When should you upgrade your CPU?

The CPU (Central Processing Unit, or “processor” for short) is arguably the most important component in a computer; If you’re a gamer, it perhaps comes second after the GPU. However, upgrade best processor It is not always simple; Choosing the right time to upgrade and the right CPU to upgrade to can be difficult as this can often require replacing the motherboard or even memory. Not every application will improve with a CPU upgrade and you need to check if your existing cooler is compatible as well.

But when it comes to CPUs, there are some general rules of thumb that can help you determine whether an upgrade is really worth your time and money.

When should you upgrade your CPU for gaming?

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CPUs and how they affect gaming performance is a surprisingly complex topic. From GPUs we expect more frames and/or better looking graphics when there are more cores, higher clock speeds and better memory, but CPUs are a different beast. In fact, under the right conditions (depending on the game and settings), a major CPU upgrade may not improve performance at all, and that’s not uncommon.

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Generally speaking, most CPUs with at least six cores produced in the last five years can do at least 60 to 120 frames per second in most games when paired with a good graphics card, but beyond that point some CPUs perform better than others. The best way to check if your CPU is limited in games is to check GPU usage via Task Manager or a resource monitor like MSI Afterburner. If your GPU is doing most of the heavy lifting in a game, you should see its usage near 100%. The lower the GPU usage, the less GPU-reliant the game is and the more likely it is that performance will be limited by your CPU.

This is commonly known as the CPU bottleneck and this is exactly where a CPU upgrade can help.

However, it’s not always worth upgrading if your GPU usage isn’t perfect. If your GPU usage is around 90%, you’ll get almost no frames from a better gaming CPU. However, if your usage is closer to 70% or lower, you’ll be left with plenty of performance if you feel like the frame rate you’re getting is too low. Upgrading your CPU can help overcome any bottlenecks and allow you to make the most of your GPU’s power.

But before you pull the trigger and upgrade, you should make sure that what you’re upgrading to is a better gaming CPU. We highly recommend checking out the reviews, but there are a few more rules to consider first:

You don’t need more than six cores for good gaming performance. It’s true that the fastest gaming CPUs have more than six cores, but it’s not just the number of cores that makes modern processors great for gaming.

RAM speed can affect gaming performancebut usually the effect is not very significant, so if your RAM is very low or particularly slow, consider upgrading your RAM as well.
CPUs with newer architectures are generally better at gaming. Make sure the CPUs you’re upgrading are from the oldest of the last two generations, namely Intel 11th and 12th gen or AMD Ryzen 3000 or 5000.
Within the same architecture family (for example, if you’re comparing two different Ryzen 5000 CPUs), higher clocked CPUs generally have better gaming performance.
CPUs with more cache are faster, which is another key indicator of gaming performance. For example, Ryzen 7 5800X3D is one of the fastest gaming CPUs Thanks to its massive L3 cache, the largest in mainstream CPUs.

When should you upgrade your CPU for content creation?

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There are many types of applications that fall under the umbrella of “content creation,” but most of these applications fall into two categories: those that take advantage of more cores and those that take advantage of a single fast core. Unlike games, it’s pretty easy to tell whether a CPU upgrade would be beneficial or not.

Most content creation applications, especially video editing and processing programs, benefit from having a large number of cores. Checking whether a particular application would benefit from more cores is quite simple. Check your CPU usage While performing a task by opening a resource monitor such as Task Manager or MSI Afterburner. If CPU usage is close to 100%, you’ll probably benefit from having a CPU with more cores. Most applications are limited in the number of cores they can use; You should research this before purchasing a 32-core CPU for a program that can only use 16 cores.

There are also software that use only one or two cores; This means CPUs with high single-threaded performance are best. But most applications that use only a single core or thread are very simple and perform well on basically all modern CPUs. For example, if you frequently work on a really large spreadsheet in Excel, you might want to consider upgrading for better single-threaded performance; this can be a demanding workload for some CPUs.

Another thing to consider when it comes to content creation is whether a faster CPU is what you really need. Sometimes other components are more important. For example, while you can use a CPU to stream to OBS, it’s arguably better to use a modern GPU with an up-to-date encoder, as CPU encoding is extremely intensive and can actually have worse quality depending on the CPU.

You may also experience bottlenecks due to other components. To see what your bottlenecks are, again, open a resource monitor while your computer is running and check what’s at 100%. High RAM usage is sometimes an indication of this you don’t have enough RAM. High disk usage is also generally not a good sign and may signal that you could benefit from a faster drive.

How to choose a new CPU

If you’ve decided that you need to upgrade, the next thing you need to do is figure out what to upgrade. You can’t pick and choose CPUs because you need a compatible motherboard and the right type of RAM. If your motherboard is compatible with many different CPUs worth upgrading, then you only need to worry about the CPU. If not, you’ll need to get a new motherboard and potentially new RAM as well.

There are many other factors (eg. Whether you should overclock your new CPU) feeling like there isn’t enough room in this article to talk about it.

For more information, Check out our CPU buying guide.