I always thought bigger number = better in the terms of pc components. Recently ive learned i5s can compete with i9s. I saw a post one day that said “i could replace your processors with i3’s and almost none of you would even notice”
How does this work?
In: Technology
It depends on if your workload actually uses that much CPU power or not. Web browsing, video watching, typical office work, etc, uses very little resources. All else equal, an i3 and an i9 would probably not perform *noticeably* different in these workloads. *Measurably* different probably, but not noticeably so.
High workloads such as gaming or video production, is a different matter, but still a complicated answer. If your game was heavily GPU limited, there may be very little performance gain from using a powerful CPU, as all that potential is wasted on waiting for your GPU.
Heavily multithreaded workloads should see massive benefits from something like an i9 vs an i3, as i9 processors have way more cores and threads.
And ALL of this is assuming we’re talking about the same generation of CPUs. A modern i3 probably *CAN* outperform an old i7/i9 from a decade ago.
**TL;DR If your workload can’t actually use the higher performance of an i9, then yes an i3/i5 could compete with it.**
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