CPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy 2024: CPU Rankings

 Our CPU benchmarks performance hierarchy ranks current and previous-gen Intel and AMD processors based on performance, including all of the best CPUs for Gaming. Below the CPU ranking charts and tables, this guide also gives you a basic introduction to CPU benchmarks and includes a list of commonly-used CPU benchmarks. We have benchmarked CPUs for over 25 years, so we've preserved many of our legacy historical CPU rankings on the second page of this article.

Your CPU is considered a computer's most important component. CPU benchmark comparisons help us sort out the differences between chips, but you'll find a dizzying collection of model numbers and specs from both Intel and AMD. We've listed the best cheap CPUs and best CPUs for workstations and even covered the Intel vs AMD feature debate in other articles, but if you want to know the CPU rankings and how you can run CPU benchmarks of your own, this CPU benchmarks hierarchy is for you.

Intel's 14th-Gen Raptor Lake processors have arrived, with the highest-end overclockable models landing first. The 6 GHz $589 Core i9-14900K, $409 Core i7-14700K, and $319 Core i5-14600K, facing off with AMD’s Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 lineup. We've added those models to our rankings below.

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D is a truly exceptional chip. Only Micro Center has this chip, and it is selling in its stores only, marking the only truly exclusive CPU launch we've seen in recent memory. The 7600X3D is the CPU to get for AM4 upgraders, or if you're shopping for a powerful budget gaming rig. However, as with all of AMD's gaming-specialized X3D parts, the chip comes with lower performance in productivity apps, which is exacerbated by its older Zen 3 architecture. That said, it's the best gaming-per-dollar CPU we've ever benchmarked, so check the review for the particulars.

The $449 Ryzen 7 7800X3D is now the fastest gaming chip money can buy. This eight-core 16-thread chip uses AMD's 3D V-Cache technology to accelerate gaming performance, but the tech doesn't accelerate all games and results in reduced performance in some applications. However, for gaming, AMD's 3D V-Cache tech is the uncontested leader. For ultra-high-end gaming-focused rigs, the $699 Ryzen 9 7950X3D is the uncontested leader with 16 cores and 32 threads that are just as adept at cutting through the heaviest productivity workloads as they are at blasting through the latest game titles. We also recently reviewed the Ryzen 9 7900X3D which has the same tech, but its pricing is too high.

That chip faces off with the Intel Core i9-13900KS, which is among the fastest desktop PC chips ever made, but it has a $699 price tag and a voracious appetite for power that requires expensive supporting componentry to deliver a single-digit percentage CPU benchmark improvement over the standard Core i9-13900K. Overall, the 13900KS' small performance gains don't make sense for the average user.

On the lower end of the spectrum, we also have the $110 Core i3-13100F, which is also available with graphics as the $150 Core i3-13100. The Core i3-13100F provides solid performance in gaming for its price point, but the Ryzen 5 5600 is also a stout contender.

We'll explain how we ranked the processors under each table. The game testing ranking is first. We also include a productivity application performance metric, which we've split up into single- and multi-threaded measurements. We also have an integrated graphics CPU gaming benchmark ranking so you can see how AMD's APUs stack up to Intel's processors.

We have two sets of benchmarks in the album above. All of our Windows 11 tests above were conducted with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, and we'll build out all future test results with this platform. We recently updated our test image, so we have a limited selection of benchmarks that include the latest Intel 14th-Gen processors. However, you can use the relative positioning of the processors to gauge performance differences to older chips by comparing them to the much broader set of CPU benchmarks found in the following slides. We are also adding new benchmarks of the older CPUs to our new test suite, and these two lists will merge into a single list in the coming weeks.

We rank all the Intel and AMD processors using the Windows 11 and RTX 4090 test bench in the tables below, but we don't include CPU overclock performance rankings. You can see all of those numbers in the charts above. We've also added separate charts for integrated graphics testing below.

Because we have a much broader selection of test results with our now-legacy Windows 10 and RTX 3090 platform, we've also included slides with those results in the above album. You can also find those results in table form in our legacy section on the next page.

Bear in mind that the charts above use the raw performance numbers, whereas our CPU benchmarks rankings in the tables below use a score to rank the chips relative to one another. Here are also a few of our faceoffs that pit top gaming CPUs head-to-head:  

We have two rankings for each chip, based on 1080p and 1440p CPU gaming benchmarks. We conducted these tests in Windows 11. The most powerful chip gets a 100, and all others are scored relative to it. We tested all platforms that support DDR5 with the newer memory — in general, Intel's chips lose a few percentage points of performance with DDR4 memory (more testing here).

The chart is aligned in order based on the 1080p game results, but the 1440p listings aren't listed in sequential order due to unfortunate limitations with our tables. So pay attention to the 1440p rankings: Some faster chips at 1440p CPU benchmarks may be listed below slower chips due to the 1080p results.

We're working to expand this roster of gaming CPU benchmarks quickly, so keep an eye out for our updates. For now, head to our legacy section on the next page for benchmarks of even older CPUs.

