Geek Patrol

Mac Benchmark

Update: Geekbench 2 is now available.

Geekbench 2006 was released on 10 July 2006. Download it and give it a try, and use the Geekbench Result Browser to see how your score stacks up against other users’ scores.

What is Geekbench?

Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmark suite for Mac OS X, Windows, Solaris, and Linux. Geekbench is designed to measure the performance an average application can expect from both the processor and the memory subsystem.

Geekbench’s benchmarks are written in platform-neutral C++, and have no platform-specific optimizations. Geekbench is compiled with what we consider the de-facto standard compiler for each platform, with the compiler switches suggested by the compiler vendor for release code.

Known Issues

  • Mac OS X

    • Physical CPU count is incorrect on systems with dual-core CPUs.
    • Geekbench reports the Darwin version (rather than the Mac OS X version) when running in 64-bit mode.

  • Windows

    • CPU information is not reliably reported for Pentium IIIs and earlier.

  • Solaris

    • Bus frequency information is not reported.
    • SIMD benchmarks are not available.

  • Linux

    • Model, motherboard, and bus frequency information is not reported.
    • CPU information is not reliably reported for Pentium IIIs and earlier.

System Requirements

  • Mac OS X (32-bit)

    • Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
    • 256 MB RAM

  • Mac OS X (64-bit)

    • Mac OS X 10.4.7 or later
    • PowerPC G5, Intel Core 2 Duo, or Intel Xeon processor
    • 256 MB RAM

  • Windows

    • Windows 2000 or later
    • 256 MB RAM

  • Solaris

    • Solaris 10 (6/06) or later
    • x86-based processor
    • 256MB RAM

  • Linux x86

    • Fedora Core 4 or Ubuntu 6 for x86 (other distributions might work)
    • 256 MB RAM

  • Linux PPC

    • Fedora Core 4 for PPC (other distributions might work)
    • 256 MB RAM

Download

Update: Geekbench 2 is now available.

Donate

If you think Geekbench is useful, and want to help (and encourage) us to develop Geekbench, why not send a few dollars our way? All donations will go towards sending John and Matt to Vegas improving Geekbench.

Links

Comments

  1. 1 John Martinez says:

    What about Solaris? Should be a simple recompile.

    Posted July 11, 2006, 11:09 am
  2. 2 LPZ says:

    Needed a Firmware Update

    This application led me to discover that my just purchased iMac needed a firmware update.

    My first run yielded a score of 178.6 and listed my processor as Genuine Intel(R) CPU 1500 @ 2.00GHz. (See http://www.geekpatrol.ca/browse/2006/?view&id=55 )

    After installing iMac (early 2006) Firmware Update 1.0.1, my score was 190.8 and my processor was listed as Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2500 @ 2.00GHz. (See http://www.geekpatrol.ca/browse/2006/?view&id=704 )

    I noticed a number of other results for iMac (early 2006) in which the processor was listed as Genuine Intel(R) CPU 1500 @ 2.00GHz. I suspect that those machines need their firmwares updated too.

    Glad I ran this application, and I hope this helps others.

    Posted July 11, 2006, 2:14 pm
  3. 3 Alex Weeks says:

    I just setup a new VMware VI 3 lab. I’m going to run this on some of my new VM’s and see how they perform. I’m dying to know what kind of score I can get from them.

    I’ll post results on my website in a few weeks: http://www.vi411.org/

    Thanks.

    Posted August 2, 2006, 12:33 am
  4. 4 Larry McCarty says:

    Aloha from Maui,

    I ran this test on my new iMac 2.0 (2gb RAM, 256MB Video, 500gb HD) and got 189.

    I got curious and dropped into Parallels running Windows XP Pro and got 369.

    Doesn’t make sense that an emulated OS would score higher than a Mac running a native OS.

    I haven’t booted up bootcamp yet to run it but will and post.

    Posted August 14, 2006, 1:05 am
  5. 5 jef says:

    It seems that whenever geekbench reports threaded rates, it combines the rates over all threads. For example, on my single-core processor, I get about the same rate for single-threaded tests and multi-threaded tests. However, with memory read and write, I get exactly half the score for multi-threaded as for single-threaded. Could geekbench be forgetting to combine the rates over all the threads for these tests?

    Posted September 10, 2006, 2:22 pm
  6. 6 Chargrilled says:

    I am sick of the Mac vs. PC argument. I am sick of all of you Mac freaks! Please do not say your Mac is some piece of technologically advanced machine. You Mac people suck. You are an extreme minority. Macs don’t get viruses because people don’t care about Macs. If Macs were popular yeah they’d get viruses but the fact is no one cares about them.

    Macs are based on hype. You see Steve Jobs (apple ceo) rave on in Apple’s web casts and how they are coming out with new hardware etc. It’s just plain boring. You people are a crappy little minority and you always will be, and hopefully one day I won’t have to keep reading about Macs because they will be discontinued.

    Posted September 11, 2006, 3:27 am
  7. 7 blandname says:

    Oh come on now chargrilled it’s just hardware. Buy enough of anything, link it together and it’s all good.
    I hope that one day you will see the light and use all hardware extensively and come here and report what your numbers are!

    Posted September 12, 2006, 12:24 pm
  8. 8 dooder0001 says:

    Chargrilled, poor flame. It’s a matter of choice. Is the on average 15% premium for a Mac worth it? In some cases, yes; in others no. I, for one, am much more productive on OS X, which I use at home, even though I have worked on Windows XP at work for over 2 years. However, you may not be. What I do know is that a lot of the technology that you take for granted was developed by Apple. Use Mac OS X for at least a year and then post here. Until then, you aren’t qualified to comment on Macs. Have a nice day.

    Posted September 12, 2006, 6:18 pm