Single-Core Kings, Multi-Core Powerhouses. | New Geekbench: This is the fastest smartphone

Geekbench 7 is a cross-platform benchmark from Primate Labs that evaluates the computing power of smartphones, tablets, and computers. Among other things, it tests CPU and GPU performance using tasks that simulate typical applications such as image processing, file compression, web browsing, video editing, and machine learning. The CPU results are normalized to a reference score of 2,500, with a score twice as high representing, in theory, twice the performance.

With Geekbench 7, Primate Labs has fundamentally modernized the benchmark compared to Geekbench 6. The multi-core test, in particular, has been redesigned: tasks are distributed across multiple cores only if the corresponding application actually benefits from multithreading in real-world use. This is intended to make the multi-core score a better reflection of actual performance.

In addition, there are new media tests for AV1 video, Opus audio, and automatic captions using the Whisper language model. A new game physics test and more extensive photo and image processing tasks are also included. The GPU benchmark also places greater emphasis on machine learning and content generation, such as AI image upscaling, video filters, RAW processing, color correction, and path tracing.

The underlying datasets have also become larger and more demanding. For example, Geekbench 7 processes more and a wider variety of archives, PDFs, and image formats. This is intended to make the benchmark more demanding for modern devices and better reflect the types of data that today’s applications work with.

Important for comparison: Results from Geekbench 7 are not directly comparable to those from Geekbench 6. The testing procedures, workloads, and reference base have been changed. For example, if you want to compare the performance of the iPhone Air with older tests, you should therefore ensure that both devices were tested using the same version of Geekbench.