Hey, recently I’ve been browsing r/thinkpad alot and have been a part of the ThinkPad craze. I’ve noticed that lots of people, especially on that subreddit, still use Dual-Core CPUs, and deem them as more than capable, or enough.
I’ve been in the US for almost 5 years now, but I used to live in Brazil back in 2019. I’ve never owned a laptop with a quad-core CPU if I’m not mistaken, and I don’t think I’ve ever had more than 8GB of RAM (except on a Desktop) before moving here. I’ve grown accustomed to having a decent laptop, and desktop while living here, as well as a up-to-date phone, etc.

I’m curious to know what are people’s thought on older CPUs and usability of older hardware. I currently own a laptop with an i7 6th gen, which is Dual-Core and 8gbs and it really doesn’t get any attention, be it for watching youtube or doing online, browser-related study or just reddit browsing.

I couldn’t really picture myself using anything that doesn’t have 16GB Ram, and 4 cores, and preferably not freezing or having slowdowns, but after considering moving back to Brasil, and knowing the situation, especially for tech, since everything is harder to obtain and wayy more expensive, I’ve started question myself how many people are still using dual-core systems, that are happy with it and don’t see anything wrong with that.

I’d like to give the old X1 Carbon 4th gen another try and see how much my view could change. I know hardware has been getting a little cheaper in some ways and quad-core and higher CPUs have been popular for a few years, but I’m not sure that it’s still accessible to everyone as I’d like to think.

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Thanks in advance!

  • ET3DBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’d like to point out that the number of cores by itself is rarely the issue. Rather it’s how old the cores are. Two more modern cores could outperform four older cores.

    I have an old Thinkpad with an AMD E-350 CPU, and I consider that not very usable (could be used in a pinch, but it’s certainly not fun to use). My Dell XPS 13 with a i5-6200U is still usable.

    Regarding RAM, 8GB is still perfectly usable for light use.

  • cheeseybacon11BEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I have a duo core laptop with a 7th gen intel CPU. Speed is fine for what I do with it, but I’m considering upgrading because the battery life is awful and lenovo messed up the thunderbolt so they get corrupted after a couple years.