Most modern PC games actually use only about 4 to 6 CPU threads at once, even though today’s processors come loaded with extra cores just twiddling their silicon thumbs. Game engines generally prioritize single-core speed, so if you’ve got a beefy chip with eight or more cores, don’t expect them all to break a sweat unless you’re multitasking—Discord in the background, anyone? Want to know which genres push CPUs to their limits, or which engines really scale up? Stick around.
Curiosity about how modern games actually use your CPU isn’t just for tech nerds—it’s something every gamer wonders, especially when watching that utilization graph bounce around like a caffeinated squirrel. It turns out, most games today lean on about 4 to 6 CPU threads during regular play.
Sure, your processor might boast a dozen or more threads, but only a handful see real action, while the others hang out in the digital break room. Some tasks cannot be parallelized effectively, meaning that even powerful CPUs might not be fully utilized by most games. Some games, like the infamous Cities Skylines, still pile most of their work onto a single main thread, almost as if multithreading was just a suggestion rather than a rule. Single-threaded performance remains crucial for gaming efficiency, because even the busiest games tend to focus their workload on just a few threads.
Most CPU threads just idle while a few do all the work—some games still treat multithreading like an optional side quest.
This means, even with all those extra threads and cores, you might not see much improvement unless the game engine is designed to spread out the workload. Lowering graphics settings can shift which threads see the most action, but it won’t magically convince the game to use more threads than it was built for.
For players with CPUs sporting 8 cores and 16 threads, congratulations—you’ve hit the gaming sweet spot. Modern engines, such as Unreal Engine 5, make decent use of around 6 cores, leaving some headroom for Discord, Chrome, or whatever else you have running. AI-enhanced games are beginning to leverage more CPU resources as they implement adaptive gameplay that learns from player behavior and adjusts difficulty in real-time.
But if you’re hoping that 12 or 16 cores will launch your frame rates into orbit, don’t hold your breath; most game engines just can’t take advantage of that many. Single-core performance still matters, sometimes more than anything else.
That’s because countless game tasks—like heavy physics, AI routines, and the main game loop—prefer to run on one or a few threads. Even with cool-sounding multithreaded designs, some game logic stubbornly resists parallelization, bottlenecking performance on one busy core.
Different genres and engines shake things up. Open-world and AAA games can stretch across more threads, while strategy or simulation titles may stick to fewer but harder-working ones. Competitive shooters, on the other hand, might use more threads for smoother frame pacing, but don’t expect miracles from more than 8 cores.
In the end, faster cores beat more cores almost every time—at least, until developers rewrite the rules.