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A lot of the consumer-class CPU focus this decade has been on power consumption and the GPU part. A Sandy Bridge 4-core, 8-thread, 3.0 ghz CPU from 2011 would
by bzbarsky 8y ago
A lot of the consumer-class CPU focus this decade has been on power consumption and the GPU part.
A Sandy Bridge 4-core, 8-thread, 3.0 ghz CPU from 2011 would be something like a i7-2960XM. It's actually 2.70 ghz base frequency, but 8MB cache and 55W.
A comparable modern CPU (same cores, threads, base frequency, cache) is a i7-8559U. This has a TDP of 28W.
The old processor would scale up to 3.7 ghz while the new one scales up to 4.5. And the new processor has 1.5 times the memory bandwidth. And I expect the GPU is a lot better.
The new processor probably has somewhat better instruction throughput at the same clock rate. All that said, I agree this is not the 90s and we're not getting 10x or more improvements in speed over the course of 7 years here... The new processor _is_ better; just not enough better to be worth paying $400 for unless you're getting a new computer anyway for other reasons.
(Note that these are both "mobile" processors, fwiw; I assume that's the comparison point if we're talking consumer-class, because consumers don't really buy desktops.)