(Image credit: Maxon)

Updated, 3/7/19, 8:30am PT: OC3D reported that Maxon used legal pressure to force another site, Guru of 3D, into taking down a version of Cinebench R20 it offered as a standalone download. This version of the benchmark is restricted to the Microsoft Store, but a variety of reasons could lead people to want it available outside of Microsoft's distribution platform. Now those people will either have to find other ways to get a standalone version of Cinebench R20 or simply accept that it's only available from the Microsoft Store (and the Mac App Store) for the foreseeable future.

Original article, 3/5/19, 11:28am PT:

Maxon has released a new version of its processor benchmarking tool, Cinebench, dubbed Cinebench R20. The new release is supposed put modern CPUs through their paces, but it also ditches the GPU test from previous versions.

Cinebench works by rendering a complex 3D scene using only the CPU. Maxon said that R20 "uses a much larger and more complex test scene than R15, requiring about 8x the computational power needed to render it" and that it "also requires about 4x the memory." That means results from Cinebench R20 and R15 can't be compared.

The updated benchmark also incorporates Intel Embree, a collection of ray tracing kernels, as well as "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." This should allow Cinebench to accurately reflect the performance these processors can offer.

Cinebench R20 also offers improved accuracy in benchmarks meant "to test if a machine runs stable on a high-CPU load, if the cooling solution of a desktop or notebook is sufficient for longer-running tasks to deliver the full potential of the CPU and if a machine is able to handle demanding real-life 3D tasks."

More information about Cinebench R20 is available on Maxon's website. The benchmark is available at the Microsoft Store and Mac App Store. It's free to download, so if you're curious about how your own system performs, it could be worth checking out.

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