[HN Gopher] The average CPU performance of PCs and notebooks fel...
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       The average CPU performance of PCs and notebooks fell for the first
       time
        
       Author : doener
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2025-02-12 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cpubenchmark.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cpubenchmark.net)
        
       | cluckindan wrote:
       | Hyperthreading and speculative execution are going out of
       | fashion?
       | 
       | Now if we could just get rid of fake frames on the GPU side.
        
       | noizejoy wrote:
       | Price increases due to multiple factors from higher interest
       | rates to trade wars, etc. are tempering the financial enthusiasm
       | of customers to buy at the higher end, maybe?
        
       | FollowingTheDao wrote:
       | Moore's law crushed by capitalism? Does anyone else have a better
       | explanation?
        
         | Gigachad wrote:
         | Most likely explanation is that we are comparing 1 months worth
         | of data for 2025 to the full years worth on previous years. The
         | laptops people will have over 2025 haven't been purchased yet.
        
         | dgfitz wrote:
         | I am super curious, if you'll indulge me. What kind of economic
         | policy would have let Moores law continue as it had been?
         | Conversely, do you think Moores law would have been faster than
         | 18? months if... someone else identified Moores law? Slower?
         | Exist at all?
        
       | slyall wrote:
       | Discussion from a day or so ago. 59 comments:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43017612
        
       | RachelF wrote:
       | I wonder why? Some possibilities:
       | 
       | 1. Extra silicon area being used by NPUs and TPUs instead of
       | extra performance?
       | 
       | 2. Passmark runs under Windows, which is probably using
       | increasing overhead with newer versions?
       | 
       | 3. Fixes for speculative execution vulnerabilities?
       | 
       | 4. Most computers are now "fast enough" for the average user, no
       | need to buy top end.
       | 
       | 5. Intel's new CPUs are slower than the old ones
        
         | dehrmann wrote:
         | 4 has been true for over a decade.
        
           | kome wrote:
           | i use a 10 years old macbook air and honestly i can do
           | everything i need, statistics, light programming, browsing
           | and photo editing. perfect.
           | 
           | i wait it to break before moving on, changing for the sake to
           | changing feels like waste.
        
             | skyyler wrote:
             | I use a 10 years old macbook pro and the only thing I
             | dislike is the battery life and the heat generated.
             | 
             | I simply can't afford the replacement 16" MBP right now.
             | Hopefully it lasts another couple of years.
        
           | gotoeleven wrote:
           | Literally the only reason you need a computer less than 10
           | years old for day to day tasks is to keep up with the layers
           | of javascript that are larded onto lots of websites. It's
           | sad.
           | 
           | Edit: oh and electron apps. Sweet lord, shouldnt we have
           | learned in the 90s with java applets that you shouldnt use a
           | garbage collected language for user interfaces?
        
         | dbtc wrote:
         | Programmers failing to manufacture sufficient inefficiency to
         | force upgrade.
        
         | jamesy0ung wrote:
         | > 1. Extra silicon area being used by NPUs and TPUs instead of
         | extra performance?
         | 
         | I'm not an expert in silicon design, but I recall reading that
         | there's a limit to how much power can be concentrated in a
         | single package due to power density constraints, and that's why
         | they are adding fluff instead of more cores.
         | 
         | >2. Passmark runs under Windows, which is probably using
         | increasing overhead with newer versions?
         | 
         | This is a huge problem as well. I have a 2017 15" MacBook Pro
         | and it's a decent computer, except it is horribly sluggish
         | doing anything on it, even opening Finder. That is with a fresh
         | install of macOS 13.7.1. If I install 10.13, it is snappy. If I
         | bootcamp with Windows 11, it's actually quite snappy as well
         | and I get 2 more hours of battery life somehow despite Windows
         | in bootcamp not being able to control (power down) the dGPU
         | like macOS can. Unfortunately I hate Windows, and Linux is very
         | dodgy on this Mac.
        
       | wiredfool wrote:
       | As the chart is updated bi-weekly, but the data point that may
       | change is for the current year. The first few days or weeks of a
       | new year are less accurate compared to the end of a year.
        
         | moffkalast wrote:
         | January 2024:
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20240123174954/https://www.cpube...
         | 
         | January 2023:
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20230130185431/https://www.cpube...
         | 
         | Still, both previous years were notably up after the first
         | month already. This _is_ different and perhaps notable
         | regardless. Either the release schedule is skewed forward or
         | the hardware is genuinely stagnating. Or perhaps the benchmark
         | is hitting some other CPU unrelated bottleneck.
        
         | ellisv wrote:
         | Really makes you wish the chart showed some measure of variance
        
       | vladms wrote:
       | People got smarter and buy only what they need?
        
       | ZiiS wrote:
       | :shrug: CPU performance is a rounding error on your GPU and RAM
       | bottlenecks.
        
         | Osiris wrote:
         | The GPU being a bottleneck over the CPU is only in very
         | specific scenarios.
         | 
         | Can you be more specific about what message you're trying to
         | convey?
        
       | Osiris wrote:
       | Looking at the top end chart, which flat lined, it seems that the
       | biggest contributor would be a slower release cycle of the most
       | performant chips. It looks like the score of the top end chips
       | were dragging up the average. With the top spot not changing, the
       | average is falling.
       | 
       | I'm curious what median and std dev look like.
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-12 23:00 UTC)