PassMark records first-ever decline in CPU performance after 20 years of growth

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Alfonso Maruccia

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TL;DR: PassMark has been aggregating CPU performance data for nearly two decades based on collective scores recorded through its benchmarking software. For the first time in 20 years, however, the data now shows an unexpected decline, shedding light on a potentially concerning trend in CPU performance.

PassMark Software has been developing well-regarded PC benchmarking and diagnostic tools since 1998. The company's website hosts a page that compiles performance scores submitted by users, and right now, the CPU scores are trending downward.

The first graph on PassMark's Year on Year Performance page compiles "thousands" of PerformanceTest benchmark results and is updated every two weeks, according to the company. The chart includes data from PerformanceTest versions 5 through 11, with version 8 (released in 2012) being the first to collect single-thread performance data.

Over the first two months of 2025, PassMark reports an unexpected decline in average CPU performance. For the first time since the company began collecting PerformanceTest results in 2004, newer CPU models show no clear trend of increasing performance. This slowdown appears consistent across both desktop and laptop processors and applies exclusively to the Windows platform.

In 2024, PassMark's data showed that users tested 186,053 desktop CPUs and 101,316 laptop CPUs, with average performance increasing by 9.5% and 13.9%, respectively.

So far in 2025, 47,810 desktop processors and 25,541 laptop processors have been tested, revealing a 0.5% decline in desktop CPU performance and a 3.4% drop in laptop CPU performance. PassMark began including Arm processors alongside x86 models in 2021.

What's behind this sudden slowdown in performance growth? PassMark offers no definitive explanation for this "historical" phenomenon – at least not yet. The company speculates that users may be opting for cheaper or less power-hungry hardware, or that system bloatware is hindering performance. Windows 11 adoption could also be a factor, although the performance difference between Windows 10 and 11 is generally considered marginal.

The simplest explanation, however, is also the most troubling: modern AMD and Intel CPUs may have hit a performance plateau. AMD's Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX, released in 2023, drove a massive 58.6% increase in desktop CPU performance. But in 2024, newer processors delivered only incremental gains at best.

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PassMark records first-ever decline in CPU performance after 20 years of growth

 
The graph shows "average cpu mark" based on baselines submitted to them, I.e. what people are most often benchmarking.

I would have thought the graph is showing that people aren't upgrading to the latest and greatest and keeping what they have?

Keeping in mind that the graph of high perf processors shows Threadripper 7995WX scores almost 150k and Epyc at 160k, while the chart in this article goes up to 30k.
 
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ibnMuhammad said:
The graph shows "average cpu mark" based on baselines submitted to them, I.e. what people are most often benchmarking.

I would have thought the graph is showing that people aren't upgrading to the latest and greatest and keeping what they have?

Keeping in mind that the graph of high perf processors shows Threadripper 7995WX scores almost 150k and Epyc at 160k, while the chart in this article goes up to 30k.
Click to expand...
Ah yes, another dude wondering about the meaning of "sample".
 
It could be any of those things. Another possibility is, the demographics have changed, a lot of people have upgraded their PCs and are now enjoying their newfound performance and no longer feel the need to measure it anymore, while a disaffected group is becoming more and more concerned about their old kit's performance, measuring it, and wondering.
 
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Another possibility is workloads have shifted from rely on CPU performance to relying on GPU and NPU performance. CPU vendors are putting NPUs in their chips, making them overall more versatile but maybe not as performant in pure CPU benchmarks.

It could also be that rising prices plus shrinking gen on gen gains are making people hold onto tech longer or look towards the used market for upgrades.
 
Benchmark N100 and watch the curve go down further, even while it satisfies most regular users due to fast SSDs.
 

Two reasons from where I stand:

1. Blame AMD: Many people buy 7800x3D or 9800x3D instead of non-X3D CPUs with higher raw compute (in the case of the new AMD gen you can actually only buy the 8 core X3D part as of now if you want the newest CPU gen and the cache).

2. Blame Intel: For decreasing and destroying trust in their stronger offerings. The CPU degradation issue and Arrow Lake being not powerful enough for gaming enthusiasts has driven many new builders to AMD (and when they do, read no. 1)

No wonder computing power in the aggregate is in stagnation with this situation. But that's only in the private B2C department. If you look at B2B, if you count GPUs and look at data centers growing in the shadow of AI training and inference, we face a hefty increase in raw compute power.
 
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I'm guessing more and more people are opting for units powered by lower end CPUs because of price to performance ratio being so favorable. Almost all CPUs these days are snappy when running daily consumer-oriented tasks. Gamers, D base crunchers and creative content people will still go for the higher end CPUs which still show significant generational performance improvement.
 
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JuanDegr said:
Two reasons from where I stand:

1. Blame AMD: Many people buy 7800x3D or 9800x3D instead of non-X3D CPUs with higher raw compute (in the case of the new AMD gen you can actually only buy the 8 core X3D part as of now if you want the newest CPU gen and the cache).

2. Blame Intel: For decreasing and destroying trust in their stronger offerings. The CPU degradation issue and Arrow Lake being not powerful enough for gaming enthusiasts has driven many new builders to AMD (and when they do, read no. 1)

No wonder computing power in the aggregate is in stagnation with this situation. But that's only in the private B2C department. If you look at B2B, if you count GPUs and look at data centers growing in the shadow of AI training and inference, we face a hefty increase in raw compute power.
Click to expand...
Blame AMD for making better processors! Damn 'em!
 
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It makes no sense to think hardware somehow regressed, why would anyone replace a piece of hardware by a slower one ? Two possible explanations come to my mind :
-Windows has become so bloated that it affects RAM in the lower tier systems to a point that processing is affected.
-The user database has changed including more individuals using outdated hardware.
 
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