why does CPUs/CPU cores seem to be capped at 3 – 4 Ghz since almost a decade?
In: 1368
On top of everything else, I’d argue that CPU speeds have now reached the point where for most *consumer* applications, a faster CPU just isn’t worth the extra power draw and cooling demands.
Things like upgrading to a SSD rather than mechanical hard drive give you far better performance boosts on modern systems than an extra 1ghz would. Even for gaming, unless you’re targeting high frame rates (I.e. 120fps and above), you’re likely to find that your performance is being limited more by your GPU or HDD speed than the CPU.
Also, programmers have become much better at spreading the CPU demand across multiple cores, rather than relying on a single CPU thread to do all the work, and also moving some tasks (e.g. video encoding) onto the GPU, so again overclocking that CPU is likely to give you minimal gains unless you have a specific need for it.
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