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I recently purchased a new laptop with Windows 11 and an i9 CPU. My first impression was less than wow. In fact, it seemed slower than the laptop it replaced. The punch line is, you pay for a lot of extra cores that are not any faster than an i7 or i5. Maybe even an i3. At any rate, I recently started looking at CPU usage and discovered a mode I hadn’t noticed before: PARKED CPU. Yep, apparently, Windows puts unused CPUs in parked mode to save energy. I noticed several times that all but one of my CPUs was parked. Only occasionally, I may see 3 CPUs actually working. Yes, my workflow is mostly sitting in a programmer’s IDE like VS Code or Visual Studio. Then I may compile some code now and then. I may open a browser or read my emails. That’s about it. So I paid double what I needed to, just so I could have an i9 badge on my laptop. I feel ashamed.

Some of you may want to know what computer I bought: it’s an ASUS Q540VJ. I way over provisioned it with RAM and SSD. I like the hardware, don’t mis-understand me. I just way over over bought. The Q530 would have been more appropriate, in my case.

I recently purchased a new laptop with Windows 11 and an i9 CPU. My first impression was less than wow. In fact, it seemed slower than the laptop it replaced. The punch line is, you pay for a lot of extra cores that are not any faster than an i7 or i5. Maybe even an i3. At any rate, I recently started looking at CPU usage and discovered a mode I hadn’t noticed before: PARKED CPU. Yep, apparently, Windows puts unused CPUs in parked mode to save energy. I noticed several times that all but one of my CPUs was parked. Only occasionally, I may see 3 CPUs actually working. Yes, my workflow is mostly sitting in a programmer’s IDE like VS Code or Visual Studio. Then I may compile some code now and then. I may open a browser or read my emails. That’s about it. So I paid double what I needed to, just so I could have an i9 badge on my laptop. I feel ashamed. Some of you may want to know what computer I bought: it’s an ASUS Q540VJ. I way over provisioned it with RAM and SSD. I like the hardware, don’t mis-understand me. I just way over over bought. The Q530 would have been more appropriate, in my case.

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[–] • 1 pt

No doubt, Windows adds a considerable amount of CPU overhead, but based on how I understand multi-core processors and operating systems, the scenario I talked about will be OS agnostic. Linux will offer better performance, mostly, but won't utilize multiple cores any differently. Thus, my conclusion won't change: too many cores only works faster when your application actually uses multiple cores. Video rendering is one workflow that does work well. Occasionally, I make videos. This is where the i9 excels. I didn't bring that up, because it's an edge case for me. However, if you find yourself opening multiple applications and windows, an i9 will help keep your workflow faster. Personally, I try to minimize the number of concurrently open applications.

[–] • 1 pt

I noticed this a while ago. The more expensive CPUs have more processor cores that are individually slower. The cheaper CPUs have a small number of faster cores.

If you spend all of your time compiling, encoding videos, or playing games then spend the extra money for more cores. Otherwise, you are paying more to make most of what you do slower.