Most newer CPU power is geared towards AI and telemetry (IoT, web advertising), which essentially feed the surveillance economy. Desktop CPUs have been powerful enough for non-ad driven web browsing and office applications for at least a decade.

> old power hungry cpu

note that global CO2 has risen since the birth of my CPU. So I doubt the next gen leads us to make less CO2... I know, the current CPU's consume less energy, but globally, because of the fall in price, I'm pretty confident that the energy saved on the CPU is completely offset by the number of CPU sold.

Plus the total consumption of a CPU doesn't actually go down, they just do more with it. They look at thermal limits more than power consumption, like, how much work can we make it do within these temperature ranges.

Mobile chips are a bit different, but to a point it's the same story there. If you put the chips of today in the smartphones of a decade ago they would probably last a week on a battery charge.

Power hungry is not a term I'd use to describe a Core 2 Duo.

Or do CPUs need more power to run as they get older? That would be news to me.

It surely needs a lot more power to do the same work as a modern CPU. Like if you were encoding a video on it where against a modern CPU that may use the same power but finish many times sooner.

The new CPU has another carbon footprint added, plus the RAM and motherboard, etc. to overcome before it is comparable. I doubt a new CPU is effective enough to offset that anytime soon on an average use PC.