Topic
The practice of testing vendor-published benchmarks for scope, methodology and pricing basis before trusting their performance or cost claims.
The framework separates configuration choices that move a deployment along a latency and throughput frontier from advances that move the frontier itself, which is the distinction you need before trusting anyone's benchmark table.
Reality
DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp undercuts Gemini 3.7 Flash by 3.4x on input tokens and 5.7x on output, then spent 3,467 completion tokens and 30.5 seconds on an invoice both models audited correctly.
Reality
Sanctuary AI's June numbers, better than 99.5% success at a 2.54-second cycle, came out of a 40-minute run of 313 insertions that CEO Daniel Friedmann later told Forbes remains a proof of concept rather than a deployment.
Reality
Parallels Desktop 27 puts a Metal-based driver behind Windows VMs, but the numbers it quotes are scoped to M3 and M4 Macs. The compatibility win is real; the throughput win is conditional.
Reality
NVIDIA reports a five-fold memory cut, 100,000 instruments on one GPU, and a 13-second refresh. The structural-break signals it sells the pipeline on go unmeasured in the post.
Reality