6 AMD CPUs that are overdue for retirement

Published Oct 12, 2026, 7:00 AM EDT Ismar is a Senior Author at How-To Geek. He previously worked as a writer, editor, and general manager at a content agency before joining the team in 2023. He began his writing career in 2021 after completing a BA in English Language and Literature. Beyond How-To Geek, Ismar has contributed to Red Stag Fulfillment and Authority Hacker. He has also worked on various SEO projects to help clients improve their search visibility. Ismar has been around Windows PCs since the age of three, so friends and family naturally chose him as the resident tech support. His projects often involve tinkering, such as disassembling mechanical keyboards and gaming mice to mod his beloved gear. He also enjoys pushing hardware to the max through overclocking while staying on a reasonable budget. An avid gamer, Ismar has logged thousands of hours across various genres, including first-person shooters, RPGs, racing games, and roguelites. When he is not at his desk, he is probably exploring other people’s phones to discover their quirks and features or experimenting with the latest AI tools. In his free time, Ismar enjoys spending time with his wife, working out at the gym, playing guitar and bass, cooking gourmet meals, and traveling. Above all else, he’s a proud cat owner. AMD has been making CPUs that are popular among desktop gamers for years, with numerous chips earning legendary status for their performance and excellent value. But even the best processors eventually show their age as games become more demanding and older architectures struggle to keep up. If you're still gaming on one of these AMD CPUs, it's probably time to consider an upgrade. The FX-8350 promised eight cores, but its performance told a different story AMD's pre-Ryzen flagship chip was somewhat deceptive Credit: Nick Lewis / How-To GeekCredit: Nick Lewis / How-To Geek Before AMD's huge Ryzen rebranding, the FX-8350 had effectively been the brand's flagship desktop chip for several years. It was built on the Piledriver architecture, a refresh of the infamous Bulldozer architecture that was vastly inferior to Intel's offerings at the time. One of this CPU's biggest flaws was its "modular" design, which combined two integer clusters with a shared FPU and L2 cache. Although the FX-8350 was marketed as an 8-core, 8-thread CPU, its shared resources meant it didn't perform like a conventional 8-core chip in every workload, which eventually led to a class-action lawsuit over AMD's marketing. And on top of having this unusual design, the FX-8350 came with a 125W TDP and could run extremely hot under load. Although it was overclockable, pushing it further required substantial cooling, and the cost of a good cooler alone makes it difficult to justify in 2026. Plus, it's platform is just too old for anything. DDR3 RAM slows down most modern apps, while the PCIe 2.0 support severely limits GPU bandwidth on modern cards. On top of its old architecture and shared-resource design, it doesn't have great single-core performance, either. The CPU struggles to reach 60 average FPS in many modern games, even those that came out only five or six years after the CPU. Even when it does reach 60 FPS, the poor 1% lows make for a frustrating experience. All this means the CPU isn't worth keeping around even for an ultra-budget gaming PC. The Ryzen 5 1600 helped make six cores affordable, but time hasn't been kind to it First-gen Ryzen was a game changer, but that was years ago AMD's first generation of Ryzen chips was nothing short of groundbreaking. It was miles ahead of anything AMD had released before, and it finally put the company back on the radar for gamers. The Ryzen 5 1600 was one of the most interesting releases, offering a 6-core, 12-thread design in a mainstream chip at a price point many gamers could afford. While the Intel equivalent, the Core i5-7600, had faster single-core performance that helped in many games of the era, its outdated 4-core, 4-thread design struggled with multi-threaded workloads. Those extra cores and threads also helped the Ryzen 5 1600 age more gracefully as games, especially open-world titles, became better at taking advantage of multiple cores. Unfortunately, while the AM4 platform that the Ryzen 5 1600 launched on is still relevant today, its Zen 1 architecture struggles to keep up with modern gaming and demanding workloads. It doesn't even support Windows 11 out of the box. The good news is that you can probably keep the rest of your system as is and simply drop in a Ryzen 5000 series chip with a BIOS update, provided your motherboard is compatible. The Ryzen 7 2700X can't rely on eight cores to keep up with newer Ryzen CPUs Eight cores can only take you so far with an outdated architecture Credit: Nick Lewis / How-To Geek The Ryzen 2000 series was a Zen+ refresh that delivered numerous improvements over the original Zen chips. At the top of this lineup was the Ryzen 7 2700X, an 8-core, 16-thread chip that