I’m excited to announce that Geekbench 3, our first major upgrade to Geekbench in six years, is now available. You can download Geekbench 3 for Windows, OS X, and Linux from the Geekbench website.

You can also download Geekbench 3 for Android from Google Play, and Geekbench 3 for iOS from the iTunes App Store.

New Benchmark Tests

Geekbench 3 includes 15 new benchmark tests that are designed to model real-world processor intensive tasks. The new tests cover a number of different application domains, including encryption, image processing, signal processing, and physics simulation.

Geekbench 3 also includes 12 completely rewritten benchmark tests from Geekbench 2. These tests are now more representative of real-world applications and usage scenarios.

New Scoring Systems

Geekbench 3 includes a completely new scoring system that separates single-core performance and multi-core performace into two separate scores.

While multi-core performance is becoming more relevant as applications are rewritten to take advantage of multi-core processors, single-core performance is still a very important metric because every application benefits from great single-core performance.

With Geekbench 3, if you know your applications can’t take advantage of the latest multi-core processors, you can use the new single-core scores to find the fastest machine for your tasks.

Note that Geekbench 3 uses a different baseline system than Geekbench 2, so Geekbench 3 scores are not comparable to Geekbench 2 scores.

New iOS Interface

Geekbench 3 has a completely new iOS interface that’s optimized for iOS 7. With a new design that matches the “flat” aesthetic of iOS 7, Geekbench 3 looks great on both iOS 6 and iOS 7.

There are also a couple of new features in Geekbench for iOS:

  • Geekbench now automatically archives each benchmark run, allowing you to go back and view past benchmark results.
  • Geekbench now integrates with Dropbox, allowing you to share results between your devices and your computers without going through the Geekbench Browser.

New File Format

Geekbench 3 uses JSON as its native file format. JSON is a lightweight format based on JavaScript. Not only is JSON easy for people to read and write, but it’s also easy for computers to understand. Parsing a JSON file only takes one line of code in most languages. This will make writing scripts that use Geekbench data easier than ever.

Geekbench 3 also includes more information about each benchmark test in its file format, allowing users to dig deeper into their benchmark results.

Pricing

Since we can’t offer upgrade pricing to our App Store customers, we’ve decided to offer introductory pricing to everyone. If you purchase Geekbench 3 before August 31st you’ll receive:

  • $5 off a single-platform license
  • $10 off a cross-platform license
  • $50 off a professional cross-platform license

You can take advantage of these introductory prices by purchasing Geekbench 3 directly from the Primate Labs Store before August 31st.

Everyone on the team has put a lot of work into Geekbench 3, and it’s our best release yet. I’m really pleased with it, and I think you’ll love it. If you have any questions or comments about Geekbench, please let me know! You can email me directly at john@primatelabs.com.