MAXON has released Cinebench R20, the first update to the application in 5 years. It’s a long-awaited improvement, as Cinebench has been a staple testing tool for professional reviewers and users looking to test their systems’ capabilities.
The new version of the free hardware benchmarking tool brings Cinebench to the same rendering architecture as MAXON’s Cinema 4D R20 3D software, and implements new features like Intel’s Embree ray-tracing technology.
Cinebench R20 also includes a more complex test scene to better stress test modern multi-core CPUs. The new scene requires about 8x the computing power and 4x the memory of the one included in Cinebench R15.
Despite increasing industry shift toward GPU rendering techniques (including Cinema 4D’s own native GPU rendering engine), GPU benchmarking has been removed; Cinebench R20 will only offer CPU benchmarking. There is no official word from MAXON on the rationale for this omission, and whether GPU benchmarking is re-implemented at a later date (or shipped in some other testing tool) remains to be seen.
As an alternative, GPU benchmarking is available through OTOY’s OctaneBench tool which can be found here. OctaneBench provides a standard test scene and settings for testing graphics capabilities and can fill in this unexpected gap in Cinebench’s capabilities.
Cinebench R20 is available for free. OS requirements are 64-bit Windows 7 SP1 and newer, or Mac OS X 10.11.6 and up. Cinebench will run on both Intel and AMD graphics cards, and will require at least 4GB of RAM.
Full details and download links for Cinebench R20 can be found on MAXON’s website. If you have any questions about testing your systems’ capabilities, reach out to Nodal!