Cinebench 2024 – Updated Benchmarking Tool
As hardware becomes faster, the tools to benchmark and test for stability with said hardware need to improve as well to properly simulate an intensive use case. Cinebench has been a staple CPU testing utility that allows you to see if your chip is running normally compared to others, or if your overclocking is stable.
The newest version of Cinebench 2024 comes with a new trick – GPU benchmarking using Redshift code.
CPU Testing
The new 2024 Cinebench CPU test is 6 times harder to run compared to CB23 which makes sense considering how much faster CPUs have become. Because of the increase in complexity, CB2024 also needs more RAM with a minimum of 16GB installed in your system.
From my observations running the CPU multithreaded test takes a lot longer than CB20/CB23 meaning that you might not even need to loop it using the minimum test duration option. I ran the test on my 5800X3D with SMT disabled and the CPU was pegged to 100% usage with max wattage throughout the benchmark.
Running one instance of this CB2024 multithreaded test should be good enough to validate a base overclock considering the increased difficulty of the rendering process.
GPU Testing
The newest feature included in Cinebench 2024 is that you can also benchmark your GPU without leaving the utility. To run this test, you will need a GPU with at least 8GB of VRAM.
The GPU test is a lot quicker since the rendering capabilities of GPUs are a lot faster meaning that my NVIDIA RTX 3080 chews through this benchmark quite quickly.
The downside of this fact is that the benchmark itself seems rather easy to run and my GPU only uses a maximum of 286W out of the 340W it is allowed to use, meanwhile something like Superposition 8K pegs my GPU at 340W at all times.
I would not use this benchmark for OC validation since it might not put enough strain on the GPU to force it to error out.
Comparing Results and Understanding Variables
As this is a new utility that uses a different scene and code you cannot compare your old scores from other Cinebench versions with 2024. You can still and should look at voltage/wattage/temperatures for your parts since those values will tell you how hard your parts are running.
You need to also understand that background tasks will introduce variables and will affect your scores therefore it is recommended to turn everything off before running CB2024. The results will vary a bit no matter what since background processes are running at all times, but that is normal run-to-run variance.
Will Cinebench 2024 Replace Older Versions?
Considering the number of requirements to run CB2024 and the fact that there are still people out there with lower-tier hardware, it is safe to say that you will still find people using Cinebench 15/20/23 to test their CPUs and a standalone utility to benchmark their GPUs. I think that as a CPU benchmark the new 2024 Cinebench version is quite good because of the increased difficulty, but as a GPU test it falls short.