Cinebench

Cinebench is a benchmarking utility developed by Maxon, the makers of the 3D software Cinema 4D. It is designed to assess computer performance primarily through rendering workloads that mimic tasks common in professional 3D graphics work. The benchmark uses the same Cinema 4D rendering engine as the software, ensuring results reflect real-world rendering performance rather than synthetic math tests alone.

Cinebench provides CPU-focused tests that measure both single-core and multi-core performance by rendering a photorealistic 3D scene. The single-core test runs the scene on a single thread, while the multi-core test uses all available cores and threads. In addition, some versions include a OpenGL-based GPU test that evaluates a graphics card's performance by running a real-time scene using the GPU.

Cinebench runs on Windows and macOS; results are reported as numeric scores. Higher scores indicate better performance; single-core scores emphasize per-core speed, multi-core scores reflect parallel rendering capability. The OpenGL test score indicates graphics performance. The benchmark is widely used by hardware reviewers and enthusiasts to compare CPUs and, in some cases, GPUs, and to gauge relative performance across processor generations. It is a synthetic benchmark, not a direct representation of every real-world workload, and results can vary with background processes, cooling, and software versions.

Version history: The tool has evolved through versions—R15, R16, R20, R23, and later R25—each introducing refinements to rendering scenarios and platform support.