Q What is the effective CPU speed index?

A A measure of CPU speed geared towards typical users. Intel i9-9900K ≈ 100%.

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A single number

The effective CPU speed index approximates performance by distilling hundreds of data points into a single number. It is weighted towards typical consumer tasks.

The first few threads

Desktop tasks such as surfing the web with multiple tabs, watching videos and listening to music rarely use more than four threads. Very few of today's popular games benefit from more than four threads. There is not much difference in fps between a stock 4 core i3-9100F and an overclocked 16 thread Ryzen 2700X in fact the 9100F is around 10% faster. Gaming fps is primarily influenced by the GPU rather than the CPU.

More threads

Higher thread counts are critical for workstation tasks such as cryptography and video encoding. If dedicated hardware (NVENC or ideally another PC) is not an option, streamers could also consider additional CPU threads for streaming.

Updates

Our indices are based on today’s performance requirements rather than sponsored marketing hype.

July 2019

We reduced the impact from thread counts higher than eight. Most of the Ryzen 3000 rank changes were positive (3800X +7, 3700X +7, 3600X +14, 3600 +13) but the 32-core AMD 2990WX moved from first position to 48th. Meanwhile the 8-core Intel 9900K jumped from 7th to first position.

Smear campaign

Within hours of the July 2019 changes, an army of anonymous call center shills posing as AMD fans accused UserBenchmark of impartiality. We are not affiliated with any brands. We act solely in the interest of our users.