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What is CPU Benchmark Charts?

CPU Benchmark Charts is the public comparison section of PassMark's benchmark site. It turns benchmark results submitted by PerformanceTest users into ranked charts of processor speed, so you can compare relative performance across desktop, mobile, server and workstation chips from Intel, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm and others. The page evidence describes over 1,000,000 CPUs benchmarked, 3,000,000+ systems tested and 5,700+ CPU models, with charts updated daily.

The charts are best used as a rough ranking tool, not a definitive verdict on a specific laptop or PC. They show aggregate scores rather than how a chip performs in your workload, and results depend on cooling, power limits and the rest of the system.

What you can compare

• Multithread scores — useful for rendering, compiling, virtualization and other work that uses many cores.
• Single Thread scores — closer to everyday responsiveness in browsing, office work and many games.
• Best Value views — a scatter-style comparison of score against price for CPUs currently on the market.
• Search by model — look up a specific processor and add several to a side-by-side comparison.

Who it suits

• Buyers checking whether an upgrade is worth it, or how two laptops with different chips compare.
• IT and support staff setting a rough performance baseline for fleets or replacement decisions.
• Enthusiasts who want a quick, broad ranking rather than a deep technical review.

Trade-offs to keep in mind

• Aggregate scores compress many workloads into one number, so a chip that wins overall may lose in your specific application.
• Mobile and server chips appear alongside desktop parts; comparing across those categories can mislead.
• Results come from a self-selected pool of users, so unusual configurations can skew individual entries.
• The site is a benchmark database and software vendor, not an independent lab review; treat its charts as one input.

A practical next step: pick two or three CPUs you are actually considering, compare their single-thread and multithread scores, then check a hands-on review of a device that uses each chip. If you want broader context on how processors compare in real systems, Tom's Hardware and AnandTech publish detailed CPU reviews.

How do I compare two CPUs using the PassMark charts?

Open the CPU Benchmarks page on CPU Benchmark Charts, add the two processors you are considering, and compare them on the same chart rather than reading each score separately. The site aggregates results submitted by PerformanceTest users and presents them as sortable lists and graphs, so the comparison is only meaningful when both CPUs appear in the same view.

CPU Benchmark Charts

A practical comparison routine

1. Search for each CPU model by name and add both to the comparison list.
2. Check the multithread score first if you run video encoding, 3D rendering, compilation, virtualization, or many background tasks.
3. Check the single-thread score next if your work is mostly browsing, office documents, light photo editing, or older games that lean on one or two cores.
4. Look at where each chip sits in the broader ranking, not just which number is larger. A small gap between two models often disappears behind cooling, power limits, memory speed, and laptop chassis design.
5. Use the value-oriented charts if price matters to you, but treat them as a rough guide, since retail pricing changes constantly and varies by region.

When the charts help, and when they mislead

The charts are best for narrowing a shortlist: for example, deciding whether a desktop upgrade from an older quad-core to a modern six-core is worth it, or whether two similarly priced laptop CPUs are in the same performance class. They are weaker for predicting real-world behavior in a specific machine. A thin laptop may throttle a high-scoring chip, and a server processor may rank highly while being a poor choice for a gaming PC because of clock speed and platform cost.

Scores also mix generations, core counts, and market segments. Compare within a category — desktop against desktop, mobile against mobile — and prefer models with many submitted samples over obscure ones with very few.

A quick decision criterion

If your workload is parallel and sustained, weight multithread performance heavily. If it is interactive and bursty, weight single-thread performance. If both are close, decide on platform factors: motherboard cost, memory support, power draw, and upgrade path.

Which CPU has the best value for money according to the charts?

The site's answer is not a single model: its charts include a Best Value (On Market) ranking, so the top value pick changes as prices move and as CPUs enter or leave the market. Value there means performance per dollar among chips currently sold, which is a different question from "fastest CPU."

A few practical points about reading it:

• Best Value (On Market) covers processors you can actually buy new, so it suits a current build. Best Value (All Time) includes older chips and is more useful for used-market shopping, where the asking price is whatever a seller wants.
• The XY Scatter chart plots price against performance, which is more informative than a single ranked list — you can see where the curve flattens and extra spending stops buying much speed.
• Rankings are built from results posted by PerformanceTest users, so they reflect that pool of hardware rather than a controlled lab sample.

Next step: decide your budget and main workload first, then look up two or three candidates on CPU Benchmark Charts and compare their multithread and single-thread scores side by side. Gaming and light office work lean on single-thread results; video export, compilation and virtual machines lean on multithread. A chip that tops the value chart for one of those jobs may be a poor fit for the other.

Should I use single-thread or multithread scores when choosing a CPU?

Use both, but decide which one leads based on what your software actually waits on. Single-thread scores reflect how fast one task completes; multithread scores reflect total throughput when many cores work at once.

