> In my experience, SSDs had a bigger impact.

When SSDs became mainstream, yes, I agree they had a bigger impact than any CPU speed increases at that particular time.

But back in the double-digit MHz days of CPU speeds, upgrading your CPU was king when it came to better performance, and I'd argue that effect was more pronounced than the the HDD to SSD transition was. It's hard to convey what huge jumps CPUs were making during that time period, and how big a difference it made.

I also remember a time, somewhere in the middle of that, when adding more RAM could be a bigger boost than a CPU upgrade. But back in the 80s and 90s (and prior, but I have no personal experience with that), there was only so much RAM you could add, and the CPU was still often what was holding you back.

But CPUs just haven't been the bottleneck for most home user workloads for a long time now. These days when I buy a new laptop, I certainly want the best CPU I can get, but I'm more concerned about how much RAM I can put in it, and the iGPU's specs. (SSDs are a given, so I don't need to think much about it.)