Best CPU's of all time?

Conroe is the only CPU in my book that merits this type of mention, in my opinion. What a huge leap.
 
My humble little E8500 Wolfdale 2core 2thread is still hanging in there. Maybe in April I will say Best CPU is the 3770K maybe not for all time, but at least for 2012!;)
 
Retsam said:
AMD 3200+ Venice. These were highly sought after when they were released. I loved this cpu. I paid only around $100 for it and the thing overclocked to a modest 2.8GHZ if I remember correctly. It was a lot of bang for the buck.
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about to post the same thing, that CPU was a champ.
I like my 1055t too.

I know intels new generation is supposed to be great, but all the intel cpu's I've had I've never liked, P4 sucked. My work mac from 2009 has dual 2.8ghz quad core Intel xeon's and this thing is as slow as hell, it seems barely faster than my 3200+
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
As soon as I saw how far ahead of the current Pentium 4s and Athlon 64s of the time, I knew right away that Dothan was the future, and AMD would be in for an epic, 6 year (still going strong) ass whooping

Those CPUs were the mobile equivalent of Conroe, they were "good enough" for most users, even up to this very day... but, even better, they came out 2 years before :)
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Exactly what I thought when I got my first i9300 with one. Then a few days later ordered my first upgrade which was a chip to do the pinmod on.
 
I always tried to upgrade to solid "bang for the buck" processors. My first was a Thunderbird 800 Mhz that reached over 1 Ghz, then I saved and got a Core2Duo 6300 which went from 2.1 ghz to 2.5 or so, but then I hit the jackpot and got my [email protected] Ghz up to 3.2 Ghz. That lasted me all the way up to last fall, when I finally upgraded to Sandybridge.
 
definitely the core 2 duo/quad series. it was the stepping stone to modern gaming.
 
AMD barton M 2500 or 2600+ in a desktop :)
Mine ran at 2.5-2.6ghz until my 9700 pro died :(
 
matteos said:
about to post the same thing, that CPU was a champ.
I like my 1055t too.

I know intels new generation is supposed to be great, but all the intel cpu's I've had I've never liked, P4 sucked. My work mac from 2009 has dual 2.8ghz quad core Intel xeon's and this thing is as slow as hell, it seems barely faster than my 3200+
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Not only are latest generation CPUs great, but kick the shit out of anything AMD. Don't kid yourself.
 
TFchris said:
definitely the core 2 duo/quad series. it was the stepping stone to modern gaming.
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Core 2 quad? Blah that wasn't even a native quad core. Amd can build a quad core on a single die like a bauss.
 
I'd have to go with my socket 939 X2 4800+... that processor had some loooong legs and was "fast enough" for a very long time...
 
ZodaEX said:
Core 2 quad? Blah that wasn't even a native quad core. Amd can build a quad core on a single die like a bauss.
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Lol, I'm sorry if I'm missing your sarcasm, but you'd be surprised how many people on this board actually spouted this nonsense back in the day.
 
My all-time favorite, the DEC Alpha. I had too much stuff and had to get rid of mine. There's a 64-bit version of Windows 2000 written for the DEC Alpha, it would kick ass even today.
 
Mendocino Celeron 300A.

Never before was so much performance available for so little money, WITHOUT COMPROMISE. Even if you didn't overclock, this chip gave you %95 of the performance of a Pentium II for under $150.

Keep in mind: prior to this, Intel priced their new Pentium II chips through the roof:

Klamath core ranged from $636 (233) to $1981 (300 MHz)!!!

Deschutes 100 MHz FSB models sold for $600 and up!!!

They also used their older Pentium MMX chips for the low-end, which made things painful for the majority of users. The Celeron broke this system completely, and the world of affordable computing would never be the same.
 
e6300 still my fav, 50% OC? all day long

100% OC? Why certainly!
 
the only answer to this thread is pentium

pentium is what made the cpu from a part into a rock star, solidifying the intel x86 dynasty
 
xp-m 2500+, it was crazy. these days its just plain boring, i bet i could put a trained monkey on HWBOT..
 
I've been into computers since i was 5 years old, that was 27 years ago. I would only truly classify 3 cpu's in category.

Intel Celeron 300A - First affordable cpu with awesome power
AMD K7 - Blew Intel out of the water
Intel E6600 (Conroe) - Such an amazing leap from the P4 and anything AMD had that AMD is still playing catch up SIX years later...
 
defaultluser said:
Mendocino Celeron 300A.

Never before was so much performance available for so little money, WITHOUT COMPROMISE. Even if you didn't overclock, this chip gave you %95 of the performance of a Pentium II for under $150.

Keep in mind: prior to this, Intel priced their new Pentium II chips through the roof:

Klamath core ranged from $636 (233) to $1981 (300 MHz)!!!

Deschutes 100 MHz FSB models sold for $600 and up!!!

They also used their older Pentium MMX chips for the low-end, which made things painful for the majority of users. The Celeron broke this system completely, and the world of affordable computing would never be the same.
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Yeah. Generally, I'd say the Celery 300A was the best bang/buck CPU ever. Considering CPU prices at the time, and how frequently people got it running at 450mhz with a simple lazy overclock...hard to beat. I never owned one (I had a K6-2 350mhz instead...my first PC build...wasn't comfortable overclocking).
 
