Best CPU's of all time?

Domingo said:
For recent processors, I feel like the 8700K is a shining star. They're still a damn good CPU and you can get a pretty good uplift vs. stock performance with minimal effort.
I can't think of another CPU that really wow'd me like that one did since the Athlon days.
Click to expand...
Second that 8700K. The only Intel platform i've ever owned. Great chip as a 6/12. Has to be in the running for GOAT status.
 
I think the 13600k is a modern classic, obviously tbd but it is very quick, reasonably priced and a good general processor
 
So many.... so little time

I think what is most interesting though is all the older ones I was going to list required tricks and overclocking.... slockets, pencil mods, voltage mods, etc etc. Plus endless jumper/BIOS tweaking.

Nowadays the CPUs overclock themselves. We don't have to do much at all.

So the modern ones are the best BC least effort.

But if I must pick one that impressed myself the most, was Celeron 300a to 466 on BH6. 500 would post and work in windows but would crash under load. Also required *GASP* extra fans, which back then was kind of unheard of. Most PCs had 1, maybe 2 tops 80mm fans (intake/exhaust). I had to add MORE fans to keep things stable. But oh, that sweet Voodoo 2 SLI running Quake 2 at 1024x768. Think about that, that's not even 720p. Oh to go back to 1998 knowing what I know now.
 
Last edited:
Burticus said:
Nowadays the CPUs overclock themselves. We don't have to do much at all.

So the modern ones are the best BC least effort.
Click to expand...
the 13600 can go up to 5.7ish ghz from 5.1 if you manually clock it , I think it’s the first “truly” overclockable chip in a long time
 
for me it was the opteron 165. i broke 3Ghz on that thing.

my old slot 1 celeron 333 was pretty cool too.
 
Nebell said:
i7-920! Has to be! :-D
That CPU was oc monster and it lasted for a looooooooooooong time.
It was even faster than some Intel 10th gen cpus.
Click to expand...
I bought an i7-930 and it was a dog. The standard voltage required for it to run at stock was more than most people with i7-920s could use for 4.0 GHz. I could never get it stable at 4.0 GHz at any voltage I was comfortable with. In those days, it seemed like the first silicon put out by Intel was the best, before they started really binning all of it for market segmentation. I eventually replaced it with a 6 core gulftown Xeon. I'm still bitter about that 930...
 
2600K and 8700K because it was a good jump from what was before and it was a long time to it being irrelevant.
13600K might be, but we will have to see if it has legs.
 
For me it's i7 920 and i3 530 as both processors introduced me to overclocking world.
That i3 530 run strong daily @4ghz at only 1.25v only, using stock cooler (run from 2011 before I sold it at 2019).
 
I would add i7-2700k. I bought three of them to get one that would hold 4.8 at anywhere from 1.344 to 1.356 volts using offset of +.005 in the voltage setting. Not earth-shattering, but a good, solid chip. Back when I used to go on overclock.com, that chip was in the Sandy stable club which required a 12 hour Prime 95 run. I still have it, but clocked down to 4.5 now. I haven't booted it in a couple of years. It's gonna be my daughters first computer.

20230315_205129.jpg
 
Tie. Core2Duo E6600. Core i7 8700K.

I remember getting my first Core2Duo chip in a new build (In a beastly Silverstone TJ07), firing up Battlefield 2 and it just FLEW. It just chewed up every game like I had never seen before. It was light years beyond whatever I had before. I believe it was the first intel dual core. I've had who knows how many CPUs since then, but that one sticks. It was world beater. I don't remember what clock speed I was able to hit, but I remember it was a huge overclock. I think I had a massive tower cooler on it, not a Thermalright, but whatever the undisputed champ was in big coolers before Thermalright came along. It was my first custom build, but I think the chip itself was also special.

I don't recall how long I ran that one.

I still run 8700K. It is just a beast at 1080p. I think I've been running it for six years. I just see no need to upgrade, but I suspect when I upgrade to 4K oled, I'll see the need.
 
