These "outdated" CPUs still hold their own in 2026, and the RAM crisis makes them smarter than ever

By Tanveer Singh Published Jul 24, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT After a 7-year corporate stint, Tanveer found his love for writing and tech too much to resist. An MBA in Marketing and the owner of a PC building business, he writes on PC hardware, technology, and Windows. When not scouring the web for ideas, he can be found building PCs, watching anime, or playing Smash Karts on his RTX 3080 (sigh). Sign in to your XDA account Five years ago, if you were to compare a 5-year-old CPU to the then current-gen parts, the gulf in performance would have been huge.