Buy a Faster CPU
17 days ago
- #Hardware Investment
- #Productivity Tools
- #CPU Performance
- CPUs have become significantly faster in recent years, yet many people use outdated mobile chips, harming productivity.
- AI coding subscriptions like Cursor cost around $500/year, justifying the expense with even a 1% efficiency gain for senior engineers.
- The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, priced at $500, is a cost-effective alternative, amortizing to $170/year over three years.
- Benchmarks show a 10x performance gap between older laptops and top-end desktop CPUs, drastically reducing build times.
- Desktop CPUs are roughly 3x faster than laptop CPUs, and new generations are 2-3x faster than those from three years ago.
- Justifying an AI coding subscription also justifies investing in the best hardware for productivity.