Before you write clickbait in the comments, hear me out. While everyone (including myself) is advocating moving to 8 cores for gaming, what am I doing calling 4 cores "just fine" in 2025? Quad-core CPUs might have sounded cool a decade ago, but you don't even get 4-core SKUs in many lineups these days (AMD stopped selling retail 4-core chips with Ryzen 5000).

The thing is, however, if you already have a 4-core CPU from a few generations ago, you don't necessarily need an overnight upgrade. If your usage hasn't changed much over the years, you can keep using your quad-core champ for quite some time. As long as we're talking about 1080p gaming and light day-to-day usage, 4-core CPUs are perfectly serviceable even in 2025.

3 Day-to-day usage doesn't require more cores

6 cores won't load your webpages faster

When you bought your 4-core CPU back in, say, 2015 or 2017, you weren't buying a low-end or older product. Quad-core CPUs were pretty much mainstream back then, and almost every one was more than enough for a home office PC. Even today, whether watching YouTube, listening to music, or working on a document, you won't feel limited by a 4-core CPU.

Unless you take into account video editing or streaming, 4 cores are surprisingly capable of driving most lightweight workloads that a regular user would run. Basic multitasking doesn't need a lot of computing power, as long as you have at least 8GB of RAM. Besides, any bottlenecks in terms of responsiveness on your PC are probably linked to your storage — upgrading to an SSD (even a SATA one) would fix that easily.

2 Your 4-core chip isn't as slow as it might sound

4-core CPUs were common just 5 years ago

Hearing "4 cores" might make it sound like we're discussing ancient tech from the forgotten ages. However, AMD and Intel were offering mainstream 4-core CPUs as recently as 2020. The Ryzen 3 3100 or Core i3-10100 isn't the same as a 4-core chip from 10 years ago. Considering the architectural advancements that these modern quad-core chips can leverage, you can easily use them without any issues even today.

I was using the Ryzen 5 1600 till just two years ago, and while it was a 6-core chip, it illustrates the longevity of first-gen Ryzen and modern CPUs in general. Even the low-core-count SKUs from a few years ago have aged quite well compared to their counterparts from the pre-Ryzen era. Chip technology might have stagnated a bit when you look at the latest CPUs, but that also means that you don't need more cores on your CPU if it's a fairly modern unit.

1 4 cores are enough for 1080p gaming

Even 1440p in many titles

The best part about owning a modern 4-core chip is that it still has some life left as a gaming CPU. We might shout all day that 6 cores is the minimum for PC gaming, but if you're currently rocking a quad-core CPU on your PC, you already know that it works just fine. Of course, the value in buying a new 4-core CPU isn't there, but existing owners can still appreciate the longevity of their quad-core Core i7 and Ryzen 3 chips.

Paired with an RTX 3060 or RTX 4060, you can play games like Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3, Forza Horizon 5, Apex Legends, and Red Dead Redemption 2 at 60+ FPS even at 1440p on your 4-core CPU. You will have to contend with your 1% lows dipping into the 40s, but other than that, it's a pretty solid gaming experience, especially on a budget build.

While you might be forced to upgrade soon, that time is not here yet. You can continue enjoying your quad-core trooper for the foreseeable future. If you're eyeing a GPU upgrade soon, it would be best to do a full system upgrade so that your latest graphics card isn't held back by the 4-core CPU.

4-core CPUs aren't obsolete just yet

Back in 2020, I was hunting for a good deal on a used quad-core chip to put together a secondary gaming PC. I ended up with a 6-core chip, but only because I got it for free from a friend. 4-core CPUs might no longer be able to keep up with high-end gaming, but they aren't obsolete by any standard. You can still enjoy modern titles at 1080p and 1440p with a small hit on 1% lows, and run basically every day-to-day workload without any hassle.