Yup. A common practice. That is why I never look at benchmarks, and look at real world performance for anything related to processor performance in the PC space. That is also another reason why Microsoft removed the Windows Experience Index. A perfect example of this is with Intel integrated graphics achieving a greater score than a much faster entry level Nvidia/AMD GPU, and in games, Intel would get you a slide show experience, while Nvidia and AMD would be playable for the same in game graphical settings. It also helped that you don't see the GPU benchmark rendering the scene, making easy for the GPU drivers to just go "don't render that, nor this, nor that, nor this". As you don't see stuff not being drawn, you think all is well, but in reality it is proudly cheating to get higher fps, and get a greater score.