Experts from the well-known Tom's Hardware portal have updated their ranking of the best processors for gaming PCs for the spring of 2025. They divided the chipsets into five categories depending on the price range and performance. Since Intel was unable to solve the problem of failures in the 13th and 14th generation processors, AMD processors are leading in many categories, writes IZ.
The best entry-level processor is the Ryzen 8600G . This option is suitable for gamers on a limited budget and without a discrete graphics card, because with it you can comfortably play online games at 1080p resolution.
For budget builds, experts recommend the Intel Core i5-12400 . This processor, priced at just over $100, provides good performance in modern games and has PCIe 5.0 support. As an alternative, you can consider the Ryzen 5600.
For the mid-range , the Ryzen 5 9600X is the best choice, with a good balance of price and performance, low power consumption, and moderate temperatures. The Intel Core i5-14600K is also worth considering, although the AM5 platform offers more options for further upgrades.
Experts named the Ryzen 9800X3D as the top gaming processor, which combines high performance and energy efficiency, and also has moderate cooling requirements.
The best processor for general tasks was the Ryzen 9 9950X3D , which, according to the manufacturer, is “the best processor for gaming and content creation.”
As a reminder, we previously wrote that OpenAI is demanding that DeepSeek be banned due to security concerns.