I'm old enough to remember when a new PC always cost $5,000, Athlon changed everything. If it wasn't for competition from AMD we would still be using 200watt Pentium 5.5 and paying $800 a piece.
 
reb00tin said:
I'm old enough to remember when a new PC always cost $5,000, Athlon changed everything. If it wasn't for competition from AMD we would still be using 200watt Pentium 5.5 and paying $800 a piece.
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With AMD becoming less relavent as well as the company itself being less focused on the desktop market, we may see skyrocketing prices yet in a few years time.
 
reb00tin said:
My all-time favorite, the DEC Alpha. I had too much stuff and had to get rid of mine. There's a 64-bit version of Windows 2000 written for the DEC Alpha, it would kick ass even today.
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Back in high school I worked at a mom and pop computer shop. We were always trying to sell these to businesses for some reason. Never did sell one.
 
reb00tin said:
I'm old enough to remember when a new PC always cost $5,000, Athlon changed everything. If it wasn't for competition from AMD we would still be using 200watt Pentium 5.5 and paying $800 a piece.
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Celeron changed everything. It was released a year earlier than the Athlon, and made powerful Sub-$1000 PCs possible. You could build a Sub-$1000 PC prior to this, but it usually had some bargain basement VX os SiS chipset and K6/Cyrix CPU.

Athlon was released at fairly expensive price points ($324 to $699 for 500-600 MHz). This was competitive with Intel's Pentium III pricing at the time, but was by no means low.

AMD released the Duron a year later, and although this did raise the bar for price/performance over the Celeron, none of the chips released breached the magic $100 barrier. PC prices remained the same.

Intel proceeded to price their Celerons at rock-bottom prices (under $50), while AMD kept to the around $100 mark for their Semprons. So Intel created the Sub-$500 PC market.

Would Intel have done all this without AMD's help? No. But they won't be raising prices if AMD disappeared tomorrow, since they are their own biggest competitor.
 
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Core 2 Quad (e.g. Q6600). Think about it this way, it's been around around the same time Vista started and many are still able to run it now - close to 2 windows released later (Windows 8 is coming soon). Especially the Q9xxx series that added SSE4 is still very relevant now. IMO we need more cores & better OS usage to see a real difference for the average user.
 
Relativist said:
Core 2 Quad (e.g. Q6600). Think about it this way, it's been around around the same time Vista started and many are still able to run it now - close to 2 windows released later (Windows 8 is coming soon). Especially the Q9xxx series that added SSE4 is still very relevant now. IMO we need more cores & better OS usage to see a real difference for the average user.
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We've had OS' that can use multi cores for many many years. It's the applications that need to scale, but you're never going to get perfect scaling and there is a point of diminishing returns. Having more powerful cores would help out a lot more than simply adding more. I know for a fact I'd benefit a lot more if each of my 4 cores were twice as powerful than I would if I had twice as many cores.
 
GreenMonkey said:
Yeah. Generally, I'd say the Celery 300A was the best bang/buck CPU ever. Considering CPU prices at the time, and how frequently people got it running at 450mhz with a simple lazy overclock...hard to beat. I never owned one (I had a K6-2 350mhz instead...my first PC build...wasn't comfortable overclocking).
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Yep, and when doubled up in an Abit BP6 you had multiprocessor performance for a very low price, probably 1/10th the cost of a similarly performing top of the range PII setup. Remember this is before the days of Hyperthreading and multicore chips - at the time very few people outside high end servers, very expensive high end desktops or really [H]ard core had multiprocessing, it was unbelievable how smooth this ran compared to non multiprocessor systems. This was something the masses could afford.

To put it into perspective - today, imagine an overclocked Celeron with similar performance to the top of the range i7 for about $80.

Cheers
Jamie
 
itsnoyfb said:
Yep, and when doubled up in an Abit BP6 you had multiprocessor performance for a very low price, probably 1/10th the cost of a similarly performing top of the range PII setup. Remember this is before the days of Hyperthreading and multicore chips - at the time very few people outside high end servers, very expensive high end desktops or really [H]ard core had multiprocessing, it was unbelievable how smooth this ran compared to non multiprocessor systems. This was something the masses could afford.

To put it into perspective - today, imagine an overclocked Celeron with similar performance to the top of the range i7 for about $80.

Cheers
Jamie
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Damn you bring back fond memories of the olde Dual Celery BP6. Besides my current 790i beater box, nothing lasted longer and played the latest games. Just add dual voodoo 2 cards to the Dual Celery.
 
plagas said:
The first Pentium 4.
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Lulz

Relativist said:
Core 2 Quad (e.g. Q6600). Think about it this way, it's been around around the same time Vista started and many are still able to run it now - close to 2 windows released later (Windows 8 is coming soon). Especially the Q9xxx series that added SSE4 is still very relevant now. IMO we need more cores & better OS usage to see a real difference for the average user.
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Yup, E/Q 6600..... best processors in history... Sure, the Celeron 300As gave you insane performance and OCs, but did they last 6 years comfortably? Hell, the Q6600 is probably as powerful as the CPU I'm running right now (AMD X4 840)... it still runs pretty much anything you can throw at it.....

Best desktop processors ever.... dammit....
 
C2D T4200 - My dual-core 2GHz has been giving me wonderful service for around four years now. Have had a few other newer laptops since I bought this one, but they never work near as well.
 
Amd Duron best cpu hands down of all time.

cheap/fast/ very overclock friendly. was a good platform all around.

i rocked one. I loved that chip. Still have it to this day, runs a quake 3 server from time to time.
 
Probably an outlier, but the first bottom-up build I did was using a Northwood P4. Didn't know crap from crap other than a price premium of $250 for the part running @ 3.06ghz was not gonna happen. 24 hours, a Zalman heatsink + Delta fan and some reading on the internet later I had it scootin' along at the same 3.06ghz. God bless that little Northwood. It's what got me into overclocking.

Edit : Almost forgot, the part I bought was 2.53ghz stock.
 
People in this thread are being way too Vague. You can't say that a "Core 2 Duo" or a "Core i7" was the "best" CPU because those brands covered dozens of different CPUs, some amazing, some not so much.

You could say a Q6600 is a legendary chip, but a Q9450? Not so much, even though they are both "Core2Quad".
 
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