Is your Mac’s performance not as good as it once was? Do you wonder if there may be a problem with your software or if one of the components has failed? Or maybe it’s your web connection that is bothering you, but you’re not sure if it’s just that your broadband connection is really bad or if there’s something else going on with your Mac.
We share plenty of advice on how to update your Mac and speed up a slow Mac, but how can you see if there is really a problem with your Mac instead of just being in patient with it? One way to get an idea of how well your Mac works is to run benchmarks and a set of performance tests on your MacBook or Mac Desktop.
More benchmarking apps help you find out how fast your Mac is, you can test your GPU and your CPU as well as your Wi-Fi Internet speed and even Ethernet speed. In this article we run through the best apps with PAC Performance tests, including some free options you can find online.
If you are considering buying a new Mac, you need to run benchmarks on your current machine and then compare them to our benchmarks of the newer models we’ve reviewed give you an idea of the kind of boost you can expect. (Check our Mac Reviews section for the latest Mac -Bnechmarks.)
In this article we recommend the many (usually free) apps we use to evaluate a Mac’s performance (and more specifically the performance of its components) in a number of scenarios. Continue reading to find out how to benchmark CPU, GPU, hard drive and more on your Mac Desktop or laptop.
How to run Mac Speed Tests
Wanna find out how fast your Mac is (and confirm your belief that it’s been slower)? You can run different tests to find out your processor speed, which will give you an insight into how powerful your Mac is. We also recommend checking the speed of your SSD or hard drive if you Mac are older.
Before we run any of the tests below, we recommend closing all the apps on your Mac as they had to influence how well the machine is doing. Reboot to make sure any RAM is released is also recommended.
How to Benchmark your Mac’s CPU
To check your processor speed, we recommend geekbonch from primate labs. Geekbench is free to use and you can get it on the Mac App Store here. You can also download it from the Primate Labs website here.
Geekbench 6 (updated from Geekbench 5 in February 2023) is the most popular tool for measuring how powerful the latest processors are and because it works for Macs and PCS, as well as iOS and Android you can get a good idea of how Your processor compares to another. It’s our go-to benchmark tool when we review the latest Macs, iPhones and iPads here at Macworld.
Geekbench’s CPU test runs through different tests to emphasize the CPU and then calculate a total score – the higher the better. Tests include file compression, reproduction of web pages and PDFs, running developer scripts and performing machine learning tasks such as object detection and background blur.
Running these tests can be useful if you think there’s something wrong with your Mac; You can compare the scoring with similar MACs and processors. You can see the recent geekbonch scores for different Mac processors here.
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How to benchmark your CPU with geekbench
The main feature of Geekbench is that it is incredibly easy to use and requires some technical knowledge. How to use it:
- Download the app from the Mac App Store here or the Primate Labs Web site here.
- We recommend that you restart your Mac before running the test.
- Close all other apps running on your Mac.
- Open geekbonch.
- You will see a welcome to Geekbench message and a request to upgrade or enter the license. You don’t have to do any of these things. Just click Later.
- Click Run CPU Benchmark.
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Geekbench will then measure the performance of your CPU when performing “everyday tasks designed to simulate applications in the real world” and can take 10 minutes or more to complete, depending on the speed of your CPU.
Once done, the results appear. Originally, you can be overwhelmed by all the information offered from Processor ID to the motherboard’s hardware, but the only two numbers you need to concentrate on are at the top: Single-Core Score and Multi-Core Score.
Single-Core score helps give a sense of how fast Mac works in certain situations when only a single treatment core handles everything. Many applications have their performance limited by a single main thread, so single-core CPU performance will decide how fast they are running.
Other applications are designed to be multi-threaded, so many processes can run at the same time. The results with multiple kernels show you how well your Mac can work when pushed to its absolute boundaries as it will use more processing kernels at once to handle the load. Think about it as your Mac’s top-end performance.
You can take these results and compare them with other benchmark tests in the Geekbench browser so you can see how your Mac compares to the latest generation of Macs and even its competitors from other manufacturers. It should give you an idea of how well your computer is doing at the moment and whether the upgrade you are considering is worth it in terms of raw treatment power.
