Cinebench is a real-world cross-platform test suite that evaluates your computer's hardware capabilities. Cinebench Release 20 provides a more accurate measurement of Cinema 4D's ability to take advantage of multiple CPU cores and modern processor features available to the average user.

Cinebench 2024 is the most recent release of the benchmark – see how we use it to test the latest CPUs – but Cinebench R20 is still widely used for testing. We also keep hosting the older Cinebench R15 for the same reason.

For over a decade, Cinebench has been a popular tool to evaluate hardware performance. Cinebench scores are used by system administrators to help make purchase decisions, journalists to review hardware, hardware manufacturers to optimize their latest products, as well as computer owners to evaluate their individual system.

Improvements to Cinebench reflect the overall advancements to CPU and rendering technology in recent years, providing a more accurate measurement of Cinema 4D's ability to take advantage of multiple CPU cores and modern processor features available to the average user.

Main Processor Performance (CPU)

The test scenario uses all of your system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral "No Keyframes" animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores.

In fact, Cinebench can measure systems with up to 256 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

Graphics Card Performance (OpenGL)

This procedure uses a complex 3D scene depicting a car chase (created by renderbaron) which measures the performance of your graphics card in OpenGL mode. The performance depends on various factors, such as the GPU processor on your hardware, on the drivers used. The graphics card has to display a huge amount of geometry (nearly 1 million polygons) and textures, as well as a variety of effects, such as environments, bump maps, transparency, lighting and more to evaluate the performance across different disciplines and give a good average overview of the capabilities of your graphics hardware. The result is measured in frames per second (fps). The higher the number, the faster your graphics card is.

Who Should Use Maxon Cinebench?

Anyone who needs to evaluate hardware performance should add Maxon Cinebench to the test tool arsenal.System administrators can use Cinebench to help make purchase decisions, journalists can use the results in reviewing hardware, hardware manufacturers may utilize the feedback in optimizing their latest products. Any computer owner can evaluate his or her individual system. Unlike abstract benchmarks, which only test specific functions of CPUs or GPUs, Cinebench offers a real-world benchmark that incorporates a user's common tasks within CINEMA 4D to measure a system's performance. For those who have to do a serious amount of testing Cinebench also provides a command line option, allowing users to run automated test procedures.

What's New:

  • Cinebench R20 uses a much larger and more complex test scene than R15, requiring about 8x the computational power needed to render it. The test also requires about 4x the memory. Therefore, R15 and R20 results cannot be compared.
  • Cinebench R20 and Cinema 4D R20 incorporate the latest rendering architectures, including integration of Intel's Embree raytracing technology and advanced features on modern CPUs from AMD and Intel that allow users to render the same scene on the same hardware twice as fast as previously.
  • Cinebench R20 provides improved benchmark accuracy for current and next-generation CPUs to test if a machine runs stable on a high-CPU load, if the cooling solution of a desktop or notebook is sufficient for longer-running tasks to deliver the full potential of the CPU, and if a machine is able to handle demanding real-life 3D tasks.
  • Cinebench R20 does not test GPU performance.
  • Cinebench R20 will not launch on unsupported processors. On systems lacking sufficient RAM to load the test scene, a warning will be displayed and the CPU benchmark will not be executed.
  • Background tasks can significantly influence measurement and create diverse results. It's always a good idea to shut down all running programs and disable any virus checking or disk indexing but it's impossible to eliminate all background processes. Modern operating systems perform various background tasks that cannot or should not be disabled, even though they could have a minor influence on the results.
  • Test results can vary slightly because it's impossible to disable every background task of the operating system. These tasks are one factor that may have a slight influence on measurements. Also, modern computers and graphics cards dynamically adjust clock speeds based on environmental conditions like power and temperature. For instance, processors will reduce clock speed when running too hot to allow for cooling and prevent damage. With many modern processors, the reverse is also true. They are able to overclock themselves when the temperature is low enough. Therefore, a system freshly started in a relatively cool environment will typically run faster than the same system that has been performing benchmarks for several hours in a heated office.

Note: Test results can vary slightly because it's impossible to disable every background task of the operating system. These tasks are one factor that may have a slight influence on measurements. Also, modern computers and graphics cards dynamically adjust clock speeds based on environmental conditions like power and temperature. For instance, processors will reduce clock speed when running too hot to allow for cooling and prevent damage. With many modern processors, the reverse is also true. They are able to overclock themselves when the temperature is low enough. Therefore, a system freshly started in a relatively cool environment will typically run faster than the same system that has been performing benchmarks for several hours in a heated office.