We measured performance for the 1080p CPU gaming benchmarks with a geometric mean of Cyberpunk 2077, Hitman 3, Far Cry 6, F1 2023, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2021, Borderlands 3, Minecraft, Warhammer 3, and Watch Dogs Legion. Not all games scale well moving from 1080p to 1440p, so we measured performance for the 1440p CPU gaming benchmarks with a geometric mean of Borderlands 3, Far Cry 6, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2021, Cyberpunk 2023, Hitman 3, Warhammer 3 and Watch Dogs Legion. 

We calculate the above single-threaded CPU benchmarks rankings based on a geometric mean of the Cinebench, POV-Ray, and LAME CPU benchmarks. The most powerful chip gets a 100, and all others are scored relative to it.

Single-threaded performance is often tied directly to the responsiveness and snappiness of your PC in any number of daily applications, like loading an operating system or surfing the web. This metric largely depends upon a mixture of instruction per cycle (IPC) throughput (the number of operations the chip can execute in one clock cycle) and frequency, which is the speed at which the transistors switch between on and off states.

However, a whole host of other considerations, such as cache, architecture, and interconnects (like rings, meshes, and infinity fabric) impact this measure of per-core performance, so these results do not align perfectly based on clock frequency. Instead, performance varies with each application and how well it is tuned for the respective architectures.  

The multi-threaded workload column is based on CPU benchmarks performance in Cinebench, POV-ray, vray, Blender (four tests - Koro, Barcellona, Classroom, bmw27), y-cruncher, and Handbrake x264 and x265 workloads. These CPU benchmarks represent performance in productivity-focused applications that tend to require more compute horsepower. The most powerful chip gets a 100, and all others are scored relative to it.

Like we see with single-threaded performance metrics, multi-threaded performance, which measures a chip's performance in applications that utilize multiple software threads, varies based on a whole host of architectural factors. It also depends heavily upon how well the software scales with additional compute cores. As such, these results do not align perfectly based on core/thread count, though it does serve as a decent litmus of multi-threaded performance. 

Be aware that architectures, caches, and interconnects profoundly impact these results, as all of these factors impact how well performance scales with additional threads. Performance rarely scales perfectly with the addition of more cores/threads, so the scaling factor of each processor architecture weighs heavily on the value proposition of going with a higher core count processor.

Here's our list of gaming performance with integrated graphics on several of the leading APUs available. We've split this into two different price ranges, so be sure to flip through all of the performance charts. For a bit of commentary and analysis of these results, head to our Ryzen 7 5700G, Ryzen 5 5600G, and Ryzen 3 5300G reviews. The most powerful chip gets a 100, and all others are scored relative to it.

Benchmarking your CPU is an essential practice for CPU overclocking, or if you're merely tuning your system. Simply run a CPU benchmark before you make any changes, then re-test after changes to see the results. You can head to our deep-dive details of overclocking in our How to Overclock a CPU guide for more details on tuning your processor, but if you want to learn how to benchmark your CPU, you're in the right place.

How do you benchmark your CPU? Well, that's not as complicated as you might think. Choosing the best CPU benchmarks can be a daunting task, but the general rule is that the best performance benchmark is simply measuring the performance of the programs you use the most. However, you might not be able to find other benchmarks to compare to, so these real-world benchmarks might not help you compare your performance to other CPUs.

However, if the programs you frequently use don't have built-in benchmarks you can also use similar types of programs (renderers or encoders, for instance) as a proxy for your workload. There are also several well-known benchmarks with large databases that enable easy comparisons. You can also compare your results to the benchmarks you see in our library of reviews to get a good sense of how your system stacks up. We have a list of some great productivity benchmarks, and their download links, below.

These same theories apply to CPU game benchmarking — the best CPU benchmark is the game that you play the most. You can download an fps counter, like FRAPS, to measure performance during your gaming session. Games can vary widely, so we don't have a specific list of titles to test. However, you can use the gaming CPU benchmarks you see in our reviews as a good starting point.

You can also use synthetic gaming CPU benchmarks, a few of which we have listed below. Just be aware that these synthetic CPU benchmarks don't tend to translate well to real-world gaming, but they do show us the raw amount of compute power exposed to game engines. However, given their stability and repeatability, these are great benchmarks for comparing performance before and after any changes you may make to your system. 

Most often overlook web-browser performance, but these are among the best CPU benchmarks to measure performance in single-threaded workloads, which helps quantify the snappiness in your system. This also often directly correlates to performance in games that prize single-threaded performance. We've included a few web browser benchmarks below as well.

If you plan to compare to other gaming and application CPU benchmark results from reviews, forums, or friends, be sure to turn off as many background tasks as possible during your benchmarks to eliminate that influence from your CPU benchmark results. Here's a list with download links for some of the most common CPU benchmarks:

Current page: CPU Benchmarks Hierarchy 2024

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Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

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