Last edited:
First, holy freaking NECRO! lol.

Second, wow, so many to choose from honestly, I guess the ones I remember the most (aside from modern CPUs I have used)...

- My old Athlon XP 2800+ Barton (which had the 512Kb of cache vs. 256Kb), I still have that in my retro box to this day running at 2.5Ghz with 400Mhz FSB! I am in the process of restoring my old Soyo KT880 board so I can run my Voodoo 3 on it (that board had universal AGP, my nForce 2 did not that it is on now).
- Q6600 G0 Stepping was hands down king of it's day with a TON of OC headroom. I had mine at 3.6Ghz (default 2.4Ghz) solid and later replaced it with a Q9450 which I also ran at 3.6Ghz (OC'ed to 450Mhz FSB) and had more cache.
- My 5960X (J-Batch) Haswell-e had a massive OC too. I still run that on my entertainment system PC at 4.625Ghz (default was 3.4Ghz).
 
Last edited:
III_Slyflyer_III said:
First, holy freaking NECRO! lol.

Second, wow, so many to choose from honestly, I guess the ones I remember the most (aside from modern CPUs I have used)...

- My old Athlon XP 2800+ Barton (which had the 512Kb of cache vs. 256Kb), I still have that in my retro box to this day running at 2.5Ghz with 400Mhz FSB! I am in the process of restoring my old Soyo KT880 board so I can run my Voodoo 3 on it (that board had universal AGP, my nForce 2 did not that it is on now).
- Q6600 G0 Stepping was hands down king of it's day with a TON of OC headroom. I had mine at 3.6Ghz (default 2.4Ghz) solid and later replaced it with a Q9450 which I also ran at 3.6Ghz (OC'ed to 450Mhz FSB) and had more cache.
- My 5960X (J-Batch) Haswell-e had a massive OC too. I still run that on my entertainment system PC at 4.625Ghz (default was 3.4Ghz).
Click to expand...
My C2Q 6600 did 3.6GHz with the stock cooler and the only thing that limited it was throttle at >99°C!

Out of all the 300A slot-1 chips I bought in 1998 one did 504 and the rest did 466 with only one making the cut at 450MHz. All cooled with a cheap-o coolermaster clip on heatsink with tiny 40mm fan! $180 for a chip that was faster than the $700 plus PII 450. Good times indeed!

Still have an SR-2 box with a pair of Xeon X5690 (default 3.4GHz) that do 4.6GHz at 1.375V. On water of course but that rig ran 24/7/365 for four years straight at full load and never went down.

My first Slot-A K7 Athlon was a 700MHz part that I got to 1009MHz stable via resistor mod. Needed fair amount of air across the Alpha heatsink but was smoking the 1GHz P3s at the time.

Some of the LGA P4s reached high clocks but they needed them due to netbust syndrome. ;-)

Had a few Athlon X2s including the screaming FX60 but later that summer (2006) Conroe arrived and pissed all over AMD's parade. 🙃

The ONLY chip I had that died of natural causes (no end user o/c) was a Cyrix PR166+. Lasted about 4 years in an office environment. I say that because, you know, people didn't game on those due to poor FP. ;-) But that chip literally suffered from electromigration failure and it was often said due to the very poor overclockability of those chips they were essentially overclocked from the factory to begin with.
 
pitingres said:
Upon seeing this topic, I immediately thought of the DEC KI-10. Yes, the KL was a lot faster, but it was a huge power pig.

Not exactly a desktop CPU, though.
Click to expand...
I had to look this one up as I thought I knew at least a little about most cpus from the 1980s and up. This one is from 1971 so no wonder it didn’t ring a bell! Pretty crazy specs for such an old CPU (36bit word length!) but then it wasn’t designed as a home use microprocessor.
 
sethk said:
I had to look this one up as I thought I knew at least a little about most cpus from the 1980s and up. This one is from 1971 so no wonder it didn’t ring a bell! Pretty crazy specs for such an old CPU (36bit word length!) but then it wasn’t designed as a home use microprocessor.
Click to expand...
I had an opportunity to bring home a working KI-10, back in 1990. The wife nixed it though. Very disappolinting.\

Of course, one can emulate it today faster than the original hardware ran.
 
