Kevin Bostic
Primate Labs this week rolled out the latest version of its Geekbench system benchmarking software, adding a number of new tests, scoring systems, and more.
Geekbench 3 was announced on Friday in a post on Primate Labs' blog, and it is first major upgrade to Geekbench in six years. The benchmarking program is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux from Geekbench's website. Android and iOS versions are available in the Google Play Store and in the iTunes App Store.
Among Geekbench 3's new features are an array of new benchmark tests. These, Primate Labs says, are aimed at modeling real-world processor-intensive tasks. The tests cover different application domains, including encryption, image processing, signal processing, and physics simulations.
Primate Labs has also rewritten 12 benchmark tests from Geekbench 2, making them better able to represent real-world applications and typical usage.
The new version also reworks its scoring system. Now, single-core performance and multi-core performance are broken out into two separate categories. Primate Labs did so because, while more apps are beginning to use multi-core processes, single-core is still very important since every application uses it. Due to the change, Geekbench 3 scores are not comparable to Geekbench 2 scores.
The update also brings a new interface for iOS, one that is tailored to the "flat" design aesthetic introduced by Jony Ive's team with iOS 7. In addition to the new look, Geekbench 3 now automatically archives each benchmark run, and the app integrates with Dropbox for easy results sharing between devices. Geekbench also now uses JSON as its native file format across versions.
The iOS version of Geekbench is available for $1 in the App Store. The 12.5-megabyte download requires an iPhone, iPad, or iPod running iOS 6.0 or later.
Pricing for Geekbench 3 for non-mobile platforms ranges from $15 for a single-user Linux license to $200 for a single-user professional license for Geekbench 3 Pro. Customers buying a Geekbench license before August 31 can receive $5 off a single-platform license, $10 off a cross-platform license, or $50 off a professional cross-platform license. Those options are available on Primate Labs' site.
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Malcolm Owen
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10 Comments
Does this mean that there is now finally a useful metric for comparing Android and iOS devices to one another? Anyone with experience care to comment?
Guys, see... http://paulstamatiou.com/android-is-better
I am seeing chatter about an Apple TV set launch in november. trying to confirm..
Does this mean that there is now finally a useful metric for comparing Android and iOS devices to one another? Anyone with experience care to comment?
Doubt it. Geekbench is like putting your cars engine on a dyno to measure the horsepower.
If Car A has 300HP and Car B has 600HP, is Car B faster? You can't say unless you know how much each car weighs. If Car B is twice as heavy then they will accelerate about the same.
The GS4 CPU benchmarks about 2X as fast as the A6 in the iPhone 5. Yet in real-world benchmark tests (like Safari) the iPhone 5 is just as fast.
To be blunt, Android is twice as heavy as iOS and therefore requires more horsepower to go just as fast.
yeesh. downloaded the geekbench 3 demo just to have a look and then ran it. without even asking (or telling me later) they uploaded the results to their server. there was nothing to indicate that would happen. i didn't have to bypass anything, or opt-in, or agree or disagree with anything. so i wonder what else from my machine they uploaded to their server without my permission. yet another company caring about your privacy.