Does Linus not realize that Intel processors also have hardware assisted SHA?
Geekbench may not be the best tool for determining the power of a processor, but at the least it gives you a general idea of power across devices in a consistent set of tests, which can be extrapolated.
That post is pretty outdated. It's about old hardware and an old version of Geekbench. But people still use Geekbench 3 and old x86 hardware, so it's not totally irrelevant.
Geekbench may not be the best tool for determining the power of a processor, but at the least it gives you a general idea of power across devices in a consistent set of tests, which can be extrapolated.