How to benchmark a Mac: GPU, CPU and hard drive performance measured

How to benchmark a Mac: GPU, CPU and hard drive performance measured

While its hard to quantify general performance in technology, benchmarking provides numbers for comparison with other machines in our case, other Mac desktops and laptops. Simply put, benchmarking is a way to test out the performance of a piece of tech, whether it be the CPU of a smartphone or the GPU of a Mac.

Benchmarking can help decide whether to upgrade to a new desktop or laptop, and help understand the performance of the various pieces of tech within, from the CPU to the GPU and even the hard drive. It can help identify weak spots in your system that can be enhanced, whether by adding more RAM or upgrading to an SSD. With that being said, carry on reading to find out how to benchmark the CPU, GPU and hard drive of your Mac desktop or laptop. While there are many general benchmarking apps available for macOS, the easiest to use and most widely recommended is .

Why? In the simplest form, Geekbench 4 is partially free and works across multiple platforms including Windows, macOS, iOS and Android, and is our go-to benchmark when reviewing the latest iPhones and iPads here at Macworld UK. There arent many limitations to the free version of GB4, apart from that it requires an active internet connection at all times and will automatically upload the results to its website for others to see. As long as youre not benchmarking a yet unreleased Mac while under embargo, it should be okay to share the results with other Geekbench users. Anyway, the main draw of Geekbench 4 is that its incredibly easy to use and requires little technical knowledge. Simply open the app, close any other apps that might be running on your Mac and click Run CPU benchmark. Itll then measure the performance of your CPU when performing everyday tasks designed to simulate real-world applications and can take up to 20 minutes to complete, depending on the speed of your CPU.

Once its done, the results will be displayed in your preferred web browser, like the one in the above screenshot. Yes, you might initially be overwhelmed with all the information on offer, from the Processor ID to the Motherboard hardware, but the only two numbers you need to concentrate on are at the top: Single-Core score and Multi-core score. When compared to other computers, the Single-Core score helps give a sense of how fast the Mac performs under certain situations when only a single processing core is handling everything. Multi-core, on the other hand, shows you how well your Mac can perform when pushed to its absolute limits, as itll use multiple processing cores at once to handle the strain. Think of it as the top-end of performance for your Mac.

You can take these results and compare them to other benchmark tests on the , allowing you to see how your Mac compares to the latest generation Mac, and even its competitors. It should give you an idea of how well your computer is performing at the moment, and whether the upgrade youre considering is worth it in terms of raw processing power.

 When it comes to measuring the read/write speeds of your hard drive or solid state drive, the easiest tool to use is BlackMagic Designs BlackMagic Disk Speed Test. Its completely free to download from the , and although it was designed for video editors to help determine whether their hard drives could handle various video files, its extremely easy to use. Simply download and open the app, select your target drive if your Mac has more than one hard drive (this is done by clicking the gear cog) and click start to begin the benchmark.

As with all other benchmark tests, its best to make sure that no other apps are running at the same time you want the results to be as accurate as possible, of course. While theres a bunch of data showcased in the Will it Work? and How Fast? charts, thats mainly for video editors. The only numbers that you want to focus on are those displayed in the big gauges at the top of the app. The Write speed is on the left, and the read speed is on the right, giving you an idea of how fast things will be written to the drive, and how fast apps and files will load, respectively.

While a standard external hard drive connected to a Mac via USB 2.0 wont reach speeds of more than 25-30MB/s (extremely slow), upgrading your built-in hard drive to a solid state drive should see significant gains in performance. Take our 2011 iMac for example: while the built-in hard drive reaches speeds of up to 90MB/s, our external SSD connected via Thunderbolt achieves speeds of up to 420MB/s. The difference in speed is dramatic, and is immediately noticeable in everyday use. In fact, its probably the main reason that Apple has replaced traditional hard drives with solid state drives across its entire MacBook range.

If youve got a slow hard drive, it might be looking into upgrading to an SSD. Last but not least, lets talk a little bit about graphical performance. For this, we usually opt for , a free piece of software that in addition to testing your Macs CPU (much like Geekbench without the ability to compare with other results online), will use an OpenGL test to benchmark your graphics card. The test uses 3D cars interacting in a dimly-lit city street to test how your GPU handles nearly 1 million polygons at once when combined with several special effects. To perform the test, simply open Cinebench and click Run next to the OpenGL test in the top-left-hand corner of the app.

Itll take you through the test, and your final result will be displayed next to the Run button. Our 2011 iMac managed only 42.66fps in the benchmark, but newer Macs, including the top-end Mac Pro, can hit speeds of around 77fps. Traditionally, Macs arent as powerful as their PC counterparts in the graphics department thanks to a lack of high-end Nvidia/AMD processors in Macs, and this should be taken into consideration when benchmarking and comparing results with PCs. Unlike with other components, the graphics card cant be upgraded on most Macs; if youre looking for better graphical performance from your machine, youll probably need to pay for a newer Mac. If you do end up looking for a new Mac, take a look at our .