Maxon Launches Its Most Demanding Cinebench Yet With SMT Core Testing
Tech enthusiasts and benchmark hunters have a new stress test to obsess over. Maxon has officially released Cinebench 2026, a major update to its popular benchmarking tool that promises to push CPUs and graphics cards harder than ever before.
Powered by a heavily updated engine, Cinebench 2026 is designed to reflect modern rendering workloads more accurately—while dramatically increasing the strain on multi-core processors and GPUs.
New Redshift Engine Delivers Far Heavier Workloads
Cinebench 2026 now uses the latest version of Maxon’s Redshift rendering engine, which the company says is up to six times more demanding in multi-threaded tests compared to the previous release.
This overhaul is meant to better mirror real-world 3D rendering workloads, improving correlation between benchmark scores and actual production performance. As a result, scores from Cinebench 2026 cannot be compared to older Cinebench versions, as the underlying workload has fundamentally changed.
New SMT Core Test Reveals True CPU Threading Performance
One of the most notable additions in Cinebench 2026 is a dedicated SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) core test.
This test runs a single-core workload specifically on an SMT-enabled core, allowing users to measure how effective a processor’s SMT implementation is compared to pure single-thread execution. For reviewers, overclockers, and CPU testers, this adds an entirely new layer of insight into modern processor behavior.
Expanded Hardware Support — But Intel GPUs Still Missing
Cinebench 2026 expands hardware compatibility significantly:
Supported GPUs include:
Latest AMD Radeon consumer GPUs
Latest NVIDIA GeForce GPUs
NVIDIA Ampere Altra, Hopper, and Blackwell datacenter GPUs
AMD Radeon Pro workstation GPUs
However, Intel graphics cards remain unsupported, as Redshift still does not support Intel’s GPU architecture.
Apple Silicon and Windows on Arm Support Continues
On the Apple side, M4 and M5 chips are now fully supported, as expected. Since Apple’s GPUs rely on unified memory, Maxon recommends:
16GB RAM minimum for GPU testing
8GB–12GB RAM may work for CPU-only testing, though performance could be limited
Cinebench 2026 also continues to offer a native Windows on Arm version, with support for NVIDIA Ampere Altra CPUs, reinforcing Maxon’s growing commitment to Arm platforms.
Higher VRAM Requirements for GPU Benchmarks
The increased workload comes with stricter requirements:
Minimum 8GB VRAM required for GPU testing
Apple Silicon systems require 16GB unified memory for GPU benchmarks
These higher thresholds reflect the growing demands of modern rendering engines and ensure more consistent test results.
Where to Download Cinebench 2026
Cinebench 2026 is available now directly from Maxon’s official website. Supported operating systems include:
Windows 10
Windows 11
macOS 14.7 or newer
Final Thoughts: Cinebench Just Got Serious Again
With Cinebench 2026, Maxon has delivered one of the most aggressive and realistic benchmarking tools to date. Between the new Redshift engine, SMT core testing, and expanded hardware support, this release is clearly aimed at modern high-performance systems—and ready to expose weak cooling, poor scaling, or inefficient architectures.
If you like pushing your hardware to its limits, Cinebench 2026 is ready to hurt it.
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