Below is a table to help people easily locate their CPU and see where it stands when compared to other
CPUs; the source Flash content doesn't allow easy searching for a particular CPU.
i'm sort of a noob to these benchmark tests... just building my first build now. but what do these numbers mean exactly? by that i mean what would be considered a good score, or a bad score, etc.
I can't believe AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core QL-64 is faster than Intel Core i7 975 and the performance is almost double. Check the source (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html).
So, I don't think cpubenchmark.net is truthworthy at all.
CPU benchmarks measure how well the CPU performs running the benchmark. That's it, really.
And some benchmarks are "shenanigans", in that the benchmark may be measuring some aspect of the CPU in which a certain sort of CPU performs exceptionally well, but other CPUs perform mediocre-at-best (where for other benchmarks the mediocre CPUs would perhaps excel).
If you wonder if the CPU benchmark has any correlation with the performance running your applications, you need to benchmark your applications. Really. There is no substitute.
Often, benchmarks have many factors, such as (for example) the standard Quake performance (framerate) benchmark. That benchmark also is impacted by the optimizing compiler used (and which particular CPU tuning was enabled), graphics card, memory, bus speed, graphics card drivers, motherboard, chipset, overclocking, yada yada.
So if you are using some CPU benchmark to gauge your next CPU purchase, take the CPU benchmarks with a grain of salt. Also factor in the (theoretical?) performance of the CPUs you are considering against the price of the CPUs. That is: look at the value.
How do you gauge value when you can't really tell if two CPUs perform comparably? Yes, that's the rub.
That's why we love Tom's Hardware, which will run a variety of CPUs against a battery of performance tests and try to keep other factors constant where possible.
Unless you actually benchmark YOUR application with some given sets of hardware, other benchmarks may only have marginal bearing.