GoKawiilWe’ve spent the past week investigating Intel’s Binary Optimization Tool (BOT). BOT modifies instruction sequences in executables to improve performance, and can only be used with a handful of applications (including Geekbench 6). Intel’s public documentation on BOT is limited, so we decided to dig in ourselves to understand how it works and what optimizations it’s applying to Geekbench.
We tested both Geekbench 6.3 and Geekbench 6.7 on a Panther Lake laptop (an MSI Prestige 16 AI+ with an Intel Core 9 386H) with BOT enabled and disabled.
Startup Overhead
When running Geekbench 6.3 with BOT enabled, the first run has a 40-second startup delay before the program starts. Subsequent runs are faster, with a 2-second startup delay. The startup delay disappears when BOT is disabled.
When running Geekbench 6.7 with BOT enabled, all runs have a 2-second startup delay. The startup delay disappears when BOT is disabled.
Geekbench Results
Geekbench 6.3 scores increase when BOT is enabled compared to when BOT is disabled. On our test system, both the single-core and the multi-core scores increased by 5.5%.
Geekbench 6.3 BOT Disabled BOT Enabled Difference Single-Core 2955 3119 +5.5% Multi-Core 16786 17705 +5.5%
Some Geekbench 6.3 workload scores also increase, with scores for two workloads (Object Remover and HDR) increasing by up to 30% with BOT enabled. A comparison that includes all workload scores is available on the Geekbench Browser.
Geekbench 6.7 single-threaded and multi-threaded scores remained roughly the same with BOT enabled and disabled.
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