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Glossary/CPU/Single-core performance

Single-core performance

Single-core performance is how much work one CPU core completes on its own, and it governs responsiveness in games and most interactive software.

Also known as single-thread performance, ST performance

Measured by SystemCheck

Part of the four-stage run: a 60-second sustained CPU load reporting throughput, decay and consistency; a memory stage reporting bandwidth and latency; a calibrated GPU raster load reporting frame time, pacing and decay; and a path tracer reporting samples per second. The paragraphs below say which metric carries this term.

A large fraction of everyday software has a critical path that cannot be parallelised. Game simulation and main render threads, JavaScript execution, spreadsheet dependency chains, and most application startup are limited by how fast one core is. Adding cores does nothing for them.

Single-core performance is IPC times sustained single-core frequency. It is also the metric where thermal state matters least, because one active core rarely pushes a system to its power or thermal ceiling, so single-core numbers are relatively stable between a cold and a hot machine, unlike all-core numbers.

In SystemCheck, the contrast between single-thread behaviour and the all-core result is diagnostic. A machine with strong single-core throughput and weak multi-core throughput is usually power- or thermally-limited under load. A machine weak on both is more likely limited by generation, memory latency, or heavy background contention.

Related terms

IPCIPC is how much work a CPU completes per clock cycle, which is why a lower-clocked newer chip often outperforms a higher-clocked older one.Read moreMulti-core scalingMulti-core scaling is how close a workload gets to N-times speedup on N cores, limited by serial code, shared cache, memory bandwidth, and clock drop.Read moreAll-core boostAll-core boost is the frequency a CPU holds when every core is loaded, always lower than the single-core boost clock because power and heat scale with active cores.Read moreCPU-boundA workload is CPU-bound when the processor cannot feed the GPU fast enough, so frame rate stops rising even though GPU utilisation stays below 100%.Read moreBackground load contaminationBackground load contamination is other software consuming CPU, GPU, or memory during a benchmark, depressing and destabilising the result.Read more
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