boasted a 4.3GHz maximum boost clock speed, a decent step up from the 2700 non-X's 4.1GHz. The chip was a great all-rounder that handled everything from gaming and streaming to video editing and everyday browsing. As someone who personally owned this chip, it pains me to say that it just can't keep up anymore. I was already seeing it show signs of struggle before I sold it in early 2025. It's stuck on PCIe 3.0, which limits support for faster NVMe SSDs, while its 16MB of L3 cache holds it back in modern games. Its 16-thread design is great for a server, but being a fairly inefficient desktop chip, it's somewhat costly to run 24/7. Put simply, the 2700X has been outclassed by more modern offerings. The Threadripper 2920X has plenty of cores, but mainstream CPUs are just plain better for gaming All those cores can't help it stay competitive Credit: AMD While most people know AMD for its Ryzen chips, the Threadripper lineup is genuinely fascinating, too. There was a time before the Ryzen 9 came out when some enthusiasts were buying Threadripper chips to use as general-purpose desktop and workstation CPUs. While the Threadripper lineup now goes all the way up to 96 cores, the Threadripper 2920X was a much more reasonable 12-core, 24-thread CPU that launched at an MSRP of $649. It was expensive, but those 12 cores made it worth it at the time. Unfortunately, while there are plenty of benefits to using this chip daily, such as its massive 64 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes, its cores can't make up for its antiquated, inefficient design and weak single-core performance. Today, you can sometimes find this chip for under $100, but the vast majority of people shouldn't even touch it. It uses the sTR4 socket found on X399 motherboards, which alone can cost hundreds of dollars on the used market. Even if you were planning to use it in a homelab, you're probably better off selling the board and CPU and putting that money toward an efficient mini PC that's better suited for an always-on server. The Ryzen 5 3400G's name suggests a newer architecture than it actually has This popular budget APU is much weaker than its name suggests AMD's APUs, which combine a CPU with a powerful integrated GPU, are popular for certain use cases. They power everything from handhelds and thin laptops to mini PCs and office desktops. One popular desktop APU that came out in 2019 was the Ryzen 5 3400G. Its name made it sound like it belonged alongside the newer Ryzen 3000 series chips, while the "5" in its name might lead you to expect the 6-core, 12-thread design that had become common among Ryzen 5 processors. Well, the Ryzen 5 3400G wasn't quite what its name suggested. It relied on the older Zen+ architecture and only had 4 physical cores and 8 threads. People bought the chip for its Radeon RX Vega 11 GPU, which handled display output for general desktop use and even some light 3D work and gaming. But as time went on, both the underpowered CPU and aging GPU made it harder to live with and use for modern apps. I could see it serving as a dedicated retro gaming machine, except it lives on the still-relevant AM4 platform and uses DDR4, which means you're probably better off upgrading to a newer Ryzen 5000 series model, such as the 5600G, which is a massively better APU. The Ryzen 5 3600 is still playable, but its 1% lows are starting to show its age It still runs games, just not as smoothly as newer alternatives Credit: Ismar Hrnjicevic / How-To Geek The Ryzen 5 3600 is a 6-core, 12-thread Zen 2 chip with 32MB of L3 cache. It offered a massive performance and efficiency leap over the previous generation, and it added PCIe 4.0 support with compatible motherboards. In many games, it was a bit faster than the Ryzen 7 2700X, and it was just a good all-around chip at a fair price, which made everyone want to buy one. It's sometimes recommended for 1080p gaming and general desktop use even in 2026, but it's yet another chip that's been outclassed by AMD's more recent offerings. Even within AM4, there are many more powerful and interesting options, including the Ryzen 5 5600X, Ryzen 7 5700X, and various X3D chips that offer drastically better gaming performance than this old, popular chip. That said, unlike the other CPUs on this list, I'd say the Ryzen 5 3600 is right on the borderline of still being acceptable. If you don't want to spend money on an upgrade right now, you could probably squeeze another year out of it, especially if you switch to Linux. These AMD CPUs aren't useless, but their glory days are behind them Ever since Ryzen launched, AMD has consistently delivered newer and faster CPUs, pushing the industry forward. Thanks to AM4's longevity, it's becoming harder to justify sticking with an older Ryzen chip when a newer one offers much better performance. As for older FX and Threadripper chips, their aging architectures, outdated platforms, and high power draw make them even harder to justify when newer, more efficient CPUs outperform them across the board.