Geekbench 7 arrived last month, and it brings one of the biggest changes to CPU benchmarking since Geekbench 6. Primate Labs added new media workloads that encode AV1 video, compress audio with the Opus codec and run live captions through the Whisper speech model.
With the release of Geekbench 7, Primate Labs also moved to larger data sets and rebuilt the multi-core test, so a task runs on multiple cores only when that kind of work is actually spread across cores in software. Now, if I show you a Geekbench 7 number today and a Geekbench 6 number from six months ago, are the two scores even comparable?
So I ran both versions on the 13 phones and measured how the score changes from one version to another.
How I Tested Geekbench 7 and Geekbench 6
I picked 13 phones to cover the full range of chipsets, from budget processors to flagship ones. I also included chipsets from all four major chipmakers – Qualcomm, MediaTek, Apple and Google. On each phone I ran the CPU test on both Geekbench 7 and Geekbench 6, and I recorded the single-core and multi-core scores. Here are the test phones alongside their chipsets.
- OnePlus N6 – Dimensity 6360
- Samsung Galaxy M47 – Snapdragon 6 Gen 3
- Nothing Phone (4b) – Snapdragon 6 Gen 4
- Moto Edge 60 Fusion – Dimensity 7400
- Nothing Phone (3a) Pro – Snapdragon 7s Gen 3
- Realme 15 Pro – Snapdragon 7 Gen 4
- OnePlus Nord CE5 – Dimensity 8350
- Redmi Turbo 5 – Dimensity 8500
- OnePlus Nord 6 – Snapdragon 8s Gen 4
- Vivo X300 – Dimensity 9500
- Pixel 11 Pro – Tensor G6
- Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra – Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
- iPhone 17 – Apple A19
Note that a Geekbench score depends on the phone it runs on and not just the chipset. Thermal management, cooling, RAM speed and the phone maker's tuning all play a part. So these numbers show how each chipset behaves inside a specific phone.
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Geekbench 7 Pulls Scores Down, Not Up
After running all the tests, I found that Geekbench 7 gave lower single-core scores than Geekbench 6 on 12 of the 13 phones. The only exception was the Dimensity 6360 processor, which increased the score by 3.5%.
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Single-Core Scores
| Chipset | Geekbench 6 Single-Core | Geekbench 7 Single-Core | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dimensity 6360 | 678 | 702 | +3.5% |
| Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 | 1002 | 874 | -12.8% |
| Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 | 1081 | 947 | -12.4% |
| Dimensity 7400 | 1081 | 918 | -15.1% |
| Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 | 1128 | 1027 | -9.0% |
| Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 | 1205 | 693 | -42.5% |
| Dimensity 8350 | 1362 | 706 | -48.2% |
| Dimensity 8500 | 1712 | 853 | -50.2% |
| Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 | 2080 | 655 | -68.5% |
| Dimensity 9500 | 3142 | 1428 | -54.6% |
| Tensor G6 | 2691 | 2285 | -15.1% |
| Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 | 3569 | 3068 | -14.0% |
| Apple A19 | 3730 | 3119 | -16.4% |
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Multi-Core Scores
| Chipset | Geekbench 6 Multi-Core | Geekbench 7 Multi-Core | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dimensity 6360 | 1700 | 1540 | -9.4% |
| Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 | 3028 | 3081 | +1.8% |
| Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 | 3106 | 3087 | -0.6% |
| Dimensity 7400 | 2976 | 3111 | +4.5% |
| Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 | 3232 | 3218 | -0.4% |
| Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 | 3535 | 2843 | -19.6% |
| Dimensity 8350 | 4259 | 2790 | -34.5% |
| Dimensity 8500 | 6489 | 4550 | -29.9% |
| Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 | 6581 | 3981 | -39.5% |
| Dimensity 9500 | 9650 | 7029 | -27.2% |
| Tensor G6 | 7203 | 6515 | -9.6% |
| Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 | 10956 | 10577 | -3.5% |
| Apple A19 | 9470 | 8611 | -9.1% |
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Budget Chipsets Barely Flinched
The budget and lower mid-range chips held up well in our Geekbench 6 vs Geekbench 7 test. Scores dipped in nearly all chips but remained within 15% of their Geekbench 6 single-core scores, except for the Dimensity 6360 chip.
