PassMark observes CPUs are slower in 2025 - and no, we don't think this is Windows 11's fault

PassMark has made an interesting observation about CPU performance in that in 2025, it's now heading downwards - for the first time ever possibly, or certainly in a long time - based on the firm's benchmark database.

As you can see in the above post on X, processor performance over the years - based on an average CPU mark (multi-threaded testing, on both desktops and laptops) - shows that there's a dip in this initial period of 2025 (representing January, and part of February).

Why might that be? PassMark guesses that maybe folks are buying cheaper hardware in the main (with slower processors), or that the root cause could be on the software front - either a greater prevalence of bloatware, or even the effect of 'Windows 11 versus Windows 10' (and presumably a decline due to the former).

We're not convinced on the bloatware theory, that's for sure, and Windows 11 adoption has not suddenly turned a major corner (though it is starting to do so, admittedly, in the face of Windows 10's end of support arriving in eight months from now).

For us, it seems more likely to be a factor on the hardware front. Indeed, a denizen of X floats the theory that maybe this is just a result of seeing only a small sample of what 2025 will offer - just the first two months (not even quite that). And that people may lean towards purchasing higher-end hardware towards the end of the year, in the run up to the holidays, particularly with Black Friday (due to the chunky discounts on pricey kit).

There may be some truth to that, although PassMark seems unconvinced, and notes that it hasn't observed this effect in past years.

We'll need to wait for 2025 to unfold more, though, and see if this trend of an average performance dip for PCs running PassMark's benchmarks continues, before drawing any real conclusions.

Interestingly, another factor that might be at play in the overall balance of performance is that folks aren't looking to upgrade beyond 8-core CPUs in the main.

As you can see from the above graph, again shared on X, PassMark's stats show that the number of people who are using processors with more than 8-cores hasn't meaningfully changed since late in 2020, over four years ago now.

In many cases, 8-cores is very much seen as enough to do the job, and of course, there have been advances on other fronts away from simply throwing more cores into the mix. (That includes architectural tuning, and changes incorporating different kinds of cores - like efficiency - and notably, different kinds of cache when it comes to PC gaming, and AMD's 3D V-Cache).

Performance has never been purely about cores, naturally, but it's interesting to see the observed stagnation in this respect.

Read more: Microsoft warns some Windows 11 users they should downgrade to Windows 10 'immediately'