PassMark Sees the First Yearly Drop In Average CPU Performance In Its 20 Years (tomshardware.com) 23
For the first time since 2004, PassMark's global CPU benchmark data shows a decline in average processor performance, with laptop CPUs dropping 3.4% and desktop CPUs falling 0.5% year-over-year. Tom's Hardware reports: We see the biggest drop in laptop CPU performance results. PassMark recorded an average result of 14,632 across 101,316 samples last year. But, in 2025, the average score sat at an average of 14,130 points between 25,541 samples, decreasing the average score by 3.4%. The average desktop PC result in 2024 netted 26,436 points for 186,053 samples. But for 2025, the average score currently sits at 26,311 points for over 47,810 samples -- a 0.5% drop from last year. While that drop is small, we should only see a continued progression of faster performance.
[...] Passmark itself mused on X (formerly Twitter) that it could be that people are switching to more affordable machines that deliver lower power and performance. Or maybe Windows 11 is depressing performance scores versus Windows 10, especially as people transition to it with the upcoming demise of the latter. We've certainly seen plenty of examples of reduced performance in gaming with some of the newer versions of Windows 11, particularly as Intel and AMD struggled to upstream needed updates into the OS. [...] PassMark also muses that bloatware could contribute to the sudden decline in performance, but that seems like a longshot.
[...] Passmark itself mused on X (formerly Twitter) that it could be that people are switching to more affordable machines that deliver lower power and performance. Or maybe Windows 11 is depressing performance scores versus Windows 10, especially as people transition to it with the upcoming demise of the latter. We've certainly seen plenty of examples of reduced performance in gaming with some of the newer versions of Windows 11, particularly as Intel and AMD struggled to upstream needed updates into the OS. [...] PassMark also muses that bloatware could contribute to the sudden decline in performance, but that seems like a longshot.
Reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally, computers have been "fast enough" for quite a while. Especially true for me, since everything runs Linux. So focus has been more on saving energy and being efficient. This is true especially on portable devices- to extend battery life and make machines smaller and lighter. But also true on desktops to cut heat and wasted energy. Even servers are affected somewhat (although there is usually always going to be demand for more and more performance on those).
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Four CPU threads and 8GB RAM
Still running Devuan Linux fine on my 2008 Dell with Core 2 Duo and 4GB RAM. I only had slowdowns when using Firefox with several standard tabs open because it has become even more of a resource hog.
But, the aging hardware is coming with small issues so now I'm thinking of buying a used Thinkpad T15, and an upgrade from 8 to 16 or maybe even splurge on 32 GB RAM while I'm at it. I could eliminate just about all swapping with zswap then.
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I think computers have been "way faster than anyone needs" for quite a while, now.
New CPUs are all simply fucking amazing.
I recently counseled a friend into getting a bargain bin CPU after demonstrating that no game known to man would be affected unless he turned off VSYNC and tried to test how many hundreds of frames per second he could get. His first impulse was to get an i9, to which I said, "why?"
There are of course plenty of things to do where a pers
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There are times when more CPU is needed. For example, for enterprise applications required for essential security for business like Crowdstrike and other MDRs, you need at least 1-2 cores dedicated to those, otherwise one winds up with a bottleneck. This doesn't mean you have to use i9s, but i7 is probably the best court, so users can have enough single core performance and multiple cores to do items, not to mention keeping enough headroom for future AI apps (MS Recall, etc.) RAM, similar. Those Chrome
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As you mention, RAM is the bigger bottleneck.
We found long ago that 8GB machines could have all the CPU in the world, their bottleneck is going to be the speed of their disk.
GPU- definitely not a bottleneck.
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It's only to run bloat (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of games and applications run fine. The only reason CPU hardware needed to increase as much as it has is simply that Windows and other applications started collecting more and more telemetry.
Excel even is a beast these days, but it's still an effing spreadsheet. You still cells and values in it. If you're not running mega spreadsheets, back in the day what you were using took 20 MB of ram, now just launching the program takes 100 MB. 5X as much, and that's still a relatively light weight application.
Browsers, what a nightmare of data collection. Early 2000s, watch videos, comment on forums. 2025. Watch videos, comment on forums. few hundred megabytes to gigabytes of ram, way more processing power.
And why? Exceptions are high def video and more, but for regular surfing? You're kidding me.
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The newer CPUs (Score:2)
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It's crazy that I now actively avoid pressing the start icon on Windows because it will take 5 seconds to settle down from it's "dynamic" loading of shit and shit ads.
99.9% of the time I open it I want to simply launch an application that is already installed. I don't want to search the internet, that's what my open browser with 100+ tabs is for. I don't want suggestions for software to install, I already have it installed. I don't need sports news I never asked for, the weather, which is on my phone, or an
Finally... (Score:1)
Maybe, finally, we are that the point where crummy bloatware developers are kicked to the curb and their pleas for mercy ignored, because users demand results now on the hardware they have.
New Laptop (Score:4, Insightful)
Sir, do you want the ten-hour or the sixteen-hour model?
Sixteen!
It could be up to 3% slower.
Don't care.
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Apple people) also value making the laptop yet another 0.5mm thinner forever. Smaller battery
You mean like the latest Macbook Pro and its 24-hour battery life?
Thin and light is a clear value proposition for a laptop. RAM and storage aren't going to add much weight or bulk nowadays. I'd rather go with a slightly bigger screen and better cooling, but passive cooling helps with reliability and battery life, not only noise. Apple's experience optimizing phone CPUs led to really power-efficient designs, so they don't need the kind of TDP that a typical x86 CPU has.
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The M1 MacBook Air is thin enough as it is. It's also fast enough, and the battery life is good enough. There isn't any point to faster unless you are doing 4K video. As soon as you press a key or click a button it's done. What more do you need? You used to click on something and have time to reach for the coffee cup while the PC was busy. Not anymore.
Memory and storage are the limiting factors now, and on a desktop USB ports.
All those speculative execution patches, probably (Score:2)
Seems like every month or so there is a new patch for a supposedly dire speculative execution vulnerability (that in reality, is not a concerning issue for 99.9% of users). These patches really do nothing but hurt performance in the name of protection, and it's probably a big part of why we're seeing this.
It's the number of cores (Score:3)
From the graph, the single-core performance is increasing year on year on both laptops and desktops. Yet the total performance (multithreaded) is lower. Meaning it's that people have bought laptops and desktops with fewer cores, not that people have selected the less powerful cores. But it's all speculation unless PassMark discloses more detailed data (e.g. sales of i9/R9 vs i5/R9, average number of cores, or average clock frequency)
I just don’t need it. (Score:2)
I don’t play games on a computer. I use my computer for work, and I’m a designer working entirely with 2D static graphics, so pretty much any laptop CPU on the market has more horsepower than I need. I’m doing fine with my M1 Mac. I do need 32 gigs of RAM to get through the day (because I’m lazy and don’t ever close anything) but that will last me for years until Adobe finally needs even more RAM just to keep Indesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop all running at once.
Win11 virtualization based security impact (Score:2)
Is more than 3%. VBS includes memory integrity checking.
I can't enable the feature to measure the impact, because of some old unsigned Firewire and MIDI device drivers, that prevent VBS from being turned on.