Is your Mac ’s performance not as good as it once was ? Wondering if there might be a problem with your package or if one of the components has fail ? Or perhaps it ’s your vane connection that ’s bothering you , but you are n’t certain if it ’s just that your broadband connective is really poor , or if there ’s something else go on with your Mac .
We share plenteousness of advice onhow to refresh your Mac , andspeed up a slow Mac , but how do you state if there is really a problem with your Mac rather than you just being inpatient with it ? One elbow room to get an idea of how well your Mac is working is to range benchmarks and a set of functioning tests on your MacBook or Mac desktop .
Several benchmarking apps will facilitate you find out how tight your Mac is , you could test your GPU and your C.P.U. as well as your Wi - Fi net speed and even ethernet speed . In this article we ’ll run through the best Mac public presentation test apps , including some free selection you may find online .
If you are thinking of buying a novel Mac , running benchmarks on your current motorcar and then comparing them to our bench mark of the New model we ’ve reviewed will give you an idea of the kind of encouragement you’re able to expect . ( Check our Mac reviews section for thelatest Mac benchmarks . )
In this article , we ’ll recommend the smorgasbord of ( unremarkably free ) apps we use to evaluate a Mac ’s functioning ( and more specifically , the performance of its components ) in a reach of scenarios . Carry on read to recover out how to benchmark the CPU , GPU , hard drive , and more , of your Mac background or laptop computer .
How to run Mac speed tests
Want to find out how tight your Mac is ( and confirm your belief that it ’s been slow down down ) ? you may scarper various test to find out your mainframe speed , which would give you an insight into how powerful your Mac is . We also recommend checking the speed of your SSD – or backbreaking drive , if you Mac is previous .
Before function any of the tests below , we urge closing any apps on your Mac as they might dissemble how well the machine performs . Restarting to make certain that any RAM is discharge up is also advisable .
How to benchmark your Mac’s CPU
To check your processor speed we advocate Geekbench from Primate Labs . Geekbench is free to use and you could get it on the Mac App Storehere . you may also download it from Primate Labs websitehere .
Geekbench 6(updated from Geekbench 5 in February 2023 ) is the most popular shaft for gauging how powerful the modish processors are , and because it works for Macs and PCs , as well as iOS and Android you could get a right idea of how your processor compares to another . It is our go - to benchmark tool when go over the latest Macs , iPhones and iPads here at Macworld .
Geekbench ’s CPU test incline through various test to stress the central processor and then account an overall score – the high the better . Tests include file cabinet contraction , try vane pages and PDFs , running developer book , and doing car - learning task like object detection and background fuzz .
Running these tests could be useful if you reckon something is wrong with your Mac ; you could equate the score to interchangeable Macs and processors . you could view recent Geekbench score for various Mac processorshere .
Foundry
How to benchmark your CPU with Geekbench
The main draw of Geekbench is that it ’s implausibly soft to use and necessitate piffling technical knowledge . Here ’s how to use it :
Geekbench will then measure the performance of your mainframe when performing “ daily tasks designed to model literal - Earth software ” and can take 10 minute or more to fill out , depending on the velocity of your CPU .
Once it ’s done , the resultant role will be displayed . You might initially be overwhelmed by all the information on offer , from the Processor ID to the Motherboard hardware , but the only two numbers you need to rivet on are at the top : single - core score and multi - core score .
The unmarried - core score helps give a signified of how tight the Mac performs under certain office when only a single processing inwardness is handling everything . Many covering have their performance limited by a exclusive main yarn , so single - gist C.P.U. performance will find out how tight they run .
Other program are designed to be multi - threaded so that lots of appendage can turn tail at the same prison term . The multi - core results show you how well your Mac can do when crowd to its downright limits , as it ’ll use multiple processing inwardness at once to wield the melodic phrase . call back of it as your Mac ’s top - end execution .
you’re able to take these results and compare them to other benchmark tests on theGeekbench web browser , give up you to see how your Mac compare to the up-to-the-minute generation of Macs , and even its contender from other maker . It should give you an idea of how well your computer is performing at the moment , and whether the upgrade you ’re considering is deserving it in full term of bleak processing exponent .
How to check your Mac’s disk speed
One way we used to stop how fast the repositing inside our Mac was used to be to copy and glue a 4 GB folder and then sentence how long it took to repeat . That is no longer an effectual measure because , since Apple bring out APFS ( Apple File System ) the pamphlet is no longer duplicated , all you are really doing is creating an assumed name to the original file .
Therefore the only mode to really make a judgment about the speed of the storage inside your Mac is to use a tool such as the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test ( free from the Mac App Storehere ) , or the AJA organization Test Lite ( free from the Mac App Storehere)to mensurate the read / write speeds of your hard drive or SSD .
How to benchmark your SSD with Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
The free Blackmagic Disk Speed Test was designed for video editors to help determine whether their hard drive can handle large files . If you ’re not a video editor , do n’t fret . the data point is still very helpful to gauge performance .
While there ’s a bunch of datum showcased in the Will it Work ? and How profligate ? charts , that ’s mainly for video editors . The numbers you desire to center on are display in the big gauges at the top . The write speed is on the left wing and the read speed on the rightfulness , give you an idea of how fast things will be written to the drive and how fast apps and single file will load respectively .
Blackmagic Disk Speed make by running a write mental test and the Write bore will finally halt with a termination . Then , it will do the same with a Read test . Then , it starts the process over again with a test of a different filing cabinet size and will continue to go back and forth between tests until you click the Stop button . you may record any result you see while the caliber is stopped . You ’ll see that the effect between examination iteration are alike .
How to check GPU performance on Mac
eventually , let ’s talk about graphical public presentation . For this , we normally opt for two main benchmark tool : Geekbench ’s Compute try out andMaxon ’s Cinebench .
How to use Cinebench to benchmark your Mac’s GPU
Cinebench 2024 , which you could downloadhere , is another free piece of computer software that , in increase to testing your Mac ’s C.P.U. ( much like Geekbench without the ability to liken with other answer online ) , will use an OpenGL and Metal test to benchmark your graphics card .
Cinebench tests the CPU and/or GPU by create a 3D engine with Maxon ’s Redshift render railway locomotive . On M3 and later MAcs , Cinebench supports the GPU - accelerated Metal RT hardware ray trace .
After the test have run you ’ll see the frames per 2nd ( fps ) result and a mark , with the gamy the result the better . You ’ll see some of the best results follow the test , but Maxon does n’t have an gentle - to - search database for different modelling like Geekbench does .
Maxon
To perform the test , instal the app ( It ’s called Cinebench R24 ) , open it , and clickStartnext to the GPU mental test in the top - leave corner of the app . It ’ll take you through the psychometric test , and your last result will be displayed next to the Start push . A test can take 10 minute or long .
How to use Geekbench to benchmark your Mac’s GPU
Geekbench does n’t quantify 3D graphics give performance like the Cinebench test above . Instead , it expend the GPU to handle computational tasks like boundary sensing on prototype , applying a gaussian blur to a 24 - megapixel photo , or detect look in photos . That is how it measures GPU Compute labor . For that reason we would suggest that if you need to measure 3D graphics performance you are better off using Cinebench ( above ) . Geeknech Compute is a good general - purpose GPU bench mark .
Having benchmarked your Mac you will have a better approximation of whether it is perform as well as should be expected , or if there might be something wrong . Our first trace would be to refresh your software package , but if your Mac is just suffering from old age and you make up one’s mind to look for a new Mac , take a look at ourMac purchasing guideand be certain to check out the best prices for a new Mac in our various Mac deal round ups :
