For much of the 2010s, we were stuck with mainly dual-core and quad-core CPUs in PCs. However the arrival of Ryzen shook the PC industry, causing a rapid increase in core counts. At the time, there was fervent discussion on this matter, with many questioning if more cores were worth it, and how many cores are more than enough?
So how do things stand today? The latest Intel and AMD consumer processors top out at 24 and 16 cores respectively. What extent of modern software can take advantage of all those cores? What modern workloads are still bottlenecked by single threaded performance?
depends on your usage, for gaming single thread is still king, but for tasks like video editing and 3d rendering, multithreading is crucial. everyone has different needs!
Single thread is far more important these days
Yes, but that’s starting from 6 cores.
Because 2 cores are not enough even if they are Raptor Cove 6 GHz cores.
In the sense that we take having 6 or 8 cores for granted
depends on your specific use case and the software you’re running. for gaming, single-threaded performance is still key, but for tasks like video editing and rendering, multi-threaded performance is crucial. it all comes down to what you need your CPU to do!
depends on your specific use case and the software you’re running. different workloads benefit from different performance metrics.
Once you reach a certain number of cores (~6-8) it depends on the workload.
Windows/File Explorers/Browsers/Games/General Use are all better off with single thread performance at this amount of cores.
Multimedia/Editing/Rendering/etc are better off with even more cores.
There is a balance between the two which nobody can solidly answer since it varies by use case.
for me, it really depends on what you’re using your PC for. for my music production and video editing, multi-threaded performance is key. but for everyday stuff like web browsing, single-threaded performance matters too. different strokes for different folks, i guess!
Single-core is more important for 99% of normal consumers. Most office productivity apps or web browsers are only lightly threaded.
Also, scaling cores efficiently is hard both in software and in hardware. 10 cores at 1x performance are going to be a lot more efficiently used than 20 cores at 0.5x performance.
First statement is definitely true, second statement is generally true but is super software and implementation dependent. Generally the issue isn’t fast vs slow cores it’s keeping all of those cores fed with data with memory and the OS scheduler handling events that makes a larger difference.
Obviously software makes the biggest difference of all in how many threads it allocates and where. This is an especially difficult issue as optimizing software for a server and for say a gaming PC are totally different problems with different optimal solutions
Once you reach a certain number of cores (~6-8) it depends on the workload.
Windows/File Explorers/Browsers/Games/General Use are all better off with single thread performance at this amount of cores.
Multimedia/Editing/Rendering/etc are better off with even more cores.
There is a balance between the two which nobody can solidly answer since it varies by use case.
As everyone has mentioned most programmes only work on single cores but what people haven’t mentioned it multiple cores allow you to run multiple programmes at the same time without suffering performance issues (from the cpu, memory or disk could bottleneck)
Depends on what you are doing but I think as a general do it all the 7800X3D is pretty good, good single-core and multi-core performance. If you want to do some productivity is good at that and it’s greaet for gaming on. If you want to do productivity only the Intel i9 is pretty good but the new Threadrippers are even better but if you just want to game the 7800X3D is going to be better for that and it’s really efficient in power.
Depends.
Microsoft uses saphire rapids (cpu that got smoked in reviews) couse it has better single core performance for their AI servers. You will find a case for CPU.
For PC depends on your workload. If you are doing normal stuff + gaming just buy this or last gen i5/r5. No need to waste money.
You will have more single and multi thread performance than you need.Probably (it widely depends), it’s very useful to increase core counts to about 8 cores in most cases. After that, the actual practical returns are greatly diminished. So, moving from 8 to 16 grants only 15-20% better performance, etc.
I would much rather take 8 cores with Zen 5 performance per clock and frequency of 8 GHz rather than 128 cores with Zen 1 performance per clock and (all-core) frequency of 3.8 GHz. In a vast majority of workloads, the former would outperform the latter.
Zen 5 performance per clock and frequency of 8 GHz
May the Liquid Nitrogen be with you!
depends on your specific use case and the software you’re running. different workloads benefit from different performance metrics.
For gaming: single threaded performance is usually better to prioritize.
For everyday use (web browsers, etc): both, but generally prioritize single threaded performance first. Multithreaded performance is usually already more than good enough on modern chips that have fast single threaded performance.
For heavier workflows: multithreaded performance is usually better to prioritize (particularly on workloads that inherently use a lot of threads). Single threaded performance still matters, but most modern CPUs are good enough on this front.
For gaming: single threaded performance is usually better to prioritize.
For everyday use (web browsers, etc): both, but generally prioritize single threaded performance first. Multithreaded performance is usually already more than good enough on modern chips that have fast single threaded performance.
For heavier workflows: multithreaded performance is usually better to prioritize (particularly on workloads that inherently use a lot of threads). Single threaded performance still matters, but most modern CPUs are good enough on this front.