Benchmarks are not very significant to me

I know many many people rely on benchmarks when choosing which rom to run on their Android phone. In my experience and opinion, benchmarks are nothing but a number. To be completely honest, I feel that benchmarks are really only significant when on stock. And even then, they're really not that significant. Developers have the ability to fake benchmarks at their will if they so choose. This causes them to be inaccurate and inflated. Of course, not having an accurate benchmark cannot possibly tell someone how well their phone will perform in real world performance. This is all that I care about when flashing roms. I test them as much as I can and determine which one handles my needs the best based on real world performance. I do recall when I first started rooting my Samsung Epic and flashing roms I would flash every single rom available, run a couple benchmarks and write down the scores. I would then figure out which rom scored the highest and run that rom... Even if real world performance suffered. I have experienced and learned much since then! Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with benchmarks.. I just feel that people rely on them a little too heavily sometimes (like me in my early rooting days).
Let me know what you think and how much you rely on benchmarks!