Based on the GB6 home blurb, it reads that the workloads have been revamped, but the scale factors have not changed.
Unfortunately for users everywhere, details on what makes the workloads more meaningful (presumably) are not summarized.
If anyone comes across a good writeup, please post.
This update will lead to a lot of churn for GB Corp which is maybe good for them, but as they've released another instance with its own performance context this results in confusion for me (as an everyman) because my previous reference points of reference have just been reset, all too common for the computing industry.
So far GB versions have for me been informed by a thread of plausible ignorance at the GB Corp as to what constitutes a good general benchmark, which they were evolving and refining. They could wave their hands and that was ok with me.
But since 5, GB is so well established as a reference that any question of refinement must address specific details of workloads:
Why are the new metrics more relevant?!
They may well be. But for casual comparisons going from 5 -> 6 just raises the curtain on how subjective the matter.
If the scores change without clear understanding of why, a benchmark is useless. The point is that it's supposed to stay the same so you can see what else is changing.
Well, GB is the defacto general benchmark!
"I just upgraded my system: I went from GB5 to GB6 and overall performance went up 20%"
or
"ZOMG I just switched to GB6 and my system is 20% slower, what do I do?"
It reminds me of when Apple switched from storage reporting from powers of 2 units, GiB, to powers of ten units, GB, and had to try to explain why data usage suddenly got bigger.
1 GB means 1,000,000,000 bytes
1 GiB means 1,073,741,824 bytes
Apple had been using the suffix of "GB" but counting in GiB.
So if you had 1,073,741,824 bytes of files on your drive, which was reported as 1 GB, after a macOS update the same usage was reported as 1.07 GB. Hey you're short-changing me on drives! A 1 TB drive holds less than a 1 TiB drive.
I hate computers
This sort of thing has been an ongoing point of consumer legal activism. In 80s there were class action lawsuits over "missing inches" in TV screens that were advertised as 25 inches diagonal but actually measured as 24.5.
I've heard that the speed of light is subject to occasional revision even after it was discovered to be a universal constant, so there's no end to grief.