How to find out the processor model on Mac and Macbooks?

the "About This Mac" won't show, and the "More Info..." won't show...

this thread talks about system_profiler but it is not on this macbook with Snow Leopard:

http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=43422

can it be found out?

nonopolarity

Posted 2010-11-06T09:43:20.630

Reputation: 7 932

That forum topic is from 2005, there weren't even Macbooks (i.e. Mac laptops with Intel chips) back then. The current operating system was 10.4 Tiger. – Daniel Beck – 2010-11-06T12:04:37.690

1Please comment on answers if they're not satisfactory. – Daniel Beck – 2011-01-09T22:17:28.677

Answers

System Profiler.app (or System Information.app in newer versions of OS X) is located in /Applications/Utilities/. You can get there by pressing Cmd-Shift-U in Finder.

If it's not there, someone with administrator access to your machine messed up your system. Reinstall Mac OS X (or try to use Pacifist to restore System Profiler.app from your Mac OS X DVD).

system_profiler is the command-line equivalent (or System Profiler.app might be the GUI application to this CLI program). You need to enter system_profiler at a command prompt in Terminal.app. If you're only interested in your CPU and model, enter

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType

Output looks something like this:

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name: MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier: MacBookPro6,2
  Processor Name: Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed: 2,66 GHz
  Number Of Processors: 1
  Total Number Of Cores: 2
  L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
  L3 Cache: 4 MB
  Memory: 4 GB
  Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s
  Boot ROM Version: MBP61.0057.B0C
  SMC Version (system): 1.58f16
  Serial Number (system): W80253LDAGZ
  Hardware UUID: 598781DD-929A-1337-F00D-EF19A1B625F8
  Sudden Motion Sensor:
      State: Enabled

An alternative to using the System Profiler is Mactracker, an application containing a database of all Mac models made so far. If you know your model (e.g. "Macbook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010)" and your order number (e.g. "MC373LL/A") you can find out your processor (M 620 with 2.66GHz for the example).

Daniel Beck

Posted 2010-11-06T09:43:20.630

Reputation: 98 421

You can get the full model number without installing Mactracker, using the method @AlexT answered below (and get even more data by augmenting it using rbanffy's script, also below). – nc01 – 2016-02-25T12:46:53.047

1Unfortunately the CPU information given by System Profiler isn't very useful. I'm looking at a "2.7 GHz Intel Core i5" and a "2 GHz Intel Core i5"; it's only when you know that the former is an i5-5257U and the latter is an i5-6360U that you know that the "2 GHz" CPU is actually faster than the "2.7 GHz" CPU. – cjs – 2017-06-14T11:26:36.583

177

You can find the full model number with the following command:

sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string

This will return something like:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2760QM CPU @ 2.40GHz

(found here: http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/15/get-cpu-info-via-command-line-in-mac-os-x/)

AlexT

Posted 2010-11-06T09:43:20.630

Reputation: 1 931

3This is the most accurate answer – João Nunes – 2014-07-01T17:46:19.053

9This is the right answer System information just tells you the processor brand. i7 is friggin useless! There are 4 generations of processors intel labeled i7 – Michael Brown – 2014-11-22T05:00:53.840

Is there a database of this info for various Mac models? Seems like for some reason Apple doesn't list this info in their sales materials. – Michael – 2015-03-11T05:09:06.523

Adding to @AlexT's answer,

open http://www.google.com/?q=$(sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string | awk '{FS=" " ; print $2 "+" $3 "+" $4}')+site:ark.intel.com

rbanffy

Posted 2010-11-06T09:43:20.630

Reputation: 248

4brilliant idea! – 比尔盖子 – 2015-09-02T12:01:59.803

Added it to https://gist.github.com/rbanffy/9c806ba406dba9a5afa324d0be3b8f13 for a more permanent presence.

– rbanffy – 2016-05-04T08:02:52.753

I added a bit more https://github.com/Haroenv/mac-processor-info

– Haroen Viaene – 2016-06-27T12:10:01.260

I didn't find any way to check it with software, but on this site: http://www.everymac.com you can find more details than system profiler provides (including cpu model)

Kamil Klimek

Posted 2010-11-06T09:43:20.630

Reputation: 3 929