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!

  • conquer69@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Dual cores chug a lot even in basic tasks like using a browser or opening the file explorer. I would recommend 4 cores minimum.

    • Devatator_@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      That’s not my experience. And that’s not even a recent one I’m using. My laptop has an i5 6200u. It runs Edge fine and I can even watch 1080p60 videos on YouTube without frame drops. I didn’t check how many tabs I can use but i think the max I used was 10? And it still worked fine

    • poke133@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Core2Duo E7400 (2008), 2x4GB DDR2 with Win10 installed on SSD, for browsing and office work is absolutely fine… still used as a daily driver of a small business without annoying anyone using it (including myself from time to time).