CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON's award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It's completely free.

How Does MAXON CINEBENCH Work?

The test procedure consists of two main components - the graphics card performance test and the CPU performance test.

Rendering test (accelerated)

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 different algorithms to stress all available processor cores.

In fact, CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is given 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 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, but also 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 given is measured in frames per second (fps). The higher the number, the faster your graphics card.

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 - or just 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 incorporating 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 R11.5 also provides a command line option, allowing users to run automated test procedures.