PassMark Measures A Drop In Average PC Performance For The First Time In Two Decades

Is It The CPUs That Are Plateauing Or People’s Budgets?

A common quibble on the PCPer Podcast, for at least two of us, is that the computer enthusiast market has become significantly less exciting in recent years.  We don’t see performance revolutions as frequently as we used to, the new generation of components tends to more often be an evolution.  That’s no bad per se, but it makes launch days a little less exciting than back in the day.  We now have a data point from PassMark that helps validate that feeling, as average computer performance has dropped for desktops and laptops for the first time since 2024.

The drop is not huge, the measured decrease in the average score was 3.4%, but that bucks a 20 year trend.  The real question is what has caused this drop.  Intel and AMD bothjust launched new CPUs, both of which are touted as better then their predecessors; something that benchmarks mostly agree with.  On the other hand, most people are having to watch their budgets and are making more frugal purchases.  The drop could indicate that, on average, people buying new machines are opting for the lower powered and less expensive models. 

The PassMark results are just one data point and they don’t include CPU models which would help determine the actual cause of the drop in performance.  Here’s hoping the next generation of silicon is both more exciting and more affordable; a faint hope indeed but one can dream.