The Reality of Processors: Why Your Old PC Might Be Good Enough

It's a fact of life that, wherever you go, someone is always trying to sell you something. Whether it's a brand hyping up their latest 1.21 gigahertz CPU or a so-called influencer rubbing your face in a brand new gaming setup that you would have to save for years to afford, the sales pitch is always there. But I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. You don't have to buy anything.

In fact, I bet the old crappy quad-core PC that you already have is good enough for anything you'd need it to do. And if it's not, you could get one of those for much cheaper than the fancy eight or 16 core CPUs that all the big players want you to buy. Let me show you, after I show you today's sponsor, GlassWire.

Are you lagging out while gaming? Use GlassWire to see what apps are wasting your bandwidth and causing your games to lag. Get 25% off using offer code Linus at the link below. And yes, I appreciate the irony.

Over the years, there have been many popular four-core CPUs that have come and gone. There have been many popular four-core CPUs over the last 10 years, and we can't test all of them, but we do have a handful, dating from today all the way back to early 2013. We've used an RTX 2080 Founders Edition for all of our tests, and we ran our gaming tests at 1080P, so more of the burden will be on the CPU rather than the GPU.

I don't wanna waste your time, so let's jump right into the results. Wow, look at that! I mean, it sure is easy to show you what a piece of crap your old 4770k is, isn't it? The 3300X, which represents a modern quad-core CPU, manages to beat it handily, and stepping up to six or eight cores, especially with the 5800X, which features AMD's latest Zen-3 architecture, is gonna deliver a completely different computing experience. That is, as long as you actually use any of these applications.

The truth of the matter is that the benchmarks that we and other members of the tech press use to compare processors are not chosen for how representative they are of the typical user's daily workload. Rather, they're often chosen because they allow us to demonstrate how their performance differs for heavy users, or in future workloads that might not be mainstream yet, but we expect them to be at some point down the road.

Like, there's a pretty good chance that you personally have never fired up V-Ray or Cinema 4D. There's a good chance you don't edit or encode videos. So, if we flashed these charts in front of you, you could easily end up spending a lot of money for something that you might never need. Even file decompression, which this is something that we all do often when we unpack a download from the internet and is a poster child for the benefits of multi-core CPU's, well, it's a relatively light workload these days, and most decompression tasks will complete in seconds on any of the CPU's on this chart. So, does it really matter the two or three times a week that it comes up, if it's 25 seconds or 45 seconds?

It's time for the other side of this coin. While our Cinebench R23 single thread benchmark results are clear, they don't tell the whole story. What about your daily use case? Are you a gamer who only plays at 1080P and never touches anything beyond that resolution? Do you edit videos or encode files on a regular basis?

If so, then maybe, just maybe, you need one of those fancy multi-core CPUs. But if not, then what's the point? The truth is, most people don't need all that power in their CPU. And even for heavy users, it's often a matter of choosing between different priorities. Do you want to spend your money on a fast CPU or a powerful GPU? Or do you want to invest in other areas of your computer, like RAM or storage?

The bottom line is that processors are just one part of the equation when it comes to building a powerful computer. And sometimes, even with all the bells and whistles, the results might not be as dramatic as we'd expect. But hey, at least you can say you tried, right?

