For those who don’t know the tool: Cinebench by Maxon has long been the go-to CPU and GPU benchmark for 3D professionals. It’s based on the Redshift rendering engine that powers Cinema 4D, and its scores have quietly dictated workstation builds across postproduction, VFX, and colour suites for years.

Updated guts for a new generation

Maxon’s official release confirms that Cinebench 2026 has been rebuilt around the latest Redshift core, mirroring the renderer inside Cinema 4D 2026. The test scenes and compiler base have been modernised to reflect current rendering workloads. As a result, scores from Cinebench 2026 are not comparable with those from Cinebench 2024 or earlier. Cinebench 2026 runs natively on Windows x86-64, Windows ARM64, and macOS. It remains free to download from Maxon’s website.

GPU support: Blackwell, Hopper, and Apple M5

The new benchmark now fully supports Nvidia’s Blackwell-series GPUs, including GeForce 5000 and Hopper cards, and AMD’s Radeon 9000 series. For Mac users, Cinebench 2026 is compatible with Apple M4 and M5 chips, using Apple’s unified memory architecture. Intel GPUs remain unsupported, according to Maxon’s documentation. GPU tests require at least 8 GB of VRAM (or 16 GB of unified memory on Apple Silicon), and the CPU tests scale with available system memory.

New SMT test: threading laid bare

A new SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) test isolates logical-thread performance, showing how modern CPUs handle parallel workloads. This separates Cinebench 2026 from prior versions, which measured only total core performance. The result gives a clearer view of per-thread efficiency, especially relevant for render nodes and multi-core workstation CPUs.

Real-world alignment with Redshift

Maxon emphasises that Cinebench 2026 now uses the same Redshift code as Cinema 4D’s production renderer, making the benchmark a closer reflection of actual 3D rendering performance. This move should reduce the gap between synthetic test scores and real-world frame render times inside DCC applications.

That said, as always, benchmark results should be validated in actual production environments before being used for purchase or deployment decisions.

Availability and notes for cautious studios

Cinebench 2026 is available now, free of charge, from Maxon’s official site. The installer covers Windows 10/11 (x86-64 and ARM64) and macOS 14.7 or newer. While the tool’s interface remains largely unchanged, the new test scenes and threading evaluation mean you’ll need fresh baselines for every workstation in your pipeline. Studios that have not updated since Cinebench R23 or 2024 will find their old score sheets effectively obsolete.

Given the tight budgets and cautious upgrade cycles across post and VFX, this update serves both as a wake-up call and as free therapy for outdated benchmarking habits. Social media: Cinebench 2026 drops with GPU and SMT upgrades. Time to see if your workstation’s still earning its power bill.

Fact check reminder: Test new benchmarks on your own hardware before using results to guide workstation or render-node purchases.

The post Cinebench 2026: Benchmark therapy first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The industry-standard graphics benchmarking tool Specviewperf, developed by SPECapc and maintained by the SPEC Graphics and Workstation Performance Group, has reached version 15. And the update finally adds what many artists in VFX, animation and real-time graphics have quietly cursed its absence for years: dedicated benchmarks for Blender and Unreal Engine 5.

The new Blender and UE5 bring two of the most widely used production tools into the Specviewperf ecosystem. While previous versions already supported software like Maya, 3ds Max and Solidworks, this release marks the first time Blender and Unreal Engine get their own dedicated GPU punishment routines—sorry, we mean performance tests.

Blender: Geometry Nodes and a Whole Lot of Hair

The Blender benchmark uses an animated forest scene rendered in Blender 3.6 LTS. It includes geometry node-based grass and scatter systems, camera motion, animated characters, and—hold onto your render budgets—3 million hair particles. It’s a pure viewport test using Material Preview shading mode (based on Eevee) and runs on the default OpenGL backend. Eevee’s full capabilities aren’t stressed here, but the setup does reflect common layout and lookdev workflows. No compositing, baking or final render performance is included—this is strictly about interactive viewport performance.

UE5: Nanite, Lumen, and Deferred Rendering on Parade

The Unreal Engine 5 viewset is based on Epic’s own Lyra Starter Game, rendered with UE5.3. The benchmark scene contains geometry from the City Sample demo, including high-resolution Nanite meshes, dynamic lighting via Lumen, and UE5’s deferred renderer. Like the Blender test, UE5 focuses purely on real-time viewport interaction. This includes dynamic shadows, global illumination and LOD transitions. Developers, shaders and lighting artists looking to gauge GPU performance in UE5’s editor will finally get a baseline for how badly their cards sweat.

Expanded GPU Support: Ada, W7900, and Intel Arc Join In

Specviewperf 15 also expands GPU support. It now includes:

• Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada
• AMD Radeon Pro W7900
• Intel Arc Pro graphics

While the software doesn’t ship with in-house test results, vendors are expected to publish official scores soon. Until then, comparisons between different GPU architectures must wait—although there’s nothing stopping you from running your own benchmarks. Just brace yourself for the hair particles.

Still Free, Still for Windows Only

Specviewperf 15 is available for free on Windows 10 and 11. There’s no Linux or macOS version, which is standard for the benchmark. No mention of changes to existing viewsets like Maya, 3ds Max or Solidworks was made in the update.

Bench First, Render Later

As always: just because your GPU survives the Blender stress test doesn’t mean your next production render won’t melt it. These benchmarks are useful for gauging comparative performance, but they do not guarantee production-ready stability, especially in edge-case-heavy workflows typical for post-production and VFX environments. Use the data for buying decisions or bragging rights, not for trusting that 300 million hairs won’t crash halfway through a late-night export.

Where to Get It

You can download Specviewperf 15 from spec.org. There’s no price tag—it’s free—but it may cost you some ego points if your GPU ends up underperforming.

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The post Specviewperf 15: Now with Extra Blender and a Dash of Unreal first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.