When you get a new computer (Mac, in this case), you might want to check how well it can perform. By running a benchmark, you’re actually finding out your machine’s scores regarding various performance-related tasks, and then you can compare your results with others.
Luckily, the software market and Mac App Store offer effective test utilities and benchmarking tools for measuring the performance of a drive, which makes it possible to understand whether a user has arrived at an optimal combination of capacity, speed, and price.
There are several benchmarking tools available, but the two most commonly used are Geekbench and Cinebench. While Geekbench provides you with an idea of how well your machine’s processing is, Cinebench takes it one step further and also benchmarks the graphics processing capabilities. Although these work on Windows too (and Windows users, keep reading, the process is still the same!), we thought it would be a good idea to benchmark your Mac OS X machine. Sniping tool for old mac 10.7.5. And yes, by “Mac OS X machine”, we mean real Macs and Hackintoshes as well. In case you missed our Hackintoshing guides, here are the two most essential links you might consider visiting:
In short, these benchmark tests are not specifically for Macs, they can also be run on Hackintoshes. And that’s even better, because this is how you will be able to see how well your hackintosh stands up against the big guns (real Macs), so Hackintosh users must try this. This is how you can check if the ~$1200 hackintosh you recently built is as powerful as (if not more powerful than) a $2500 Mac Pro!
The first benchmarking utility is called Geekbench. It mainly focuses on benchmarking your computer’s performance (processor and memory). Go to the Geekbench download page and download it. There’s just one problem, you’ll have to purchase it for 64-bit benchmarks (but anyway, the 32-bit version works just fine). When downloaded, you need to make sure no extra apps are running (have a look at the menu bar and quit any background apps). Now you’re ready to run the benchmark test. The Geekbench main window will display some system specs, which will also be included in the final results. Once you’re ready, press the ‘Run Benchmarks” button. Be patient, since this might take a while. Once the benchmarking process completes, you’ll see a rundown of all the details, and your Geekbench score as well.
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Benchmarking is a way to test out the performance of your Mac’s memory, hard drive, graphics card, among other things. It provides numbers for finding the weak spots within the system, comparison with other machines, and can help you understand whether to upgrade to a new laptop or desktop computer.
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Now it’s time to compare this score with others (having similar results), so you can get an idea of your computer’s ranking. Click the ‘Upload’ button on the Geekbench window, and your default browser will open and take you to a webpage.
As an example, let’s have a look at these Geekbench scores.
Yes, these are the scores of a hackintosh, but it doesn’t really matter.
In the next step, we will try to compare our scores head-to-head with another machine. For that, we have to set our results as a baseline, so click ‘Set as Baseline Result’.
Then click ‘Similar Systems Chart’ to display a graph with various computers of similar specs. You can also choose to compare with the top scores as well.
Now you’ll be presented with a ‘performance chart’. This is a graph which shows the results of all the computers (shown as dots, or ‘points’) that resemble the specs of your computer. The x-axis on this graph shows the processor speed, and the y-axis denotes the Geekbench score. Your score on this graph is denoted by a red point, and the blue points are others’ results. So, the farther away the point is, the higher would be the processor speed, and same is the case for the Geekbench score. You might see some points having high Geekbench score but low processor speed, and vice versa. This is because processor speed is not the only determining factor for Geekbench scores, the number of cores and threads also matters, alongside the amount of RAM installed and several other factors.
If you want to compare your results with any particular computer (point), just click it, and it will display a direct comparison (since you’ve already selected your computer as the baseline). In this case, let’s compare it with a relatively more powerful machine.
A multiplication factor of greater than 1.00 indicates that the machine being compared is more powerful compared to yours (by the corresponding number). In this case, the Mac being compared has a Geekbench score 2.17 times higher than the baseline. Likewise, the baseline is powerful than the machine being compared if the multiplication factor is less than 1.00 (0.1x, for instance)
Now let’s move to another benchmarking utility that concentrates on video performance as well as CPU performance. It’s called Cinebench, and you can download it from here.
Open Cinebench, and you’ll see two options, CPU and OpenGL. Let’s start with OpenGL, which is the graphics rendering test (for the GPU). Click the “Run” button to start the OpenGL test, and wait patiently till the rendering is complete. You will see a 3D scene playing (being rendered), which is actually the benchmark test. The process might take some time, depending upon your video card (or integrated graphics, Intel HD 3000, for instance). Once the OpenGL test is complete, you’ll be presented with an FPS (frames per second) score. Now you can run the CPU benchmark as well. This test will render a 3D image using full power of your CPU, and as you might guess, this one will take some time, and the temperatures might go up as well (if you’re running a monitoring application such as iStat Menus, you will be able to see the temperatures go up, and all cores working at 100%).
