The best CPUs for gaming 2023: Top picks in all price categories

Midrange CPUs are the sweet spot for PC gamers. In fact, if you don’t need the additional cores of pricier CPU options, this class of chip offers essentially the same gaming experience of processors that cost hundreds more. The reason? Most of the computing burden falls on your graphics card.

At a street price of about $180, the Intel Core i5-12400 smoothly balances performance and affordability. Despite being succeeded by the Core i5-13400, it still holds strong in the sub-$250 space. This six-core, 12-thread processor offers plenty of oomph, so much so that it remains hot on the 13400’s heels in gaming benchmarks, as shown by TechSpot. It also provides support for DDR5 motherboards and memory, allowing you to build a system with a little more future-proofing built-in.

If you don’t care about DDR5 support, however, you can also consider the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X. At 1080p, it offers a slight bump in performance (around 5 percent). Still, be sure to consider which games you play most and which might give the greater advantage to AMD versus Intel. That said, if you’re upgrading your CPU on an older AM4 motherboard, we recommend the 5700X over the 12400; it’s a drop-in replacement that requires no other purchases, making it a highly cost-effective upgrade. (Just don’t forget to update your BIOS before making the swap.)

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• Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/401980/best-cpus-for-gaming.html