On the multi-core side, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 and the Dimensity 7400 went slightly up by 1.8% and 4.5%, while the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 and Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 remained almost flat. So in the budget end, Geekbench 6 and Geekbench 7 scores are roughly comparable, and the version change barely matters.
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The Mid-Range Segment Loses the Most
The mid-range segment is where Geekbench 7 makes the most impact. These chips power a lot of popular phones in the Rs 20,000 to Rs 60,000 range, and they lost around 50% of their single-core score. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 fell by 42.5%, and the Dimensity 8500 fell by 50.2%.
The Redmi Turbo 5 and its Dimensity 8500 show the trend clearly. In Geekbench 6, it scored 1712 in single-core, well above the mid-range segment. However, in Geekbench 7, it dropped to 853. The Dimensity 8350 in the OnePlus Nord CE5 did almost the same, going from 1362 to 706.
Meanwhile, the multi-core scores fell too, but by a relatively smaller degree. The Dimensity 8350 lost 34.5%, the Dimensity 8500 lost 29.9%, and the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 lost 19.6%. So the single-core score reduction is the key takeaway from the mid-range segment.
Flagship Chips Held, Except for One
Three of the four flagship chips held up almost like the budget chips, losing around 15% in single-core. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 fell by 14%, the Tensor G6 fell by 15.1% and the Apple A19 fell by 16.4%. Their multi-core scores held even better, and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 lost just 3.5%.
The Dimensity 9500 is the only exception here. It's a flagship MediaTek chip, but in Geekbench 7, it did not perform well. Its single-core score fell from 3142 to 1428, which is a drop of 54.6% and the largest fall in the test. Its multi-core score also fell by 27.2%, which is far more than the other three flagships.
I noticed a pattern, though. Every higher-end MediaTek chip took a big hit. The Dimensity 8350, 8500 and 9500 all fell by nearly half in single-core. And the two MediaTek chips that held their performance – the Dimensity 6360 and 7400 – are budget processors.
On the Qualcomm side, only the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4's score fell significantly. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and the Snapdragon 6 and 7s chips were minimally impacted. This was the case with Apple's and Google's chipsets too.
Why I Think Mid-Range Chipsets Struggled the Most
Geekbench 7 moved to larger data sets and added media and machine learning workloads like AV1 encoding, Opus audio and Whisper captions. These tasks push a lot of data through the chip. You need more memory bandwidth and cache and Geekbench 7 rewards CPU cores that are modern rather than cores that are simply clocked high.
The high-end flagships have modern cores and faster memory, so they are minimally impacted. The budget chips never scored high to begin with, so the impact is less. However, the mid-range chips pushed clock speeds to achieve bigger Geekbench 6 numbers but paired those cores with weaker memory and smaller caches.
Now, when the workloads have gotten heavier, those mid-range chips are unable to keep up, and the single-core score has dropped.
Coming to multi-core, Geekbench 7 only runs a task on multiple cores if the real work uses many cores, so multi-core held up better than single-core. By the way, I expected heavier AI work to inflate scores like AnTuTu v11 did. However, Geekbench 7 exposed which chips are paired with faster memory to handle bigger tasks and which ones don't.
What This Means for Reading Benchmark Numbers
The most useful thing I learned here is that you can't compare a Geekbench 7 score with a Geekbench 6 score, and this is especially true for the mid-range chips. In the top and bottom segments, the score gap is small, around a 9–16% reduction in single-core and about a 10% reduction in multi-core.
However, a mid-range chip can look almost 50% weaker in single-core and about 20–35% weaker in multi-core in Geekbench 7. If you see a new mid-range phone posting a lower Geekbench score than an older one, check which version was used first.
For us at Beebom Gadgets, this means we will label the Geekbench version on every score. And for readers, my advice is to think of Geekbench 7 as a fresh evaluation system, not a continuation of Geekbench 6.
I actually think this is a better way to measure CPU performance. Geekbench 7 asks chips to do heavier and more realistic work, and it doesn't reward a chip for one fast core when the rest of the cores can't keep up.
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