Geekbench 7

Geekbench 7 is here, promising a more realistic way to measure how fast your computer and graphics chip really are. The update adds tests based on everyday stuff like video calls, screen sharing, subtitles, photo editing, game physics, and trendy camera effects. It also tries to fix one of the biggest complaints about the last version: big, expensive machines with lots of processor cores didn’t seem to scale properly, which made some power users feel like their monster hardware was being scored like a budget laptop with delusions of grandeur.

And that’s where the comments got spicy. One early tester said this looks like Primate Labs trying to clean up Geekbench 6’s awkward multi-core mess, especially for giant workstations with 32, 64, or even 128 cores. Others were far less charitable. One commenter basically called benchmark scores pretty numbers with no real meaning, arguing that saying “1000 beats 990” tells normal people almost nothing about whether a computer will actually feel faster. Another was disappointed that in the age of chatbot fever, Geekbench still isn’t giving people the one thing they want to brag about: how fast their machine can spit out AI words per second.

There was also nitpicking over whether the new video tests use dedicated media hardware or just brute-force the job in software, which is the kind of detail benchmark fans will absolutely fight over for hours. And for comic relief, one user shrugged that Geekbench may not be perfect, but at least it’s not UserBenchmark — a drive-by roast that landed like a community in-joke with a standing ovation.