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Cinebench updated to tackle core-happy AMD and Intel CPUs

Here's how Intel and AMD's gaming processors cope in Maxon's Cinebench R20 update

Cinebench R20 CPU benchmark

Maxon has released Cinebench R20, a photorealistic update to its popular CPU benchmarking software. CPU silicon has come a long way in recent years, especially since AMD fired the starting pistol in a processing core arms race with Intel, and the latest Cinebench release is designed to harness all of that modern computing power now available far and wide.

Cinebench has long been one of the benchmarks of choice for hardware reviewers and overclockers, ideal for evaluating a CPU’s relative performance or even as a quick test for stability. With release 20, Maxon has opted for a far more complex scene that its predecessor, leveraging the 3D engine from Cinema 4D release 20.

It also incorporates Intel Embree, an open source collection of high-performance ray tracing kernels that Intel has been developing since 2012, 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.” All in all the improved run should be able to more accurately represent a modern processor’s ability.

Maxon expects the latest release to be eight times more demanding on CPU silicon and require four times the memory than the previous release.

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“Cinebench R20 reflects our engineering efforts to leverage the advancements to CPU and rendering technology in recent years,” David McGavran, Maxon CEO, says. “The updated tests in Cinebench R20 deliver more accurate benchmarking measurements to reflect the performance of today’s CPUs in demanding rendering workloads.”

We’ve put a couple of the best CPUs for gaming from Intel and AMD through the new and improved benchmark to see how the scores shake out with the latest optimisations. For the record, Cinebench R15 and Cinebench R20 results are not directly comparable.

PCGamesN Test Rig: MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Edge AC / ASUS Strix X470-F Gaming, 16GB Corsair Dominator DDR4 @ 3,200MHz, Corsair HX1200i, Philips BDM3275

You can download Cinebench R20 right now from the Microsoft Store. Or, if you prefer to avoid that place, there are packaged versions available to download elsewhere on the web – but do so at your own risk.