how to find ghz and graphics card info

> So I can know if something will run or not

You won't find any (or, at least, many) modern MacOS apps that specify a particular clock rate, so the information isn't as useful as you might think. I think that's John Galt's meaning. He's not being glib.

In the PC world, there are about gazenty kabillion (a real number ;) ) permutations and combinations of hardware and its impossible for a software vendor to list them all, so the industry settled on a 'lowest common denominator' model, listing CPU clock speeds and GPU generation as a best-effort attempt to indicate performance - "You need a 3.5GHz Intel i7 processor with a NVIDIA 4xxx GPU to run this app", but the actuals are far more nuanced. No mention of AMD processors or GPUs, no mention of Intel GPUs, no idea whether a 3080-based GPU will work at all, or just at a lower frame rate, etc.

In the Mac world, Apple are the only player, and they generally release models on an annual basis. Along with the specific hardware models for that year, there's typically a corresponding OS release - Ventura, Sonoma, Tahoe, High Sierra, etc.

Since the number of permutations and combinations are much lower (and the variations within them are much smaller), it's easier for a developer to say you need either a minimum model year or a specific CPU (e.g. M1, M2, etc.) and an OS version (Sonoma/MacOS 14, Monterey/MacOS 12, etc.) and you have a solid sense that the application will run, without needing to know anything about clock rates, bus speeds, core counts, etc.

Newer systems (generally), will run better, but knowing the software calls for "Sonoma or later" means you're good to go.

The active CPU/GPU GHz stats are unavailable (and irrelevant) on Apple Silicon-based devices (those with an Apple M 1/2/3/4 processor).

That's in part due to the fact they dynamically scale based on several factors, including load, temperature, core counts, etc. as well as the fact that the Performance cores run at a different clock speed from the Efficiency cores, which makes it hard to come up with a single value.

Ostensibly, the M4 performance cores are spec'd at 4.3GHz, while the efficiency cores are 3GHz (IIRC), but that's just a line in the sand and doesn't mean anything as far as 'ability to process instructions' is concerned. Your effective speed may be higher or lower than that, on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis.

low_damage wrote:

I am a new Mac owner switching from PC, love it, but can you make it easy to find your ghz and graphics card info, all my google searches and everything doesn't help, I click on apple icon about and it just tells me the chip so I do system report and still can't find it, it shouldn't be this hard but since I am new I am giving the benefit of the doubt at the moment.

Now that Macs use Apple Silicon processors, the more relevant information is

• Processor generation – M1, M2, M3, M4, M5
• Processor level – Plain, Pro, Max, or Ultra
• Number of CPU cores
  • Number of "performance" CPU cores
  • Number of "efficiency" CPU cores
• Number of GPU cores

As a rule, all chips within a particular generation use similar, or identical, designs for "performance" CPU cores; for "efficiency" CPU cores; and for GPU cores. You can find information about clock speeds in MacTracker, but I can't think of any software vendor who refers to them when specifying minimum or recommended system requirements,

As you go from Plain to Pro to Max to Ultra, you get "more" of various types of computing units – especially "more" GPU cores. You also get more SoC <-> RAM bandwidth, to be able to feed all of those computing units. A plain M4 chip might have 10 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores – while a high-end M4 Max chip might have up to 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores.

It doesn't exactly answer your question but Geekbench is more useful for measuring relative performance than examining various parameters. In other words "ghz and graphics card info" is irrelevant and meaningless. Macs have always been that way.

Why?

What model Mac do you have?

It's not a PC.