I loved my E8500 and Q9650 back in the Intel LGA 775 days, both CPU's performed quite well.

I was also quite fond of my old AMD Athlon X2 6000+ when it first launched and was my first dual core CPU ever.
 
Camaroz06 said:
Hello All,

sort of a light hearted usless thread. What do you feel are the best CPUs of all time? Can be any producer.

I'd have to throw my hat in for the Q6600 and E6600 from the core 2 duo line, and even the i7920.
Click to expand...
Going all the way back to this post, even though it's 13 yrs later, the C2D E6600 was a groundbreaking performance leap. A great chip. I also have to tip my hat to the i7 930 I used for almost 10yrs, Intel was doing some fantastic work from 07-10.

My Athlon 64 3500+ was also a great chip for the money all the way back in '05
 
ChronoDetector said:
I loved my E8500 and Q9650 back in the Intel LGA 775 days, both CPU's performed quite well.

I was also quite fond of my old AMD Athlon X2 6000+ when it first launched and was my first dual core CPU ever.
Click to expand...
I had the Q9650 also. Awesome chip. I just recently gave it away to a friend.
 
Q9650 was the best. It over locked like a monster. I ran a 42% overclock on mine for 3+yrs.
 
Core 2 Duo E6600. Intel took the disastrous Prescott Pentium 4 and made the absolutely epic Conroe architecture which reduced power consumption while at least doubling IPC. That chip ran so cool that I could run my Thermalright Ultra 120 without a fan directly attached to it. Zero chance you could do that with any high-end chip today.
 
madpistol said:
Core 2 Duo E6600. Intel took the disastrous Prescott Pentium 4 and made the absolutely epic Conroe architecture which reduced power consumption while at least doubling IPC. That chip ran so cool that I could run my Thermalright Ultra 120 without a fan directly attached to it. Zero chance you could do that with any high-end chip today.
Click to expand...
Yup! I had a Tuniq Tower 120 cooler on it, in a beastly Silverstone TJ07. 👍🏻
 
Blackstone said:
Yup! I had a Tuniq Tower 120 cooler on it, in a beastly Silverstone TJ07. 👍🏻
Click to expand...
Not getting the TJ07 was one of my biggest regrets of that time. I was torn between the TJ07 and the PC-V1200 and went Lian li because when i went to order the Silverstone the black one was out of stock. It came right back in stock like 2 days later. Dont get me wrong the Lian li case was amazing and is still kicking today for my nephew but i would have rather had the Silverstone.
 
Keljian said:
I think the 13600k is a modern classic, obviously tbd but it is very quick, reasonably priced and a good general processor
Click to expand...
I have KF version of this and yes its well rounded CPU, not the best at anything but very good for everything and compared to competition punches above its weight class.

It is unfortunately rather expensive CPU and this makes it nowhere near "the best CPU of all time" category.
Good example is something I would say might be the best CPU: ~80 bucks Pentium Dual-Core E2140. The only CPU I ever saw overclocked 100% (here frtom 1.6GHz to 3.2GHz) and after OC surpassed performance of many times faster and the fastest CPUs in the market.

Like literally no matter what anyone had if it was something other than Conroe it made very little sense to keep it.
You cannot say the same for 13600K

madpistol said:
Core 2 Duo E6600. Intel took the disastrous Prescott Pentium 4 and made the absolutely epic Conroe architecture which reduced power consumption while at least doubling IPC. That chip ran so cool that I could run my Thermalright Ultra 120 without a fan directly attached to it. Zero chance you could do that with any high-end chip today.
Click to expand...
12589.png


In general applications it was more like 'just' twice as fast
12575.png

Here Pentium XE 965 didn't only have twice the clock but also Hyper-Threading and still barely won with cheapest Conroe (at the time) E6300 by one point 🙃

Imho Conroe was the best CPU core of all time.
Even today fast Conroe system with modern GPU gives reasonable experience so even if we compare CPUs by "how long they could be used" this core is out there with the longest usable CPUs of all times.
 