Once the tests have finished, you’ll see your scores, compared with a couple of other results on the left side (in the ‘Ranking’ column). Your result is highlighted in orange, while others are in blue. These results are scores of similar computers with hardware almost similar (lower or higher) than yours. You can toggle between CPU and OpenGL scores by clicking ‘OpenGL’ in the ranking column (or vice versa). This way, you’ll get an idea of your Mac’s (or hackintosh’s) standing among similar machines, and that’s what a benchmark test is all about.
Overall, the interface of both these benchmarking apps is pretty easy to use, and since you know what it means, now you can easily go ahead and give it a try. And also, there’s not much difference between the Mac version and Windows version, so Windows users can also use these benchmarking tools pretty easily. We did not discuss each and every aspect of the process, but we hope it gives you an idea of how it works.
These are just two of the most used benchmarking tools for Macs, obviously there are a couple more you can try (Xbench/Novabench, for instance). So what are your computer’s benchmarks? Let us know in the comments!
Here’s a YouTube video showing most of what’s mentioned in this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNddEFL3ERw
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Over the course of writing guides to boosting Mac and hard drive speeds, I’ve discussed the incredible performance improvements Macs can get from simple upgrades — adding RAM, choosing a fast solid state drive (SSD) as an internal or external drive, and even running a simple disk optimizer tool. But there’s a common question that comes up when considering upgrades: how can you tell in advance how big of an improvement you’ll actually see?
The answer: benchmarking tools. Many apps help you measure the speed of various components of your Mac, and with a little help, you can estimate the performance jumps you’ll see after an upgrade. Below, I’ll introduce three of the best free Mac benchmarking tools, and explain how they work…
For Hard Drive Speeds: BlackMagic Disk Speed Test
Measuring the speed of your hard drive is the easiest benchmarking process around, and the best tool I’ve found for that task is the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test by BlackMagic Design. Completely free to download from the Mac App Store, this app has only a single window and very few settings to worry about. If you have only one hard drive, you can just hit the Start button after you’ve quit all of your other apps; otherwise, you can access settings by pressing the gear button between the two speedometer circles, or use the File and Stress menus at the top of the screen. Here, you can choose the right hard drive to test, and the level of stress for the testing (1GB is least, 5GB is most).
BlackMagic designed this app to help video editors determine whether their hard drives could handle various video files, ranging from basic, low-bandwidth NTSC videos to more demanding 1080p videos with higher frame rates and color depths. Unless you’re editing video, those details (summarized in the Will it Work? and How Fast? charts below the speedometers) won’t matter at all to you. You only need to focus on the two big gauges.
The drive’s Read speed is on the right, with the Write speed on the left, respectively giving you a sense of how fast apps and videos will load, and how fast things you create will be written to the drive. Speeds in the 25-30 Megabyte per second (MB/s) range are slow — what you’d expect from an external hard drive connected via USB 2.0. The same drive placed inside an iMac, or connected via USB 3.0, could reach four or five times that speed — around 100-120MB/second.
But pop an SSD like the top-selling Samsung 850 EVO I’ve recommended into the same iMac, and these are the kind of speeds you can see: around 500MB/second, five times faster than a traditional hard drive. This is the sort of speed difference that’s dramatic, instantly noticeable, and likely to really improve your day to day Mac experience. Outstanding SSD performance is the key reason Apple has switched all of its MacBook laptops away from traditional hard drives to SSDs, and is beginning the same process with its desktop machines.
For Overall Computer Performance: Geekbench 3
Although there are a bunch of different “total computer benchmarking” apps out there, the one that’s easiest to recommend is Primate Labs’ Geekbench 3, since it’s partially free, works across multiple platforms (including Macs, iOS devices, PCs, and Android devices), and lets you compare one computer’s results to other computers and other users. Like Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, Geekbench 3 is designed to be simple to use — choose one setting, make sure your other apps are closed, and hit the “Run Benchmarks” button shown above. There’s only one hitch: the free version of Geekbench 3 only runs older (“32-bit”) benchmarks on your Mac; to see the superior performance you’d get from newer (“64-bit”) apps, you’ll need the full $10 version from the Mac App Store.
