Cinema 4D Viewport Performance Benchmark & Scores (Updated Results)

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CG Director Author Alex Glawionby Alex Glawion   /  Updated 

CGDirector’s Cinema 4D Viewport Performance Benchmark measures how snappy and smooth active work inside your 3D Software will be.

While this benchmark uses Maxon’s Cinema 4D for measuring performance, these scores can (roughly) be applied to other 3D Software as well, as they all utilize the hardware similarly.

In Cinema 4D and most 3D-software, your processor’s single-core performance is responsible for a smooth viewport experience and is rarely bottlenecked by the graphics card.

Every year and with every new version, we revisit Cinema 4D’s Viewport performance. And this year’s Cinema 4D 2024 performance uplift is mind-boggling.

Help us extend the below table with your score in Cinema 4D 2024! 🙂

Cinema 4D Viewport Performance Benchmark Scores

= AMD   |    = Intel

Because different Cinema 4D Versions have different viewport performance, be sure to filter by your C4D Version in the search bar for best results (e.g. R20 or 2023 or 2024).

CPU Name# CoresC4D
Version
Viewport Benchmark Score
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X162024.2.04080
Apple M3 Max162024.13543
Apple M1 Ultra2020242705
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X1220242412
Intel Core i7 11800H82024.12117
Apple M2 Max122023.1.31793
Intel Core i9 9900K820241765
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X162023.1.31736
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X16R201694
Apple M182023.1.31643
Intel Core i9 11900K8R211587
Intel Core i5 11600K6R211494
Intel Core i9 11900K8S241479
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X16R211382
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X12R211378
Intel Core i5 11600K6S241377
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X6R211373
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D8R251364
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X8R211354
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X16R201286
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X12R231280
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X12R201277
Intel Core i9 10900K10R201153
Intel Core i9 9900K8R211125
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X8R211113
Intel Core i7 10700KF820231100
Intel Core i9 9900K8R211088
AMD Ryzen 7 3800X8R201064
Intel Core i7 7700K4R201049
Intel Core i9 9960X16R201045
AMD Ryzen 5 36006R201033
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X16S221015
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X16R201007
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X12R181006
AMD Threadripper 3960X24R201006
Intel Xeon W-215510R18964
Intel Core i7 5930K6R20962
Intel Core i7 5820K6R18960
AMD Ryzen 7 2700X8R20956
AMD Threadripper 2950X16R19955
Intel Core i5 6600K4R20922
AMD Threadripper 3975WX32R25885
AMD Threadripper 1900X8R19879
Intel Core i7 6850K6R20864
AMD Threadripper 1920X12R20857
Intel Core i7 5930K6R19771
Intel Core i5 7300HQ4R20768
AMD Threadripper 1950X16R20750
AMD Threadripper 3990X64R20714
Intel Core i5 2500K4R19694
AMD Threadripper 2990WX32R20680
Intel Core i7 4510U2R20665
Intel Core i7 8650U4R18663
Intel Core i7 3930K6R18656
Intel Xeon E5-2667 v28R20622
Intel Xeon E5-2630 v4 (DP)20R20591
Intel Xeon X56506R19554
Intel Xeon E5-2683 v3 (DP)28R19502
Intel Xeon E5-2620 v2 (DP)12R19451
Intel Xeon X54508R19418
Intel Xeon E3-1240 v34R19409
Intel Core i7 4578U2R18337
CPU Name# CoresC4D
Version
Score

OC = Overclocked | DP = Dual Processor (2x CPUs)

How do Cinema 4D Versions stack up against each other?

So, which Cinema 4D version has the fastest viewport? Maxon claims to improve viewport performance with every new version, but is this actually the case?

We ran the Cinema 4D viewport benchmark on the same system in all Versions of Cinema 4D since R20 (AMD Ryzen 5900X@Stock, 128GB RAM CL16-3600, RTX 2080Ti, default Cinema 4D clean-installs).

The results are quite interesting:

Cinema 4D Viewport Performance comparison between Versions

Cinema 4D VersionBenchmark Score (average of 10 runs)
20242412
2023 (2023.2.1)1401
25 (R25)1363
24 (S24)1331
23 (R23)1227
22 (S22)1184
21 (R21)1289
20 (R20)1191

Ignoring the occasional outlier, viewport performance in Cinema 4D has been increasing very slowly, but continually from R20 to 2023. Cinema 4D 2024, especially, almost doubles viewport performance in our benchmark scene!

This also means that in the first scores table above, you should make sure to filter by the Cinema 4D version you’re looking to run to be able to compare CPUs with each other.

