How do modern CPUs keep getting faster with each generation if clock speed is not increasing?

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Processors have been stuck in the 2-5 GHz range for basically a decade, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get any faster. My question is, how does their speed keep getting faster, if the clock speed isn’t getting faster?

Example: The Ryzen 7 5800X (based off leaked benchmarks) is somewhere around 20% faster than the Ryzen 9 3900X for single-core benchmarks. How is a jump of this size possible without increasing clock speed? I’m sure they did increase clocks a little bit for the upcoming generation, but not by 20%.

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

In ELI5 terms, newer processors do more things in parallel. More cores, more cache, better algorithms etc etc means new processors do more stuff per clock cycle than older ones.

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