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- It's a fact of lifethat, wherever you go,someone is always tryingto sell you something.Whether it's a brand hyping uptheir latest 1.21 gigahertz CPU,or a so-called influencerrubbing your facein a brand new gaming setupthat you would have tosave for years to afford,for the third time this week.But I'm gonna let youin on a little secret.Come on, come over here.You don't have to buy anything.In fact, I bet the old crappy quad-core PCthat you already have is good enoughfor anything you'd need it to do.And if it's not, you could getone of those for much cheaperthan the fancy eight or 16 core CPUsthat all the big players want you to buy.Let me show you,after I show you today'ssponsor, GlassWire.Are you lagging out while gaming?Use GlassWire to see what appsare wasting your bandwidthand causing your games to lag.Get 25% off using offer codeLinus at the link below.And yes, I appreciate the irony.(upbeat music)There have been many popular four coreCPUs over the...(metal thudding)(crew laughing)There have been manypopular four-core CPUsover the last 10 years, andwe can't test all of them,but we do have a handful,dating from today all theway back to early 2013.We've used an RTX 2080 Founders Editionfor all of our tests,and we ran our gaming tests at 1080P,so more of the burden will be on the CPUrather than the GPU.I don't wanna waste your time,so let's jump right into theresults where, whoo-whee!Wow, look at that.I mean, it sure is easy to show youwhat a piece of crap yourold 4770k is, isn't it?The 3300X, which representsa modern quad-core CPU,manages to beat it handily,and stepping up to six or eight cores,especially with the 5800X,which features AMD'slatest Zen-3 architecture,is gonna delivera completely differentcomputing experience.that is, as long as you actually useany of these applications.The truth of the matteris that the benchmarksthat we and other membersof the tech press useto compare processors are not chosenfor how representative they areof the typical user's daily workload.Rather, they're oftenchosen because they allow usto demonstrate how theirperformance differsfor heavy users, or in future workloadsthat might not be mainstream yet,but we expect them to be atsome point down the road.Like, there's a pretty goodchance that you personallyhave never fired up V-Ray or Cinema 4D.There's a good chance youdon't edit or encode videos.So, if we flashed thesecharts in front of you,you could easily end upspending a lot of moneyfor something that you might never need.Even file decompression,which this is somethingthat we all do oftenwhen we unpack a downloadfrom the internetand is a poster child for thebenefits of multi-core CPU's,well, it's a relativelylight workload these days,and most decompression taskswill complete in secondson any of the CPU's on this chart.So, does it really matterthe two or three times a weekthat it comes up, if it's25 seconds or 45 seconds?It's time for the other side of this coin.While our Cinebench R23single thread, web browsing,\"Grand Theft Auto V\", and\"CS:GO\" results demonstratethat there are certainlybenefits to modern processors,the addition of more coresisn't the biggest one.And check this out.If we covered the legendon these \"Assassin'sCreed: Valhalla\" results,you'd be hard pressed to guess which CPU'shave four, six, or eight cores.Go ahead and try.But hold on a second, Linus,everyone knows that FPS and action gamesare still dependent onjust a handful of threads.You need to test strategy gamesthat can use a multi-core CPU to calculateall the possible AI moves or whatever.And yeah, someday that willprobably be a valid point,but it is not this day.And we did a quick \"Civilization VI\" runon our Zen-2 CPUs todemonstrate that point.Now, with the latest genconsoles from the big playersfeaturing eight core, 16 thread CPUs now,we are going to see developers really pushto take advantage of everythingthey can squeeze out of them,but if history is anything to go on,it'll be a while before we see a gamethat was really built from the ground upfor this generation of hardware,and it'll be years before wesee these many-core designsused to their fullest potential,which doesn't mean our videois over, not even close.I haven't even mentioned LTTstore.com,with its great designs andhigh quality shirts yet.The thing is game consolesdo pretty much one thing:They game, but your PC couldbe doing any number of things,capturing video from your webcam,removing ambient noisefrom your microphone feed,encoding a stream to sharewith your friends or viewers.What happens to our quad-core performancewhen we throw commonbackground tasks into the mix?So, let's fire up Premiere.We're not working on it rightnow, it's just sitting there.We're gonna need Discord,little bit of OBS,stream that gameplay, right?And love me some backgroundYouTube music playlist action.All right, let's do this again.Despite the fact that we hadall of this extra softwareopen in the background,none of our CPUs performed in a waythat I would describe as being unplayable.Our older four-core chips did strugglesignificantly more in \"CS:GO\"with all of these programs running,with the 4770k actually losingnearly half of its performance,but that still left it atover 120 frames per second,and that would more thangood enough for most people,unless they're especiallycompetitive, in which case,guys, turn off yourbackground tasks, all right?And moving to our moremodern quad-core 3300X,it lost only a marginallyhigher percentageof its performance when comparedto the eight-core 5800X.In \"GTA V\", the performancehit was even more negligible.What this tells us then is that,sure, if you have more overhead overall,there will be less to worryabout when you open extra appsif you have a many-core CPU,but as long as you're not gonna be running30 pieces of software whileyou're running your gameand expecting to get the maximum FPS,you're still gonna get acompletely playable experience.But there are other advantagesto overbuilding a gaming rig,particularly with modern AMD processors.If you allocate four of your coresexclusively to your game,and this is something you can do manually,or there are tools to helpyou do it, theoretically,it could help smooth out the experience,both by removing extraclutter from background taskson those cores, and by havingall of the game tasks runningon the same physical group ofcores for faster cache access,at least in theory.In practice, we didn't observenearly as much differenceas we expected, but some users on Reddithave reported measurableperformance improvements,particularly in \"CS:GO\"with first-gen Ryzen chips,so your mileage may vary.The truth is, thought, thatif you don't have a fortuneto spend on a gaming PC, that's okay.A chip from 2013 may comewith unpatched security flawsthat have scary nameslike Spectre and Meltdown,and Microsoft warns thatolder platforms experience52% more kernel modecrashes in Windows 11,but real talk, Spectre andMeltdown are only of concernto enterprise and businesscustomers, for the most part.And 52% more than 0.2% is 0.3%.That sounds like a risk worth taking,when a 4770K can be had forabout a hundred bucks on eBay.There is still the questionof whether it's wiseto buy into aging technology like DDR3when older Ryzen 3000 chipscan be had for not much more,but that one is just gonna come downto your individual budget,which we have no way of knowing.What we do know is thatfour cores is still enough,unless you actually needextra multi-core gruntfor content creation orfor non-gaming workloads.Just like you need to checkout this sponsor message.Thanks, Ting Mobile, forsponsoring this video.Ting Mobile has new ratesthat make it easier than everto see how much you can save by switching.They've got unlimited talkand text for just $10,data plans starting at $15,with their Set 12 plan,which includes 12 gigsof data for $35 a monthand unlimited data for 45 a month.And if you liked their previouspay for only what you useplans, they're still around.They're called TingMobile's flex plans now,and they charge just $5 a gig.Data can even be sharedif you have a family plan,so you can connect morephones to save more.Anyone who signs up fora Ting plan in September,it gets entered to win one of fourTing-branded Yeti prize packs,and everyone who signsup for an unlimited planautomatically receives afree Yeti tumbler as well.So, check out the detailsat linus.ting.com.Oh, and you'll also get $25 incredit towards your account.If you guys enjoyed this video,maybe check out our Ryzen 5000 review,which has a bit moredetail about how taskspinned to certain CPU corescan have a performance benefit.\n"