Why does the same CPU score differently in different Cinema 4D Versions?

Because the benchmark Scene stays the same no matter which Cinema 4D Version you test it with, the score differences between versions come down to Cinema 4D’s very own software performance improvements.

Every now and then, Maxon implements viewport improvements or refactors some code in new releases which should speed up your viewport. This doesn’t always work, though, as the newest version isn’t always the fastest. The Intel i9 11900k for example, scores much higher when benched in R21 compared to S24, but later versions can flip this ranking upside down.

Download Cinema 4D Viewport Benchmark

Help us extend the scores-list and bench your own hardware. Download the benchmark here and comment with your score:

Cinema4D_ViewportBenchmark_v1.3.c4d

v1.3 Updated on 21.11.2020 – Added Cinema 4D R23 Support and support for any upcoming Cinema Versions.
v1.2 Updated on 20.07.2020 – Added Cinema 4D S22 Support.
v1.1 Updated on 16.09.2019 – Added Cinema 4D R21 Support.

How to use the Benchmark

Open the downloaded Scene in any Version of Cinema 4D that you have installed (Tested on R17 – R23).

Select the Null-Object in the Object Manager (you might also have to click “User-Data”) and click “Run Benchmark”.

Cinema 4D Viewport Benchmark

After a few moments (depending on the performance of your machine) you will see a popup window displaying your score.

Cinema 4D Viewport Benchmark

That’s it! Let us know your Score, CPU-Name, Clock-Speed and C4D Version in the comments, so we can add it to the score list. Thanks! 🙂

How does this Benchmark work?

In many of our articles, we discuss two general types of CPUs:

  • 1: A CPU with a lot of Cores but usually lower Clock-Speed (e.g. 64-Core 3990X @ 2.9 GHz Base, 4,3Ghz Turbo Clock)
  • 2: A CPU with usually fewer Cores but high Clock-Speed (e.g. Intel 24-Core i9 13900K @ 3,0Ghz Base, 5,8 GHz Turbo Clock)

For Rendering and other tasks that can be easily parallelized, we need a CPU with many Cores but for active work, we need a CPU that Clocks very high (or has high IPC = Instructions per Cycle).

Usually, we use the Cinebench Single-Core Score to estimate how smoothly a CPU would perform when actively working in 3D Applications, but this Score is obtained by benching the Rendering Performance and doesn’t represent active work- and viewport-performance well.

So we need a new Benchmark.

A viewport performance benchmark. With this, we can measure how fast our 3D Viewport will be, as we want to work with as little delay & lagg as possible.

No delays at all, optimally.

As discussed in many of our Articles, the Viewport performance in most cases depends on the IPC and Clock of the CPU, and not the performance of the Graphics Card.

In some cases, of course, the GPU can bottleneck the performance, but those are very rare.

This usually occurs only when using GPU OpenGL Effects like extreme Anti-Aliasing, SSAO, Real-time Shadows or other Viewport Effects (Which, in my experience as a 3D Artist, are usually turned off). Or when you have an underpowered GPU compared to the rest of your components.

In this Cinema 4D Viewport Benchmark, we measure the Frames per Second (FPS) of a typical Scene that uses common 3D Objects from Cinema 4D Objects in a hierarchy.

Cinema 4D Viewport Benchmark Hierarchy

CGDirector’s Cinema 4D Viewport Performance Benchmark – Scene contents

The CPU has to step through this hierarchy one at a time, without being able to offload Calculations to other Cores – as is the case in almost any typical 3D Scene.

These metrics can very well be transferred to other 3D Applications too, as they all use the Computer’s resources in very similar ways.

Over to you

That’s about it! Let us know the following in the comments, so we can add it to the scores-list. Thanks! 🙂

  1. Score
  2. Cinema 4D Version
  3. CPU-Name
  4. (and Clock-Speed, if it has been overclocked)



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Alex Glawion

Hi, I’m Alex, a Freelance 3D Generalist, Motion Designer and Compositor.

I’ve built a multitude of Computers, Workstations and Renderfarms and love to optimize them as much as possible.

Feel free to comment and ask for suggestions on your PC-Build or 3D-related Problem, I’ll do my best to help out!

263 Comments

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  • Bassem

    Score: 3648.34
    Ver: C4D 2024.3.2
    CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X
    Clock speed: 4.28ghz

    Pretty sure this scene test utilizes only a single core hence why a 6 core CPU scores higher than a Mac M3 chip. There are plenty of C4D generators that can utilize more cores now so you might wanna optimize the test scene a bit.

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