How fast is your CPU? All Intel and AMD CPUs: PassMark scores from 2001 to today

Why this table?

Since 2010 I kept a table with the speed of Intel CPUs on my old blog (in Dutch), from the Pentium 4 to the Core i7. It was popular for years, because you simply look up your own CPU and see right away how it compares with a newer model.

This is the updated version for 2026: Intel and AMD are combined in one table, desktop and laptop mixed, from 2001 to today. You can see at a glance whether a Ryzen is faster than a Core i5, and how much faster a new laptop is than your old one. For comparison: the fastest CPU in the table is 542 times as fast as the 2001 Pentium 4. The chart below shows the fastest desktop and laptop CPU per year from the table, with the highest score for all cores (green bars) and for one core (blue line). Want to know which CPU you need first? Then also read Which CPU do you need for your PC or laptop?

How to read the table

• All cores (PassMark score): the CPU Mark from PassMark, a benchmark that tests how fast a CPU computes with all its cores at once. The higher, the faster. A score twice as high means roughly twice the computing power.
• One core (single-core): PassMark’s Single Thread Rating. It tests how fast one core of the CPU computes. Click “One core” above the table to rank the CPUs by that score.
• Type: desktop (a regular PC) or laptop. Mini PCs usually use a laptop CPU, so you will find those under laptop.
• Year: roughly the year the CPU came on the market.
• TDP: how much heat, and so roughly how much power, the CPU gives off in normal use, in watts. The lower, the more efficient and quieter.
• Orange bar: the CPU scores below 8,000 points.
• F or KF after the name: such a version (e.g. i5-12400F or i9-14900KF) has no built-in graphics, but computes just as fast. They are not listed separately: just look up the model without the F.

For laptops the score is not the whole story: two laptops with the same CPU can perform differently, because a thin laptop cools less well and the CPU then slows down.

All cores or one core: which score matters most for you?

A modern CPU has several cores: small computing units that can work at the same time. That is why the table shows two scores.

One core decides how responsive your PC feels. Much of what you do every day can only run on one or a few cores at a time: loading a website, opening a program, typing in Word, calculating in Excel or browsing your email. The program keeps waiting for the previous step, so extra cores sit idle. In games, too, the speed of one or a few cores matters most.

All cores decides how fast heavy work goes that can be split up well: converting or editing videos, processing large batches of photos, 3D rendering or running many programs at once. Then all cores work together.

Note: a CPU with many slow cores can score higher on "all cores" than a CPU with fewer but faster cores, while the second one feels quicker in everyday use. If you mainly use your PC for the web, email and Office, look mostly at the single-core score. If you edit videos or use heavy software, look mostly at the all-cores score.

The chart "CPU performance evolution" at the top shows how both scores evolved: until around 2016 both scores rise gradually. From 2017 the all-cores score shoots up, because CPUs got many more cores (up to 16 and more), while the single-core score keeps rising steadily. Since 2001 the fastest desktop CPU has become about 15 times faster on one core, and more than 500 times faster with all cores together.

Since 2022, however, desktops have slowed down considerably. From 2017 to 2022 the fastest desktop CPU became almost four times faster with all cores, from 2022 to 2026 only 16% (11% on one core). Desktops are hitting a limit of power consumption and heat. Laptops are still making big leaps: since 2022 the fastest laptop CPU became 2.3 times faster with all cores and 41% faster on one core. They are catching up with desktops, because the same technology now fits in a laptop and Intel and AMD are focusing more and more on efficiency. The average desktop of PassMark users is barely getting faster either: less than 1% in 2026 compared to 2025.

My advice

If your CPU scores below 8,000 points (orange bar), I recommend upgrading. I do assume you have at least 8 GB of memory and an SSD.

If you have a desktop with a CPU from 2022 or later, there is no urgent reason to upgrade. The newest models are only 10 to 20% faster on one core, and you will hardly notice that for the web, email and Office. Moreover, a new CPU usually also means a new motherboard and new memory. Only the cheapest models from that time, such as the Celeron G6900 and the Pentium Gold G7400, score below 8,000 points. For those, upgrading does make sense.

My tip from 2010 still holds: an SSD makes more difference than a faster CPU. A PC with an old hard drive feels slow, however fast the CPU is. If you still have a hard drive, replace that first.

Is your CPU not listed?

This is how to find out which CPU you have:

• Windows: right-click the Start button and choose System. Under Device specifications, next to "Processor", you see the name, for example "Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8250U".
• Mac: click the Apple menu and choose About This Mac. Macs with an Apple chip (M1 and later) are not in this table, because those chips are not made by Intel or AMD.

Then type the name in the search box above the table. If it is not in the table, you still get its score from the full PassMark list of more than 6,000 CPUs. You can also browse PassMark's full lists yourself: the Intel list and the AMD list. You can compare the scores there directly with this table.

Test your own PC

Want to know what your own PC or laptop scores? You can find out with PassMark PerformanceTest, which you can try free for 30 days.

1. Download PerformanceTest via the link above, install it and start the program.
2. Close other programs first, so they don't slow down the test.
3. Start the CPU Mark test. After a few minutes you get your score.
4. Compare that score with the table above. Your own score can be a bit lower or higher than the average in the table, depending on your PC's cooling and settings.

Sources

• PassMark CPU Benchmarks: CPU Mega Page (scores retrieved on November 11, 2026)
• PassMark: list of all Intel CPUs
• PassMark: list of all AMD CPUs
• PassMark: Year on Year Performance (average scores per year, retrieved on November 14, 2026)
• Cover photo: TechRadar
• My original 2010 article (Dutch)