Over the years, we've seen many, many early benchmark results for unreleased processors all coming from Geekbench. Engineers and testers have used Geekbench to test pre-release hardware for years, but since the database is accessible by everyone, this also leads to a lot of leaks. To combat this, Geekbench is changing its policy and will now block access to results of pre-release hardware. 

Starting this week, benchmark scores from unreleased hardware will no longer appear in the Geekbench database. As spotted by @Benchleaks, Primate Labs, the software developer behind Geekbench, changed its policy to prevent “engineering samples (ES), qualification samples (QS), and retail hardware not yet available for sale” from appearing in the database.

Geekbench ded 🙁https://t.co/dOYfN3dJgD pic.twitter.com/JZGQgu8tP7

— Benchleaks (@BenchLeaks) October 5, 2021

Once given to reviewers, OEMs and engineers, ES and QS hardware still belong to the manufacturer. When handing out samples, customers and partners sign an NDA, but even that doesn't prevent scores from being uploaded to databases, as you can see by the sheer amount of leaks we see each month.

Geekbench may have stopped being a sanctuary of information for unreleased hardware, but other benchmarks such as SiSoftware Sandra and Ashes of the Singularity have yet to adopt a similar policy. There will also still be the odd leaker sharing results directly, so we still expect to see leaks, but there should fewer with Geekbench cracking down.

KitGuru says: We wouldn't be surprised if Geekbench's decision was backed by manufacturers like Intel, AMD and Nvidia, particularly since these early benchmark scores rarely represent the final retail product. 

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