they don't match specifics of real-world workloads.

Here's a content creation benchmark (note that for some tasks a GPU is also used):

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/mac-vs-pc-for-con...

aurareturnOP1y ago

Cinebench is being used like a general purpose CPU benchmark when, like you said, it should only be used to judge the performance of Cinema 4D. Cinema 4D is a niche software in a niche. Why is a niche in a niche software application being used to judge overall CPU performance? It doesn't make sense.

Meanwhile, Geekbench does run real world workloads using real world libraries. You can look at subtest scores to to see "real world" results.

Pugetsystem benchmarks are pretty good. It shows how Apple SoCs punch above their weight in real world applications over benchmarks.

Regardless, they are comparing desktop machines using as much as 1500 watts vs a laptop that maxes out at 80 watts and Apple is still competing well. The wins in the PC world are usually due to beefy Nvidia GPUs that are applications have historically optimized for.

That's why I originally said ARM is leading AMD - specifically Apple ARM chips.

zigzag3121y ago

Some Geekbench 6 workloads and libraries:

- Dijkstra's algorithm: not used by vast majority of applications.

- Google Gumbo: unmaintained since 2016.

- litehtml: not used by any major browser.

- Clang: common on HN, but niche for general population.

- 3D texture encoding: very niche.

- Ray Tracer: a custom ray tracer using Intel Embree lib. That's worse than Cinebench.

- Structure from Motion: generates 3D geometry from multiple 2D images.

It also uses some more commonly used libraries, but there's enough niche stuff in Geekbench that I can't say it's a good representation of a real world workloads.

> Regardless, they are comparing desktop machines using as much as 1500 watts vs a laptop that maxes out at 80 watts and Apple is still competing well. The wins in the PC world are usually due to beefy Nvidia GPUs that are applications have historically optimized for.

They included a laptop, which is also competing rather well with Apple offerings. And it's not PC's fault you can't add a custom GPU to Apple offerings.

aurareturnOP1y ago

Cinebench R23 was built on Intel Embree. ;)

You can cherry pick libraries that Geekbench 6 uses that are old or niche but do they do a good job as proxies?

The point of a general CPU benchmark is to predict CPU performance. For that, Geekbench does an outstanding job. [0]

[0]https://medium.com/silicon-reimagined/performance-delivered-...

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zigzag3121y ago

Here's a content creation benchmark (note that for some tasks a GPU is also used):

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/mac-vs-pc-for-con...

aurareturnOP1y ago

Meanwhile, Geekbench does run real world workloads using real world libraries. You can look at subtest scores to to see "real world" results.

Pugetsystem benchmarks are pretty good. It shows how Apple SoCs punch above their weight in real world applications over benchmarks.

That's why I originally said ARM is leading AMD - specifically Apple ARM chips.

zigzag3121y ago

Some Geekbench 6 workloads and libraries:

- Dijkstra's algorithm: not used by vast majority of applications.

- Google Gumbo: unmaintained since 2016.

- litehtml: not used by any major browser.

- Clang: common on HN, but niche for general population.

- 3D texture encoding: very niche.

- Ray Tracer: a custom ray tracer using Intel Embree lib. That's worse than Cinebench.

- Structure from Motion: generates 3D geometry from multiple 2D images.

It also uses some more commonly used libraries, but there's enough niche stuff in Geekbench that I can't say it's a good representation of a real world workloads.

They included a laptop, which is also competing rather well with Apple offerings. And it's not PC's fault you can't add a custom GPU to Apple offerings.

aurareturnOP1y ago

Cinebench R23 was built on Intel Embree. ;)

You can cherry pick libraries that Geekbench 6 uses that are old or niche but do they do a good job as proxies?

The point of a general CPU benchmark is to predict CPU performance. For that, Geekbench does an outstanding job. [0]

[0]https://medium.com/silicon-reimagined/performance-delivered-...

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