CPU Benchmark Charts publishes separate single-thread and multithread CPU charts, so the same chip can look strong in one list and ordinary in the other.

Pick single-thread first when

• Everyday apps feel slow: browsing, office documents, PDF and image editing.
• Games are the priority, especially titles that lean on one or two heavy threads.
• You want snappy response from a laptop or small desktop where sustained all-core speed is limited by cooling.
• Your workload is mostly sequential: some compilers, older engineering tools, light scripting.

Pick multithread first when

• You run video encoding, 3D rendering, simulation, or large builds.
• You run virtual machines, containers, or many background services.
• You batch-process photos, data, or archives.
• You host a database or application server for several users.

Quick comparison

A practical way to decide

Write down your two or three most time-consuming tasks. If they finish faster mainly because more cores are working, sort by multithread. If they feel slow because one action drags, sort by single-thread. Then check the price gap between the top candidates: paying a lot for multithread performance you never saturate is worse value than paying less for strong per-core speed.

As a next step, open the single-thread and multithread charts side by side, add three or four CPUs within your budget, and compare their positions in both lists. A chip that ranks well in both is usually the safer long-term choice; a big gap between the two rankings tells you exactly which kind of user it suits.

How are PassMark CPU scores calculated from PerformanceTest results?

PassMark CPU scores are not a single number pulled from one test. They are aggregated from the individual benchmark results that PerformanceTest records on each machine, then normalized so that different processors can be compared on a common scale. The CPU charts you see on CPU Benchmark Charts are built from millions of these submitted results, covering both single-thread and multithread workloads.

What the scores represent

• Single-thread score reflects how fast one core completes a defined set of tasks. It matters most for lightly threaded software: older games, many office applications, and tasks where one main thread does the work.
• Multithread (CPU Mark) score reflects the combined throughput when many cores and threads work at once. It matters for video encoding, 3D rendering, virtual machines, and other workloads that can use all available cores.
• The two numbers often rank CPUs differently. A processor with fewer, faster cores can win the single-thread chart while losing badly on multithread, and vice versa.

How the aggregation works in practice

PerformanceTest runs a fixed battery of tests covering integer and floating-point math, compression, encryption, physics, sorting, and similar operations. Each test produces a raw result, which is converted into a calibrated score. The individual scores are then combined into the published figures. Because the test suite is fixed, results from different CPUs and different submission dates can be placed on the same chart.

The scores are therefore relative indices, not physical units. A CPU scoring 4,000 is not "twice as fast" as one scoring 2,000 in every real program; it means it performed roughly twice as well across this specific test mix. Real-world gains depend on whether your software resembles that mix.

Practical use and trade-offs

A useful decision criterion: pick the score that matches your actual bottleneck, then treat a 10–15% difference as roughly a wash unless the price gap is large. A reader choosing between two similarly priced CPUs for photo editing should compare multithread scores first, then check single-thread as a tiebreaker.

Next step

Look up your exact CPU model on CPU Benchmark Charts and note both its single-thread and multithread position rather than only the headline number. Then check a benchmark that stresses your specific application — for example TechPowerUp for GPU-adjacent gaming data or Tom's Hardware for application-specific reviews — because a synthetic aggregate can diverge from the software you actually run.

Can I benchmark my own PC and submit results to the database?

Yes — in principle. PassMark's CPU charts are built from benchmark results that PerformanceTest users have posted to the site, and the page notes that CPU charts are compiled from millions of submitted results. So the database is a crowd-sourced pool, not a closed lab set.

The catch is that you contribute through PassMark's own PerformanceTest software, not by uploading a result from any other tool. The CPU charts page links to PerformanceTest as its "easy PC benchmarking" product with a free trial and a purchase option, so the practical path is: install PerformanceTest, run the CPU benchmark, and submit the result when the software offers to post it.

H3 What that means for you

• If your goal is to see where your own chip lands, running the same test and submitting it puts your machine into the same pool the charts draw from.
• If your goal is to compare a specific upgrade before buying, you do not need to submit anything — you can just read the charts for the models you are considering.
• If your goal is to verify someone else's claim, remember that submitted results come from many different systems, so a single entry is weaker evidence than the aggregate.

H3 A concrete example

Suppose you have a Ryzen 5 desktop and are weighing a move to a newer generation. You run PerformanceTest on your current machine, submit the result, and then look up the candidate CPU in the multithread and single-thread charts. The gap between your submitted score and the charted score for the candidate gives you a rough sense of the gain — useful for a buying decision, though it says nothing about your GPU or storage.

H3 Decision criterion

Submit your own result if you want your hardware represented in the pool and you are willing to install and run PassMark's tool. Skip submission if you only need relative rankings; reading the charts is enough. For broader context on how one chip compares across different testing philosophies, cross-check with Notebookcheck for mobile and laptop parts, or Tom's Hardware for desktop-focused reviews.