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Stop using Geekbench to "prove" how fast your CPU is. It's one aspect of benchmarking, not the totality. It doesn't cover the vast majority of generic benchmar

Stop using Geekbench to "prove" how fast your CPU is. It's one aspect of benchmarking, not the totality. It doesn't cover the vast majority of generic benchmarks. It covers "common use case" ones, which is exactly what the Apple engineers target. That's not a bad thing, but as mentioned in the OP there are over a hundred things it sucks at, and a few dozen more it barely keeps up at. Even if it's awesome at executing JS code.

xcv123 3y ago
Benchmarks (or any timed CPU performance tests) are precisely how we prove how fast CPUs are. No need for quotes on "prove". It's an objective measure, an actual proof. Geekbench 6 is one suite of tests that is reliable and has provided a useful measure for comparing production server VM performance at my job. It accurately predicted the performance of real server work loads. I would rather use Geekbench or any random benchmarking suite than rely on some guy commenting that he thinks/feels his ancient quad i5 is as fast as the M1 (not even close).
- deaddodo 3y ago
  > It's an objective measure, an actual proof. Geekbench 6 is one suite of tests that is reliable Did I say it wasn't useful? I said it's only useful if you're trying to measure a single set of metrics versus a broad spectrum. As is clear from the 100+ tests it doesn't compare to a generation old Ryzen architecture at. I also clearly said that it was a useful metric for what many M-series users are actually looking for ("common use cases such as JavaScript execution and visual compositing"). You should really learn to comprehend entire thoughts versus the idea/sentence/strawman you make up in your head.
  - xcv123 3y ago
    > You should really learn to comprehend entire thoughts Both of these replies from you are poorly written, hence you're getting downvoted by others. You should learn to form clearer thoughts that are worth communicating, and work on your writing.
    - deaddodo 3y ago
      I'm being downvoted for being a smarmy ass. I accept that. Now feel free to introspectively accept your own faults. Particularly your pigheaded inability to argue in good faith and/or comprehend basic English. PS - you didn't need two messages for that. All it does is reinforce your insecurity and necessity to "be right". Next time, just edit your post. Or better yet, post and move on. It's an internet comment from an anonymous person, no need to let it live rent free in your head.
      - xcv123 3y ago
        Wow. You have issues. > PS - you didn't need two messages for that. I only wrote one message for that. Anyway, put that aside. The benchmark suite at Phoronix is biased to AMD due to a lot of tests being optimized for x86 instructions (AVX).
        deaddodo 3y ago
        > Wow. You have issues. Sick burn, bro. > I only wrote one message for that. You returned to write this later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38121689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38121689 Because a stupid internet argument was living rent free in your head. > Anyway, put that aside. The benchmark suite at Phoronix is biased to AMD due to a lot of tests being optimized for x86 instructions (AVX). Which is a part of the x86 instruction set. As equally as with Apple's own simd instructions: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/accelerate/simd https://developer.apple.com/documentation/accelerate/simd But understood, one favors one party so is invalid and the other favors your weird cult, so it's acceptable. I'll keep that in mind in the future for internet "debate": "if the benchmark doesn't favor Apple, it's invalid for <INSERT-SOME-REASON>". You can move the goalposts or change the argument all you like. I don't really care who wins/loses an internet argument, and I'm quite well versed on both architectures to be able to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of each. Which I fully acknowledged multiple times, despite your inability to parse the text of that information.
        xcv123 3y ago
  - xcv123 3y ago
    > As is clear from the 100+ tests it doesn't compare to a generation old Ryzen architecture I checked the Phoronix test results. Looks like AMD is ahead specifically in DSP / linear algebra tests where the code was designed for AVX instead of NEON. These are massively accelerated by specialized vector processing instructions. The results would be quite different if the code was optimized for both instruction sets.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > It's an objective measure, an actual proof. Geekbench > Geekbench 6 is one suite of tests that is reliable and has provided a useful measure for comparing production server Geekbench is notoriously the least-useful of the lot. The big flashy numbers you share from that test are an aggregate score of almost nothing meaningful or similar being compared. Geekbench is less about hardware analysis and more about offhand comparisons to other systems. Using it to compare ARM and x86 is useless, given that both architectures are more efficient at different workloads. Worse yet, we then "average" those scores to try and give people a realistic performance impression based off wildly different CPU architectures. In some tests, it is entirely probable that an i5 would smoke an M1. Load up an SIMD benchmark and compare AVX2 to ARM NEON. Even a Haswell CPU will come out on top if you stack the benches right.
  - xcv123 3y ago
    > ... In some tests, it is entirely probable that an i5 would smoke an M1 I'm aware that there is no such thing as a perfect benchmark. Geekbench has been useful for me and is good enough to get a general idea of performance. Check it yourself. Compare i5-4690k (fastest i5 from 2014) with my M1 Pro. https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/3356017?baseline=3265219 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/3356017?baselin... M1 is faster in every single-core test in Geekbench 6. Overall 195% for single core and 427% for multi-core. > an aggregate score of almost nothing meaningful or similar being compared The dissimilarity between tests is intentional, by design, and is precisely what makes it useful as a general benchmark. The tests seem to cover a range of various real world use cases (C compilation, ray tracing, file compression, image processing, web browsing, etc). As I mentioned earlier, it usefully predicted real server performance at my job (JVM server doing financial batch processing).
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      > The dissimilarity between tests is intentional, by design, and is precisely what makes it useful as a general benchmark. That's fine, if those numbers mean something to you then don't let me take that from you. My point is more that Geekbench has always been about cooking the books and avoiding objective comparisons. A number of their tests have been shown to instead rely on memory and SSD bandwidth, which kinda makes the whole "CPU score" concept bunk. Most benchmarks will indeed rank the 2021 RISC CPU above the 2014 CISC CPU. My point is more that Geekbench has always been a dubious point of comparison for hardware differences. The meaning behind those scores is pretty pointless when you actually see how they're weighed and aggregated.

