Conclusion. When buying a new computer, whether a desktop PC or laptop, it's important to know the number of cores in the processor. Most users are well served with 2 or 4 cores, but video editors, engineers, data analysts, and others in similar fields will want at least 6 cores.

How many cores do you need for gaming?

Generally speaking, six cores is usually considered optimal for gaming in 2021. Four cores can still cut it but would hardly be a future-proof solution. Eight or more cores might provide performance improvement, but all this depends mainly on how a particular game is coded and what GPU the CPU would be paired with it.

How many core processors do I need?

If you do lots of multitasking or edit high-res videos, or do other complex, time-consuming CPU-heavy tasks, you should prioritize the number of cores. But for the vast majority of gamers and general-purpose computer users, a clock speed ranging from 3-4GHz with four to eight cores is plenty.