Did you know End of an Era? CPU Performance Drops in 2025—What’s Really Happening?

 

According to new data from PassMark Software, which has offered PC benchmark testing tools since 1998, average CPU performance has started to decline with every new model that comes. Many of us would assume that when we buy the latest computer, they will have faster performance but this isn’t the case, according to the data. PassMark submitted a graph about average performance of CPUs over the course of 20 years and it was found that average CPU performance did climb up a lot in the past two decades, but suddenly started declining from 2024 to 2025.  

PassMark tweeted that this is the first time in history that CPU performance is about to drop in 2025. They also said that most of the people are ready to buy cheaper hardware because they do not find it important to invest in a more powerful hardware. The data also revealed that performance benchmarks are based on PCs with no more than 8 cores and the same amount of people are using 8 cores as they were doing in 2020.

AMD's 96-core Threadripper PRO 7995WX which was from 2023 is the most powerful chip on the desktop side. Many of the chip makers like Intel and AMD are now focusing on AI applications and power efficiency rather than raw CPU performance with low power CPU cores. Intel’s latest desktop chips have also removed hyper-threading but the latest PC chips still offer year-over-year improvements in processing power. Now we have to wait and see whether this decline in CPU power is just for a short while or if it’s going to become long term. PassMark also says that users using Windows 10 and 11 can also be a factor for the performance decline but it will change as Microsoft is going to end its support on Windows 10 soon.