xcv123 3y ago

Benchmarks (or any timed CPU performance tests) are precisely how we prove how fast CPUs are. No need for quotes on "prove". It's an objective measure, an actual proof. Geekbench 6 is one suite of tests that is reliable and has provided a useful measure for comparing production server VM performance at my job. It accurately predicted the performance of real server work loads. I would rather use Geekbench or any random benchmarking suite than rely on some guy commenting that he thinks/feels his ancient quad i5 is as fast as the M1 (not even close).

deaddodo 3y ago
> It's an objective measure, an actual proof. Geekbench 6 is one suite of tests that is reliable Did I say it wasn't useful? I said it's only useful if you're trying to measure a single set of metrics versus a broad spectrum. As is clear from the 100+ tests it doesn't compare to a generation old Ryzen architecture at. I also clearly said that it was a useful metric for what many M-series users are actually looking for ("common use cases such as JavaScript execution and visual compositing"). You should really learn to comprehend entire thoughts versus the idea/sentence/strawman you make up in your head.
- xcv123 3y ago
  > You should really learn to comprehend entire thoughts Both of these replies from you are poorly written, hence you're getting downvoted by others. You should learn to form clearer thoughts that are worth communicating, and work on your writing.
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    I'm being downvoted for being a smarmy ass. I accept that. Now feel free to introspectively accept your own faults. Particularly your pigheaded inability to argue in good faith and/or comprehend basic English. PS - you didn't need two messages for that. All it does is reinforce your insecurity and necessity to "be right". Next time, just edit your post. Or better yet, post and move on. It's an internet comment from an anonymous person, no need to let it live rent free in your head.
    - xcv123 3y ago
      Wow. You have issues. > PS - you didn't need two messages for that. I only wrote one message for that. Anyway, put that aside. The benchmark suite at Phoronix is biased to AMD due to a lot of tests being optimized for x86 instructions (AVX).
      - deaddodo 3y ago
        > Wow. You have issues. Sick burn, bro. > I only wrote one message for that. You returned to write this later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38121689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38121689 Because a stupid internet argument was living rent free in your head. > Anyway, put that aside. The benchmark suite at Phoronix is biased to AMD due to a lot of tests being optimized for x86 instructions (AVX). Which is a part of the x86 instruction set. As equally as with Apple's own simd instructions: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/accelerate/simd https://developer.apple.com/documentation/accelerate/simd But understood, one favors one party so is invalid and the other favors your weird cult, so it's acceptable. I'll keep that in mind in the future for internet "debate": "if the benchmark doesn't favor Apple, it's invalid for <INSERT-SOME-REASON>". You can move the goalposts or change the argument all you like. I don't really care who wins/loses an internet argument, and I'm quite well versed on both architectures to be able to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of each. Which I fully acknowledged multiple times, despite your inability to parse the text of that information.
        xcv123 3y ago
- xcv123 3y ago
  > As is clear from the 100+ tests it doesn't compare to a generation old Ryzen architecture I checked the Phoronix test results. Looks like AMD is ahead specifically in DSP / linear algebra tests where the code was designed for AVX instead of NEON. These are massively accelerated by specialized vector processing instructions. The results would be quite different if the code was optimized for both instruction sets.
smoldesu 3y ago
> It's an objective measure, an actual proof. Geekbench > Geekbench 6 is one suite of tests that is reliable and has provided a useful measure for comparing production server Geekbench is notoriously the least-useful of the lot. The big flashy numbers you share from that test are an aggregate score of almost nothing meaningful or similar being compared. Geekbench is less about hardware analysis and more about offhand comparisons to other systems. Using it to compare ARM and x86 is useless, given that both architectures are more efficient at different workloads. Worse yet, we then "average" those scores to try and give people a realistic performance impression based off wildly different CPU architectures. In some tests, it is entirely probable that an i5 would smoke an M1. Load up an SIMD benchmark and compare AVX2 to ARM NEON. Even a Haswell CPU will come out on top if you stack the benches right.
- xcv123 3y ago
  > ... In some tests, it is entirely probable that an i5 would smoke an M1 I'm aware that there is no such thing as a perfect benchmark. Geekbench has been useful for me and is good enough to get a general idea of performance. Check it yourself. Compare i5-4690k (fastest i5 from 2014) with my M1 Pro. https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/3356017?baseline=3265219 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/3356017?baselin... M1 is faster in every single-core test in Geekbench 6. Overall 195% for single core and 427% for multi-core. > an aggregate score of almost nothing meaningful or similar being compared The dissimilarity between tests is intentional, by design, and is precisely what makes it useful as a general benchmark. The tests seem to cover a range of various real world use cases (C compilation, ray tracing, file compression, image processing, web browsing, etc). As I mentioned earlier, it usefully predicted real server performance at my job (JVM server doing financial batch processing).
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    > The dissimilarity between tests is intentional, by design, and is precisely what makes it useful as a general benchmark. That's fine, if those numbers mean something to you then don't let me take that from you. My point is more that Geekbench has always been about cooking the books and avoiding objective comparisons. A number of their tests have been shown to instead rely on memory and SSD bandwidth, which kinda makes the whole "CPU score" concept bunk. Most benchmarks will indeed rank the 2021 RISC CPU above the 2014 CISC CPU. My point is more that Geekbench has always been a dubious point of comparison for hardware differences. The meaning behind those scores is pretty pointless when you actually see how they're weighed and aggregated.