2026-07-26

Primate Labs has released Geekbench 7, a ground-up rework of the popular benchmarking tool. If you've ever used Geekbench scores to compare second-hand CPUs before buying — and let's be honest, most of us have — this matters.

The headline changes: workloads have been completely overhauled to better reflect modern real-world tasks including AI/ML inference, HDR photo processing, and more representative multi-threaded tests. The GPU Compute benchmark has also been rebuilt with new graphics and ML workloads. Crucially, Geekbench 7 scores are not comparable to Geekbench 6 scores, so any mental benchmarks you've stored for Xeon E-2388Gs or Ryzen 5600Gs are now out of date.

For homelabbers, this is relevant in two ways. First, if you're shopping for used mini PCs or server CPUs on eBay, the Geekbench Browser will gradually fill up with v7 results — giving you a much better picture of how chips handle current workloads like transcoding, containerised apps, and light ML tasks. Second, if you're selling kit, running a fresh GB7 score on your hardware adds credibility to listings.

The caveat? It'll take time for the results database to become properly useful. Right now the Geekbench 6 browser is far more populated, especially for older Xeon and consumer chips common in homelabs. Don't bin your GB6 reference points just yet. The free version still limits you to CPU tests; the full licence is $99 USD which is steep for casual use.

It's also worth noting that synthetic benchmarks only tell part of the story — actual power draw under load, idle consumption, and platform features (ECC support, NVMe lanes) still matter more for a 24/7 homelab box.

If you're planning hardware purchases or just like keeping your benchmark data current, grab the free download from the Geekbench site and start building your own baseline. And if you've got spare NVMe drives sitting around from upgrades, an M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure – USB-C 10Gbps with Magnetic Closure is a handy way to repurpose them as fast portable storage.