Sounds like some bad software or something extra CPU intensive then. I use R5 2600 on W11 and it can handle everything I need with ease like web browsing (depending on pages and tab count it can be quite demanding), at least 3 VMs at the same time (2 Windows, 1 Linux), gaming, video transcoding. All that is not happening at the same time, but I can’t remember last time I checked Task Manager to see what is using my CPU.
The R5 2600 is not only newer than my old i5 and faster, it also has a LOT more threads (12 vs 4) and an extra 2 full cores
Making it excellent for the multi threaded workloads (VMs) and leaving room for non-multithreaded optimized workloads
I have an RTSP client program running all the time displaying a handful of camera feeds. It had a ~45-55% average CPU usage even with GPU decoding/encoding enabled on it.
That same piece of software on my much newer 7600 changing absolutely nothing else software wise (I just dropped in the SSD from my old build) that same software barely cracks 5%
iCUE (for Corsair RGB control (yes I know there’s open source versions I just never got around to it lol)) had a similar story with ~30-40% before and barely 4% now
