First off, you are not going to get the processor microarchitecture name (Broadwell, Sandy Lake, Ivy Bridge, etc.) because it's not a prominent branding scheme for the Intel processors. Contrast that with Apple, the marketing department chooses to actively market the code names of their operatings systems (Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan). It's a marketing convention, not a technical one.For a list of all Intel Processors and their codenames, architectures and specs, has a good page.So, to answer this question, I am going to provide three methods to find out what CPU you have, the first two, which should be good for most users, and a third method in which you can determine the microarchitecture number so you can look it up on Intel's support site.
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You can 'jump' to the section that applies to you. About this Mac (general CPU info).
![Cpu-z For Macos Cpu-z For Macos](/uploads/1/2/6/5/126525164/658639297.jpg)
System Profiler (general CPU info). Terminal (detailed CPU info)About this MacClicking on the Apple symbol at the top of your screen, select About this MacYou will get a screen that gives you an overview of your system. Your processor will be listed here.System ProfilerClicking on the button marked System Report.
(green arrow) you get a complete profile of your system. On the first page, it will give you more detailed info about your machine, including processor infoTerminalI am a fan of Terminal in general. Pretty much everything you see in the GUI in OS X can be accessed quicker and more accurately through the command line, IMHO.To get the exact CPU model including the microarchitecture number, in Terminal, execute the following command: sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brandstringYou will get the exact processor that you are using. @NumLock Oh, not having the architecture name is to be expected (I don't think the CPU actually reports as the code name, so the OS would have to keep an up-to-date database.). The model number is enough to easily and uniquely identify the architecture, so IMO that counts. But the non-Terminal options here don't even provide the model number; trying to guess which CPU it is (and its performance, efficiency, etc.) by just the core count and clock speed (is it base clock or max turbo boost?) is inaccurate and generally a bad idea.–May 19 '16 at 7:19. The terminal option is the only useful thing in this answer.
If I asked someone what CPU they were testing on, and they said 'Core i7', all I'd know is that it was a Nehalem (2008) or newer. There are huge differences between Nehalem and Sandybridge, and important differences from SnB to Haswell to Skylake. You should remove the other options to not encourage people to give useless answers when people ask them what microarchitecture their CPU has. The model number is great, because you can tell at a glance from the first digit what microarch it is, or google for full details.–May 19 '16 at 13:57. You still suggest two useless methods that don't tell you the model number, only 'i7', and you suggest them first. You don't make it clear that the terminal way is the only one that lets you answer the OP's question.
The 'About' and 'System Profiler' stuff appears to be just a waste of time. Even worse, the red arrow pointing at 'processor info' implies that 'Core i7' is a valid answer to the 'what microarchitecture do I have' question. It's too bad there isn't a GUI way that gives a satisfactory answer, but there isn't.–May 19 '16 at 16:22. The CPU has its own model number string built in. Software can run with the right parameters to copy the string into registers.
The string will be something like ' Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz'. You can get it from the command-line with sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brandstringI don't actually know OS X. I'm answering this as someone who is often frustrated by benchmark numbers in SO answers that don't mention the hardware.
On Linux, some distros ship lscpu and/or x86info, but neither of them decode the model number into an Intel code-name either. The numbers follow a pattern, so it's fairly easy to decode (see below).None of the existing answers have mentioned any GUI method that gives the model number. All the GUI methods just show you 'Core i7', which is nowhere near sufficient.
Please don't tell people you have 'a core i7', because that just wastes everyone's time.' I7' could be anything from Nehalem to Skylake. There are huge differences between Nehalem and Sandybridge, and important differences from SnB to Haswell to Skylake.If someone asks you what microarchitecture you ran your benchmark on, the model string from that is a great reply containing more information than just the microarchitecture name, so just copy&paste it to them (e.g. 'i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz').Most people who ask you that will know how to decode model numbers, so don't feel like you need to summarize it or look it up for them. I'd much rather someone copy/pasted the exact model number, since I can google it to find out details like cache size. ( has a page for each model, and those usually come up high in google's search results. However, those don't use the codenames).
i3/i5/i7 xxx ( 3 digits) is or (identical performance, so it doesn't matter). i3/i5/i7 2xxx or Xeon E3/E5 XXXX v1 is. i3/i5/i7 3xxx or Xeon E3/E5 XXXX v2 is.
i3/i5/i7 4xxx or Xeon E3/E5 XXXX v3 is. i3/i5/i7 5xxx or Xeon E3/E5 XXXX v4 is. i3/i5/i7 6xxx or Xeon E3/E5 XXXX v5 isThere are 'Pentium' and 'Celeron' models of each microarchitecture, but they have AVX disabled so people only use them for ultra-budget machines.The 'i7 extreme' CPUs are an exception to this. I7-5960X is still Haswell, but is 8 core (16 hyperthreads) with quad-channel memory. IDK if Apple sells any machines with such CPUs.Wikipedia has excellent tables of model numbers for each microarchitecture. You can google x5690 wikipedia to quickly find that a Xeon X5690 is a processor.To learn more about the differences between the pipelines of various microarchitectures, see articles like this.
Even the Wikipedia articles are not bad.For a more technical CPU architecture point of view, see and writeups.is excellent if you're analyzing / tuning assembly language (or compiler output), e.g. Trying to make sense of perf counters.Intel's and AMD's optimization manuals also have some microarchitectural details, but don't always explain their asm optimization suggestions with analysis of how the microarchitecture operates.
This is why I prefer Agner Fog's guide.Also see the, which I've expanded/improved a lot in the past year. Gcc or clang -march=native can print a code-name for you, because the names of the tuning options match Intel's uarch codenames (e.g. For AMD: -march=bdver2 = Piledriver = Bulldozer version 2. Clang-3.5 -v -xc /dev/null -O3 -march=native -o- -E 2&1 grep -o 'target-cpu w.' On my Linux Core2 system prints: target-cpu core2. I assume it will do something similar on OS X.
Gcc -v -xc /dev/null -O3 -march=native -o- -E 2&1 grep -o 'arch=w.' on my Linux Core2 system prints: arch=nativearch=core2. @Bob: IDK, I don't even own a Mac! I got here from the 'hot network questions' sidebar.
Many Unix programs are distributed in source form, so some people will have a C compiler on their Mac, even if you don't program at all, or not in C. (Some perl modules come with C to be compiled, for example.) Anyway, this answer was mostly targeted at people that use gcc or clang on their Mac fairly regularly, but aren't Intel hardware experts. It's possible to be a programmer without being a hardware geek.–May 24 '16 at 3:07.
CPU-Z gives you information such as processor name and vendor, core stepping and process, processor package, internal and external clocks, clock multiplier, partial overclock detection, and processor features including supported instructions sets. This software supports detection of the processor's core voltage, L2 bus width, support for two processors (in Windows NT or 2000 only), and memory timing (CAS Latency, RAS to CAS, RAS Precharge). CPU Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your Windows system. Awesome for Windows PC!CPU.
Name and number. Core stepping and process. Package.
Core voltage. Internal and external clocks, clock multiplier. Supported instruction sets.
Cache information.Mainboard. Vendor, model and revision.
BIOS model and date. Chipset (northbridge and southbridge) and sensor.
Graphic interface.Memory. Frequency and timings. Module(s) specification using SPD (Serial Presence Detect): vendor, serial number, timings table.System. Windows and DirectX version.Also Available.
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