I could go into a lot of detail regarding Geekbench’s results, and there are a lot of them, sorted into three main categories, each with multiple tests. But the key numbers you need to know are the big two at the top: Single-Core Score and Multi-Core Score. Compared against results from other machines, Single-Core gives you a relative sense of how fast your Mac performs under most situations, when only one processing core is handling all of the Mac’s work. Multi-Core shows you how the Mac does when it’s being pushed to its limits and all of its processing cores are sharing a bigger workload at once.
The scores above show how my 2011 four-core iMac compares to my 2013 two-core MacBook Pro; under most circumstances, they’ll feel identical (3166 is only 3% faster than 3078), but when given big tasks to perform, the four-core iMac will deliver nearly twice the performance of the two-core MacBook Pro. Your numbers will vary a little bit from test to test; running the test multiple times will give you an average.
Geekbench offers a web-based Browser that lets you compare performance between your own machines, as well as the key hardware components found in each computer. You can see above that the differences between my iMac and MacBook Pro aren’t merely in their numbers of processor cores; look closely and you’ll note that each iMac core is faster, and the iMac has more memory. On the other hand, the MacBook Pro’s processor is newer, and its memory is faster.
The critical benefit Geekbench offers is the ability to compare your results against ones submitted by other users. Doing a search of the Geekbench 3 database for, say, “iMac 27” would let you see how various 27-inch iMacs compare with your current computer. That way, if you’re going to shop for a new Mac, you can get a sense of the Single-Core and Multi-Core performance other users are getting from their machines. Do a little math (divide the new machine’s Single-Core number by your old machine’s Single-Core number) and you’ll get a sense of the performance boost. A 27″ Retina iMac with a score of 3980 would be around 26% faster than my current machine (3166) at most tasks. That’s a big jump by Mac standards, and unlike the 5%-8% benefits typically seen in annual Mac updates, one worth paying for.
Buying an all-new Mac is a big step, though, so you might prefer something simpler and cheaper, like adding extra RAM. Although that can deliver excellent performance improvements at a relatively low cost, Geekbench’s Memory test doesn’t show you the improvement you’d get from more RAM — its benchmark only shows the RAM’s raw speed, which typically can’t be improved over the top-specced RAM Apple ships in its Macs. Whatever RAM you buy as an upgrade will match the existing RAM’s speed, but the performance improvements you see will be real, including much-reduced hard disk accessing and better CPU utilization.
For Video Card Performance: Cinebench R15
Last but not least is Maxon’s Cinebench R15, a free tool that tests two things: graphics card performance using OpenGL, and CPU performance. The CPU test shown above checks how fast your computer’s main processor can render a photorealistic 3-D scene containing 2,000 objects with lights, reflections, shadows, and shaders. This test starts with a black window and fills out the image square by square over the course of several minutes; the higher the “point” total, the faster your CPU is. Like the other benchmarks, speeds in Cinebench R15 can be reduced if other apps are running.
The more distinctive benchmark is the OpenGL test, which uses three complex 3-D cars interacting on dimly-lit city streets to test your graphics card’s ability to handle nearly 1 million polygons at once with various special effects active. It’s a cool demo to watch, and the results will be displayed in frames per second (fps). My iMac hit around 68fps, versus around 23fps on my MacBook Pro. Doing a little research online, I found scores suggesting that the demo Mac Pros in Apple Stores were getting around 77fps last year.
That’s the major hitch with Cinebench: it’s hard to meaningfully compare your numbers against other Macs unless you search Google for “Cinebench R15 score” and the specific Mac you want to compare with. Maxon does include a small sampling of different OpenGL scores within a “Ranking” box, but all that tells you is that your machine (in orange) with X cores (C) and Y threads (T) running at a given GHz speed with a certain graphics card achieved Z frames per second. This isn’t “actionable information” in that you can’t do anything with it — most people won’t even be able to tell which Macs those specs pertain to. And unless you have a Mac Pro, the only current Mac with a replaceable video card, your only option to improve graphics card performance is to buy a new Mac.
My advice: if you’re interested in improving your current Mac’s performance, consider boosting the RAM and/or putting in an SSD. CPU and GPU improvements call for an all-new machine, and Geekbench is the best way to determine whether the performance differences will be meaningful enough to justify the added price.
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To make the most of your Mac (or pretty much any other Apple device), I’ve written quite a few How-To and Best of guides, as well as reviews of worthwhile accessories. Read more of my guides and reviews for 9to5Mac here (and don’t forget to click on Older Posts at the bottom of the page to see everything)!