The first yearly drop in average CPU performance in its 20 years of benchmarks
21 comments
·February 11, 2025sonofhans
crazygringo
> Their sample size has dropped dramatically since the previous year, from 100k to 25k for laptops and from 186k to 48k for desktops.
I suspect that's just an effect of 2025 data being limited to just ~January, rather than a full 12 months.
If people run a benchmark only once every 4 months on average, that would certainly explain the sample size.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
That's because many new Windows PCs have Snapdragon ARM processors which are slower than x86 processors (but have much better battery life).
etempleton
I wonder if there are a couple of trends that skew this data:
- 3D VCache: Are the X3D processors over represented on this benchmark?
- Focus on Battery Life: the latest mobile processors nearly double battery life with minimal increase in multicore performance.
Overall, CPUs are specializing a bit more than the past and that may be impacting the scores.
Havoc
That has got to be a data issue?
I can’t see many let alone a majority downgrading
lerp-io
it’s cuz developing countries are using more computers
Pannoniae
Could be several things, ranging from mundane to very concerning.
- People are downgrading their computers.
- Windows 11 is more bloated and slower, decreasing the test scores.
- All the security mitigations are making everything slower but they've been masked by hardware improvements in the past. Now there isn't much in terms of that so we start the slow descent to death.
citrin_ru
It could also mean that consumers are buying more budget models and less pro- ones. Given cost of living crisis (at least in Europe) it would not be surprising.
Eduard
why would consumers downgrade their systems?
taneq
- People buying new high end computers are no longer benchmarking them (at least with PassMark) while people buying lower end or second hand computers still do so
I know I haven’t bothered on my last two computers, partly because CPU performance is so far past what I need for most workloads, and partly because for the rest, I care about actual workload rather than synthetic benchmarks.
mtreis86
Performance per watt continues to increase tho
p1necone
I wonder how widespread the adoption of steam deck + clones has been amongst benchmark participants (very very good perf per watt, relatively middling absolute performance), that could explain a lot. Not sure where they would end up on the desktop vs laptop categorization.
Synaesthesia
For some time there was stagnation on the performance per watt metric. But ever since Apple dropped the M1 there has been a huge change.
2OEH8eoCRo0
Apple has unlimited money cheat codes. Buy newest/best node, move memory on package, ignore compatibility/longevity.
crazygringo
By this point, it feels like we ought to be benchmarking CPU+GPU. The same way it already seems to be measuring multi-core.
Maybe the drop is some kind of artifact. But it would also be interesting if it started making more sense to invest more in improving GPU's, even at the cost of CPU's, for a large part of the market.
crazygringo
> Or maybe Windows 11 is depressing performance scores versus Windows 10, especially as people transition to it with the upcoming demise of the latter.
Surely the stats track that internally?
This "mystery" seems like it should be easily solvable with some further category breakdowns -- how is the mix of hardware changing, how is the mix of OS's changing, is the change happening in some countries but not others.
johnklos
So other than Windows constantly and actively slowing down machines, we have dust collecting which then causes CPUs to throttle sooner... I'd be interested to see what the trend in average scores looks like for machines that don't otherwise change over time, although I can't imagine anyone would run Passmark every day or every week for a few years.
nicce
Not only Windows but all the software that counters hardware-level vulnerabilities. I bet those tests don’t disable them.
epicureanideal
I wonder if we need an inflation adjusted measure? Maybe this is CPU shrinkflation?
I don’t believe these numbers mean what they think. Their sample size has dropped dramatically since the previous year, from 100k to 25k for laptops and from 186k to 48k for desktops. Given that all the data comes from people choosing to run the benchmark, I wonder what population has suddenly left the data, and if that is significant.
Also consider that the CPU is only one component of this benchmark. The article itself says that Windows 11 performance is worse than Windows 10. This might be another instance of “What Andy [Grove] giveth, Bill [Gates] taketh away.”