It’s been just a few weeks since Apple’s WWDC 2025 event, and whereas Apple did announce a brand new Games app that might be included within the new macOS Tahoe later this 12 months, there wasn’t a number of information on forthcoming titles that Mac players can sit up for enjoying.
There was, nonetheless, one necessary games-related announcement throughout WWDC that may have gone a bit bit beneath the radar. The announcement got here from UL Solutions, with the launch of a brand new Mac model of its 3DMark benchmarking app.
This is a crucial improvement for Mac players, as 3DMark is among the hottest instruments used to check the graphics efficiency of gaming PCs – and its arrival on the Mac displays the truth that Macs are lastly being taken critically as a gaming platform. With that in thoughts, I’d wish to take a while to debate how precisely you may go about benchmarking the best MacBooks and Macs.
And, with A-List video games similar to Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and Cyberpunk 2077 now out there for Macs, many people Mac players are questioning how nicely these video games will run on our Macs. As the identify suggests, 3DMark does focus particularly on testing efficiency with video games and 3D graphics, however there are different choices out there that you should utilize to benchmark your Mac (and in addition to check your Mac’s efficiency with Windows PCs, too).
DIY Benchmarking
Some video games (together with the aforementioned AC: Shadows and Cyberpunk) do have their very own benchmarking instruments already inbuilt, which let you check your Mac’s efficiency and see the frames-per-second (FPS) rating that it could possibly obtain whereas operating the sport.
These instruments may be useful as they assist you to experiment with totally different graphics settings throughout the sport with a view to strike the perfect steadiness between graphics high quality and efficiency on your explicit Mac mannequin. But, in fact, these instruments solely work inside particular person video games, in order that they don’t provide you with a lot indication of how your Mac will work with different video games, or the way it compares with different Macs or PCs – plus, you may have to truly purchase the sport to run the benchmark generally.
PC players who use Steam most likely know that the Steam app contains an choice for displaying framerates in-game. Unfortunately, the Mac model of Steam may be… a bit erratic, and its FPS counter went AWOL someday round 2023. However, one other welcome little bit of gaming information that arrived throughout WWDC was Valve’s announcement that it’s at the moment testing a brand new model of Steam, up to date particularly for the most recent Macs with Apple Silicon processors, so hopefully it will work extra reliably sooner or later.
Steam apart, Apple really offers its personal choice for testing gaming efficiency. It’s referred to as the Metal HUD (heads-up show), because it’s a part of the Metal software program that Apple makes use of to show 3D graphics on Macs and different Apple gadgets. The Metal HUD was initially designed for builders who want to check their video games or apps in macOS, however anybody can use it in the event that they don’t thoughts dipping into the Terminal app on their Mac.
The Terminal is present in Applications/Utilities, and you’ll simply double-click on it to launch it, like some other Mac app. When the Terminal window seems on display, you may activate the Metal HUD by typing the next command:
/bin/launchctl setenv MTL_HUD_ENABLED 1
You gained’t see something occur instantly, however the Metal HUD will seem mechanically the following time you launch a sport with 3D graphics in your Mac. The Metal HUD shows numerous technical info for builders, however your display decision and refresh fee are proper on the high, adopted by the present common FPS rating. This means that you can regulate decision and different graphics settings inside any sport so to see how they have an effect on efficiency.
And, if you’ve completed with the Metal HUD, you may merely flip it off by typing one other command into the Terminal window:
/bin/launchctl setenv MTL_HUD_ENABLED 0
Testing with Geekbench 6
The well-liked Geekbench check suite has been out there on the Mac for a few years, and it runs on Windows PCs, Linux, and Android as nicely, so it’s a very good choice for evaluating your Mac’s efficiency with a wide range of PCs and different gadgets. There’s additionally an enormous database of check outcomes on geekbench.com that you may search by as nicely.
Geekbench contains two primary units of instruments, with a CPU benchmark that checks the efficiency of your laptop’s primary processor, and a GPU benchmark for graphics efficiency. However, the GPU checks have a tendency to focus on 2D graphics duties, similar to making use of filters for photo-editing work, so it’s not essentially the perfect indicator of 3D efficiency for gaming. Even so, Geekbench remains to be a great tool for getting a normal overview of your Mac’s efficiency, and there’s a free model that you may obtain from geekbench.com, in addition to a Pro model that prices $99.00 for individuals who want to check computer systems regularly (like TechSwitch’s personal diligent reviewers).
3DMark For Mac
Mac players will most likely begin leaping up and down at this level, telling me that 3DMark has been out there on the Mac App Store for a number of years. That’s true – however in case you look intently on the Mac App Store, you’ll discover the small print that states that this model of 3DMark was “designed for the iPad, and not verified for Mac”. It’s additionally fairly outdated, so it doesn’t embody checks for the most recent graphics methods, similar to ray-tracing.
However, the brand new model of 3DMark for Macs that we take a look at right here is at the moment solely out there on Steam, and is particularly written to run on the most recent Mac fashions with Apple Silicon processors. There’s a demo model of 3DMark out there on Steam, which helps you to run the primary efficiency checks freed from cost. The full model prices £29.50/$34.99 and contains extra options, similar to the power to regulate the display decision used within the varied checks. And, if you purchase 3DMark on Steam, a single buy means that you can obtain both the Mac or PC model as required, so that you don’t need to pay twice for the separate Mac and PC variations.
Unlike GeekBench, 3DMark focuses particularly on benchmark checks that assess your laptop’s efficiency with 3D graphics in video games. The new Mac model doesn’t embody the complete vary of checks which are out there within the PC model, however the 4 checks that it at the moment contains ought to provide you with a very good overview of your Mac’s gaming efficiency. Scores in these checks are additionally immediately akin to these within the PC model of 3DMark, making it straightforward to check the efficiency of Macs and PCs.
There are 4 primary checks at the moment out there for macOS, though two of them are very related. Steel Nomad is a general-purpose check of 3D graphics efficiency. It’s designed to run on extra highly effective Macs and PCs – reasonably than on smartphones and tablets – so the 3D graphics scenes that it creates run at full 4K decision. There’s additionally a check referred to as Steel Nomad Light, which runs at 2560×1440 decision, and is designed for much less highly effective computer systems, such because the MacGuide Air.
There’s an identical check referred to as WildLife Extreme, which runs at 4K however is designed for a wider vary of cell gadgets, so it might be a very good choice for evaluating a high-end iPad Pro with a MacGuide Pro laptop computer or a PC gaming laptop computer. However, neither the Steel Nomad nor the Wildlife Extreme checks use the ray-tracing graphics know-how that’s now utilized in many trendy video games, similar to Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. So there’s yet another check, referred to as Solar Bay, which is particularly designed to check your Mac’s efficiency when utilizing ray-tracing inside video games.
Ray-tracing is a way that creates spectacular and reasonable lighting results inside video games, nevertheless it’s very demanding and requires a fairly highly effective Mac or PC. In reality, Apple solely launched ray-tracing on Macs round 18 months in the past with the introduction of the M3 processor – and, in fact, the present M4 as nicely – so Solar Bay could be very a lot designed for the most recent Macs and high-end iPad fashions which have M3 or M4 processors.
The excellent news is that the majority of those benchmarking instruments are free to make use of – or at the very least present a helpful working demo freed from cost – so it gained’t value you something to obtain them and take a look at them out.