I think the 5900X should be on the list.

Out of the box its a bit tame, but feed it some power and curve and she turns into a beast.

Running Pi32M at 5150MHz is quicker than a 6GHz 8700K..

But I mean, to be fair I have loved all of my past processors. They all have a place in me because I tuned them :)
 
Phenom II X2's (ex. 550BEs), who doesn't like free cores for no effort.
 
XoR_ said:
Even today fast Conroe system with modern GPU gives reasonable experience
Click to expand...
Sorry but thats not even remotely true. Conroe chips will not give you anything resembling a reasonable gaming experience today. Not even close. No single threaded dual core CPU will give you a reasonable gaming experience in 2023 let alone one from 2007.

I dont know if its nostalgia or you just plain dont remember right but Conroe was only ever single threaded dual core chips and the dual core chips from that era aged incredibly poorly. The Kentsfield Quads that came 6 months after Conroe was the far better long term investment. Those held up far better than the Conroe chips ever did thats for sure.
 
Disposed said:
No single threaded dual core CPU will give you a reasonable gaming experience in 2023 let alone one from 2007.
Click to expand...
Couldn't agree more.

I have this SB i5 2500k, and at 3.5ghz (can oc blck only due to H77 board) it can't even keep up with gtx 1070ti. I may have a chance to further oc it for example 4.5ghz / 4.8ghz (by ordering z68/z77 board) but even then I'm not so sure it will lessen the bottleneck.
 
The 2600k had staying power that is going to be tough to match. The 4790k may come close, but probably wont last as long.
 
Disposed said:
Sorry but thats not even remotely true. Conroe chips will not give you anything resembling a reasonable gaming experience today. Not even close. No single threaded dual core CPU will give you a reasonable gaming experience in 2023 let alone one from 2007.

I dont know if its nostalgia or you just plain dont remember right but Conroe was only ever single threaded dual core chips and the dual core chips from that era aged incredibly poorly. The Kentsfield Quads that came 6 months after Conroe was the far better long term investment. Those held up far better than the Conroe chips ever did thats for sure.
Click to expand...
I should be more specific... I meant things like browsing web, watching netflix, etc, doing actual work like programing, excel engineering, CAD, photoshop, etc. this sorts of things "experience".
Not amazing by any means but Core2 Duo is one of the CPU's with longer time of still being somewhat usable.
 
applegrcoug said:
The 2600k had staying power that is going to be tough to match. The 4790k may come close, but probably wont last as long.
Click to expand...
I don't know..

I have a 3770K that I run at 4700, and it is pretty soft compared to my Zen 3 units.. I sold my X5690 a couple of years ago because it was getting no love, and it wasn't worth the power to turn it on anymore :D

With all of the mitigations the old Intel CPUs have had dealt to them, they are slow now a days.
 
XoR_ said:
I should be more specific... I meant things like browsing web, watching netflix, etc, doing actual work like programing, excel engineering, CAD, photoshop, etc. this sorts of things "experience".
Click to expand...
Sorry thats still not true at all. Conroe will struggle like crazy with everything you just said besides web browsing. Conroe chips legitimately struggle with Youtube playback.

Not amazing by any means but Core2 Duo is one of the CPU's with longer time of still being somewhat usable.
Click to expand...
Not really. The dual cores aged very poorly and are practically unusable today for anything more demanding than a web browser. Nostalgia is definitely tinting your perception. You are specifically saying Core 2 DUO and Conroe which specifically aged like milk compared to the the Core 2 Quad line AKA Kentsfield.

Dont get me wrong Conroe was absolutely amazing when it launched. It did not age that well though. Single threaded dual cores all aged very badly in the long run. The quads where a far better investment. I dont know how anybody could put Conroe over Kentsfield for best. Kentsfield was significantly better in the long run. Kentsfield is still usable for most of the things you listed, Conroe is not.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top