Updated October 3, 2026
Top of the market. 4K and high refresh rates.
High end. 1440p Ultra and entry 4K.
Upper mid-range. 1440p High and 1080p Ultra.
Mid-range. Smooth 1080p High in almost everything.
Entry level. 1080p Medium, or older games at High.
Basic or old. Esports and older games at Low to Medium.
We place every processor in a tier by its gaming index, where the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is 100. S is 85 and above, A is 70 to 84, B is 55 to 69, C is 40 to 54, D is 25 to 39, and E is below 25. The index measures how fast a chip is in games at 1080p, where the processor is the limit, not how fast it renders video.
That is why chips with a lot of cache rank so high. Games are sensitive to cache, and the X3D line from AMD beats chips with many more cores in most titles.
S and A tier chips pair with the fastest graphics cards at 1080p and 1440p. B tier is the best value for most gaming PCs and is enough for a mid-range or high-end card at 1440p. C tier suits mid-range cards at 1080p. D tier chips are fine for older games and light titles but will hold back newer cards. E tier chips struggle in modern games.
Do not buy a processor on tier alone. The socket decides what you can upgrade to later, and the cooler and motherboard add to the cost.
Begin with the graphics card you have or plan to buy, and the resolution you play at. A chip two tiers above your card gives you no extra frames; a chip two tiers below holds it back at 1080p. Inside a tier, choose by socket, price and power draw, because the chips are close in speed. If you already own a motherboard, the best chip for you is the fastest one on that socket that fits your budget.
Core counts only matter for what you do besides gaming. If you stream, edit video or run many programs at once, a chip with more cores inside the same tier is worth a small premium. For pure gaming, spend that money on the graphics card. The bottleneck calculator and best GPU for your CPU pages help you match the two.
The value chart divides each chip's index by its launch price. A higher bar means more gaming performance per dollar at launch. Prices change fast, so use it to find strong families, not to pick a chip at today's price.
Gaming index per $100 of launch price, desktop chips from 2019 on.
In our index the fastest processor for gaming is the Ryzen 7 9800X3D (index 100, where the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is 100). For value, the best performance per launch dollar among recent chips is the Core i3-14100F.
By our gaming index: S is 85 and above, A is 70 to 84, B is 55 to 69, C is 40 to 54, D is 25 to 39 and E is below 25.
Not beyond about 8 good cores for most games. Cache size and single-core speed matter more, which is why X3D chips top the list.