I think it's more a function of modern OS's not really taking that much more from the CPU than they used to be- IIRC, Windows 10 is faster than Windows 7 on slow hardware because it disables more nice-to-have features (think Aero).
CPUs continue to get more powerful, but the minimum hardware requirements for newer editions of operating systems tends to not follow the same curve that new game releases do. (I can't play Rainbow 6 Siege on my Ryzen 5 3550H + GTX 1050 laptop, but CSGO runs fine on it and my i7-2670QM laptop mobo with a GTX 1060 strapped to it.)
Oh I completely agree that basic desktop computing is still reasonably responsive on older CPUs; I'm just pointing out that the mere idea of a six year old CPU being called "pretty fast" by current standards would have been unthinkable for most of my lifetime.
10 (and IIRC 8?) felt incredibly slow on my gaming PC until I switched to an SSD for the OS disk. I think it hits disk way, way more often than 7, which makes it feel slower. Even on an SSD it doesn't really seem any better than 7 did on spinning rust (programs load faster, of course, but you can't really credit the OS for that—the OS interface itself, and OS utilities, don't seem faster). This was true even with Cortana and all that junk totally disabled.
Strange. I'd expect you to be hitting at least 40-50fps on 1080 High settings in R6 Siege with those specs. Minimum system requirements for R6 Siege is an i3. Maybe because its a laptop you are either hitting thermal limits or you have significantly less VRAM than the desktop counterpart.
> Minimum system requirements for R6 Siege is an i3.
I've never played R6 Siege and have no idea how it performs, but I would just like to say that this is effectively meaningless and I hate how games put it in their system requirements. Writing "moderately fast CPU" would carry more useful information. A Westmere Core i3-530 from 2010 is not going to perform anything like a Coffee Lake Core i3-8100B from 2018.
CPUs continue to get more powerful, but the minimum hardware requirements for newer editions of operating systems tends to not follow the same curve that new game releases do. (I can't play Rainbow 6 Siege on my Ryzen 5 3550H + GTX 1050 laptop, but CSGO runs fine on it and my i7-2670QM laptop mobo with a GTX 1060 strapped to it.)