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To check your Mac’s disk speed
One way we used to check how fast the storage inside our Mac was used to be to copy and paste a 4 GB folder and then time how long it took to duplicate. It is no longer an effective measure because the folder is no longer duplicated as Apple introduced APFS (Apple File System) that the folder is no longer duplicated, all you really do is create an alias for the original file.
Therefore, the only way to really take a judgment on the storage speed inside your Mac is to use a tool such as Blackmagic Disk Speed Test (free of the Mac App Store here) or AJA System Test Lite (free of the Mac App Store here) To measure reading/writing speeds on 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 if their hard drives can handle large files. If you’re not a video editor don’t worry. The data is still very useful for measuring performance.
- Download Blackmagic Disk Speed Test.
- We recommend that you restart your Mac before running the test.
- Open the app.
- For improved accuracy, and as with all other benchmark tests, it is best to make sure no other apps are running.
- Select your target driving if your Mac has more than one hard drive (this is done by clicking Gear COG) and clicking Start to start the benchmark.
While there is a lot of data that appears in the will it works? And how fast? Charts, it is mainly for video editors. The numbers you want to focus on appear in the large meters at the top. The writing speed is on the left and the reading speed on the right, giving you an idea of how fast things will be written for the drive and how fast apps and files will load respectively.
Blackmagic Disk Speed works by running a writing test and the writing meter eventually stops with a result. Then it will do the same with a reading test. Then it starts the process again with a test of another file size and will continue to go back and forth between testing until you click the stop button. You can record any results you see while the meter has stopped. You will find that the results between testing -Iterations are the same.
How to check GPU —DEABLE ON MAC
Finally, let’s talk about graphic performance. For this, we usually choose two most important benchmark tools: Geekbench’s Compute Tests and Maxon’s Cinebench.
How to use cinebench to benchmark your mac’s gpu
Cinebench 2024, which you can download here, is another free piece of software that, in addition to testing your MAC’s CPU (much like Geekbench without the ability to compare with other results online), uses an OpenGl and Metal Test to Benchmark your graphics short.
Cinebench tests CPU and/or GPU by creating a 3D engine with Maxon’s Redshift Render engine. On M3 and later MACs, Cinebench supports the GPU-accelerated metal RT-hardware beam tracking.
Once the tests are run, you will see the framework per. Second (FPS) results and a score, with the higher the result the better. You will see some of the best results after the test, but Maxon does not have an easy to search for database for different models like Geekbench does.
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To perform the test you need to install the app (it’s called Cinebench R24), open it and click Start Next to the GPU test in the upper left corner of the app. It takes you through the test and your final result will appear next to the start button. A test can take 10 minutes or longer.
How to use geekbench to benchmark your mac’s gpu
Geekbench does not measure 3D graphics that reproduce performance such as the Cinebench test above. Instead, it uses GPU to handle calculation tasks such as edge detection on images, apply a Gaussian blur to a 24-megapixel photo or detect faces in photos. This is how it measures GPU calculates tasks. For that reason, we would suggest that if you want to measure 3D graphics benefit, you are better off using Cinebench (above). Geeknech Compute is a good general GPU benchmark.
- To measure the GPU using Geekbench download the app from the Mac App Store here or Prime Labs Web site here.
- We recommend that you restart your Mac before running the test.
- Close all other apps running on your Mac.
- Open geekbonch.
- You will see a welcome to Geekbench message and a request to upgrade or enter the license. You don’t have to do any of these things. Just click Later.
- Click Calculate in the sidebar on the left.
- Choose from OpenCl or Metal In the GPU API section. On a Mac, metal is the most important score; On iPhones and iPads is the only supported API metal.
- Click Run GPU -benchmark.
Once you have the benchmarket your Mac, you will have a better idea of whether it works as well as it should be expected or whether something may be wrong. Our first suggestion would be to update your software but if your mac just suffers from old age and you decide to look for a new Mac, look at our Mac -purchase guide and make sure to check out the best prices for a new mac in Our various MAC offers round up: