The Top 5 Best CPUs of All Time

[NamelessPFG]

All those kids in here...

Best CPUs of all time in my opinion:

1. Zilog Z80
   One of the most influential CPUs which helped initiate the home computer revolution in the 1980s and is built into countless other devices. Produced from 1976-present.
   
2. Motorola 68000
   
3. DEC Alpha 21064
   
4. AMD Athlon Thunderbird
   This helped AMD win the race to 1 GHz
   
5. undecided yet

Now here's a list that acknowledges the existence of non-x86 CPUs for a change!

You'd think the Z80 and 68000 would've warranted more consideration, given their historic proliferation; the only reason x86 took off, by contrast, is simply because modern computers are descended from the IBM 5150 Personal Computer in some form. Pretty much everyone else went Z80, 6502 (C64) or 680x0 (Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST, X68000).

Funny thing is, the Z80 and 68000 are still alive and well, if only because of the artificial monopoly that is the academic market for graphing calculators that TI has a death grip on and can still charge $100+ a pop for. TI-83/84 use the Z80, TI-89/92/Voyage 200 use the 68000.

There was a huge jump between the Kentsfield Q6600 (released 1/2007) and Nehalem i7-920 (released 11/2008). Hyper-threading and the move to DDR3 were two of the larger ones. I dumped two Q6600 systems and replaced them with three i7-920 ones when Microcenter dropped them to $199 in early 2009. Not related to gaming performance but there were huge performance gains for DC projects as well. The i7-920 was a must upgrade from Q6600 IMO.

An yes, it was more like 2 years and 2 months between releases, I must have been looking at the i7-2700k's release date.

I don't know about you, but Nehalem didn't feel like big enough of a jump to warrant immediately retiring a computer that I spent about $1,450 on at the time when talking my Q6600 build, which was maybe two years old at most at the time. It wasn't like going from the Athlon XP 1800+ to said Q6600, or from the K6-2 350 to said XP 1800+. It certainly wasn't the '90s/early 2000s, either, when it felt like we were getting double the clock speed every year, alongside new Direct3D and OpenGL standards for graphics cards to support.

Then again, I don't have the money to change computers like underwear, as enthusiasts tend to do. If I'm buying a computer, it's built to last, and the fact that my Q6600 build keeps trucking to this day is a testament to its longevity for general use.

Besides, the games that really make a computer hurt for single-threaded CPU performance didn't show up until Nehalem was old news. PlanetSide 2 took a few more years to be announced, DCS still had independent Black Shark and Warthog modules instead of the unified World engine + add-on aircraft system they use now, BF3/BF4 and Squad were still years away, I wasn't gonna buy Rise of Flight when it was still retail price for just two planes...

It wasn't until all that stuff started dropping and PS2 had its CPU/GPU bottleneck indicator on the FPS counter that I realized how inadequate the Q6600 was, and given the time, that's why I run Haswell now.

Of course, the $200 i7-4770K Micro Center sale was pretty sweet, too. I haven't seen a sale that good since!

 

[Dan_D]

also, making a "Best CPUs of all time" list, separate from a "Top OC'ing CPUs of all time" is strange, figuring overclockability is a major criteria factoring into how good a CPU's overall value is

Overclocking was a minor consideration. This was more about architecture, innovation and longevity than overclocking or value.

To me the list seems somewhat strange:
* In the top position you have a very specific model, Core i7-2600K.
* The other listed Intel products are by generation, not specific model.
* The "Athlon 64" listed is even broader, covering several generations!

In my mind the best "generations" would be the best option. Intel's Sandy Bridge (as a whole, not just the top i7) was a huge leap forward and I'd guess there are just about as many Core i5-2500K in use as there are i7-2600K, if not more.

Fair point. I went back and fourth on how specific to get and did consider just using the fastest model in the text of each entry. I'd have done it differently based on the feedback I've seen here were I to do it again. The reason I specifically excluded the Core i5 2500K was due to the fact that it's less relevant today than the 2600K due to the lack of Hyperthreading. I've used some plain four core CPUs on my test bench recently, and the responsiveness of the system was terrible compared to HT enabled CPUs or genuine 8 core CPUs.

 

[xXaNaXx]

i still have my old 2600k, although it's not my main rig anymore. the motherboard i had it in basically died (would only recognize 1/2 of the RAM i put in it and wouldn't boot with all 4 sticks inserted), so i upgraded to the 4790k due to high-performance motherboards for LGA1155 being pretty much either non-existent or insanely expensive due to being EOL. otherwise, i'd still be running that as my main system right now. i did buy a cheap microATX board for it, though, and will be running it as my RouterOS home router...far more powerful than any Routerboard or Cloud Core router from MikroTik.

 

[lostin3d]

i still have my old 2600k, although it's not my main rig anymore. the motherboard i had it in basically died (would only recognize 1/2 of the RAM i put in it and wouldn't boot with all 4 sticks inserted), so i upgraded to the 4790k due to high-performance motherboards for LGA1155 being pretty much either non-existent or insanely expensive due to being EOL. otherwise, i'd still be running that as my main system right now. i did buy a cheap microATX board for it, though, and will be running it as my RouterOS home router...far more powerful than any Routerboard or Cloud Core router from MikroTik.

All these stories about 2600k MOBO's eventually failing are getting me worried. I love mine and honestly don't know how many thousands of hours its has on it now. Runs like a champ but in PC terms, it's old. Maybe I should look for a backup board?

 

[lostin3d]

I nominate the 8086 for the following reasons:

1) It ran the computers on the Space Shuttle...
2) See #1.

Didn't have an 8086 but I did have a Tandy 1000ex(8088). It was a powerhouse that my dad got as a birthday present in the mid eighties and I kept using well into the mid nineties. Last game I really loved playing on it was 'Out of this world'.

 

[Dan_D]

All these stories about 2600k MOBO's eventually failing are getting me worried. I love mine and honestly don't know how many thousands of hours its has on it now. Runs like a champ but in PC terms, it's old. Maybe I should look for a backup board?

Many of the early adopters of the 2600K are using motherboards that are more than 6 years old at this point. Granted, some people may have motherboards and systems that can run for twice that length of time or more, but its a crap shoot after five years.

 

[T4rd]

Here I am on my old X58 platform; 920 at 4 GHz on air and 16GBs of RAM. I just threw a GTX 1060 in it too just to play some more modern games too and it seems to be holding up fine. I plan on upgrading to a new platform later on this year though, here lately I've been playing more PS4 exclusives than anything else.

 

[Deleted member 83233]

Loved my 386 DX40. The motherboard even had VLB, which I put an Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 with 2MB into. It was quite fast for the time, but I soon had a 486 DX50 which blew it to little pieces for Doomery. Still that 386 was so welcome after doing my best to run things like Wing Commander on a 286/16 with 1MB and a 256K VGA card.

(speaking of DX50, that was an excellent chip, no clock-doubled BS, just a straight 50MHz bus speed matching its clock speed)

 

[p_monks33]

So many 2600Ks , 2700Ks, and 2500Ks still trucking along at 4.5+ . Intel really hasn't made strides since then, and going away from the soldered IHS was a bad call.

 

[lostin3d]

Many of the early adopters of the 2600K are using motherboards that are more than 6 years old at this point. Granted, some people may have motherboards and systems that can run for twice that length of time or more, but its a crap shoot after five years.

Thanks for the info.

I guess I'll end up being one of those test cases for MSI 'Military Class II HiC capacitors' in terms of longevity. Just checked and bought it 6 years ago this month.

Mine's had a pretty easy life in terms of temps, and clean stable power. I almost entirely let the OC genie control everything since 4.2GHZ has been plenty for my needs. It even sat for about 6-9 months when I upgraded to the X79 build. I felt so much guilt over the still unused potential that as the X79 got upgraded I kept putting parts back on it until all I needed was a PSU and case to bring back to life. Now its a point of pride in simplicity and performance-no optical drive and only 2 SSD's and 1 GPU. I added a WFI/BlueTooth NIC that takes care of all network needs. It's really hard for me to convey how happy I am with this rig.

 

[Dan_D]

So many 2600Ks , 2700Ks, and 2500Ks still trucking along at 4.5+ . Intel really hasn't made strides since then, and going away from the soldered IHS was a bad call.

You can point to that hurting their overclocking potential but that's not why they haven't made strides in CPU design. The problem is that they haven't released any architectures that are a massive leap forward from Sandy Bridge. Everything, including Skylake which was supposed to be almost totally knew amounted to a small increment over it's predecessors.

 

[NamelessPFG]

Many of the early adopters of the 2600K are using motherboards that are more than 6 years old at this point. Granted, some people may have motherboards and systems that can run for twice that length of time or more, but its a crap shoot after five years.

This made me think about how many motherboards have bitten the dust over the years due to capacitor-related issues, and how well today's boards will hold up once they start hitting that 30-year mark.

You know the capacitor plague all too well; boards like the Abit BP6 and VP6 were produced smack in the middle of it, hence the former not making your "best mobo of all time" list largely for that very reason.

But when I say "30 years", well, I have a Macintosh IIcx I picked up from a neighbor not long ago. It won't power on at all, no lights, no PSU fan movement, no clicking noises, and certainly no chime. PRAM battery was replaced with a known good one. Still dead as a door nail. And of course, the commonly advised remedy is a full board recap - axials, SMDs, they all have to go before this thing has a chance of working again. Even before the infamous capacitor plague, vintage computers aren't quite holding up with components going well past their intended shelf life.

How long will it be before we start seeing modern, post-Core 2 boards crapping out on us for similar reasons? Will people care enough about them to bother going through the trouble of a full recap? I can't think of many boards that would command enough sentimental value to warrant such refurbishing in the future, aside from maybe one of those Intel Skulltrail boards, the EVGA Classified SR-2, or your typical Asus ROG Maximus/Rampage Extreme.

 

[Amblyopius]

It would normally be hard to see Intel CPU's in a list of greatest CPUs of all time. The AMD Opteron may be in it for introducing x86-64 but aside from that it is tough to get an x86 chip in. The 386 was great for x86 but not as a CPU in general. I understand the bias but as a few others have pointed out there are a lot of other processors that should be on a list of greatest CPUs ever. In a top 5 I'd list the MOS 6502, Zilog Z80, Motorola 68000 and Alpha 21064 at a minimum and I guess the Opteron for shaking up what is generally a rather "boring" part of CPU history. I guess the 8086 can get a mention as the legacy it created has crippled x86 ever since

List probably comes closest to "Best x86 desktop CPUs"

 

[Calavaro]

The author made a mistake not including the Celeron 300A. A proper list shouldn't be limited to 5 parts either.

Suggested revised list.

10: 8080 (and 8088). Spawned the first "home computers".
9: Z80 (8088 clone, 8-bit console gaming). Still produced and sold.
8: Pentium (& PII)
7: Opteron. The Opteron 240 specifically because of the introduction of the 64-bit instruction set.
6: Celeron (300A). For obvious reasons.
5: Core Duo (& Core2Duo). Thank the "2nd team" at Intel for ignoring the Netburst BS and making a worthy successor to the Pentium III.
4: Athlon 64. First consumer grade 64-bit computing.
3: i7 (2600k). Hasn't lost much at all compared to current gen CPU's.
2: ARM (Mobiles anyone?)
1: 4004 (1st commercial CPU and started Intel down the path of producing CPU's)

I'm thinking EPYC will prove to be this generations Opteron. And it deserves a mention even though it's just barely released.

 

[Dan_D]

The author made a mistake not including the Celeron 300A. A proper list shouldn't be limited to 5 parts either.

Suggested revised list.

10: 8080 (and 8088). Spawned the first "home computers".
9: Z80 (8088 clone, 8-bit console gaming). Still produced and sold.
8: Pentium (& PII)
7: Opteron. The Opteron 240 specifically because of the introduction of the 64-bit instruction set.
6: Celeron (300A). For obvious reasons.
5: Core Duo (& Core2Duo). Thank the "2nd team" at Intel for ignoring the Netburst BS and making a worthy successor to the Pentium III.
4: Athlon 64. First consumer grade 64-bit computing.
3: i7 (2600k). Hasn't lost much at all compared to current gen CPU's.
2: ARM (Mobiles anyone?)
1: 4004 (1st commercial CPU and started Intel down the path of producing CPU's)

I'm thinking EPYC will prove to be this generations Opteron. And it deserves a mention even though it's just barely released.

This point has already been addressed. Once again, this was a five CPU list, not a 10 CPU list. Overclocking was only ONE factor considered. While overclocking is hugely important to many enthusiasts, not all of them overclock, nor is it the only classification we judge CPUs on. I had a Celeron 1.8GHz that would do 3.0GHz or better. It was still a slow ass piece of shit. It greatly suprassed the Celeron 300A in overclocking prowess and performance. So should it outrank the 300A? You see the issue? Many CPU's can overclock beyond the Celeron 300A on a percentage gained basis. The 300A only holds a distinction for being on of the earliest CPUs that took us as far as it did, and for little money. Recognizing this, I created a separate list for overclocking CPUs, where only overclocking and dollar value were considered.

The Celeron 300A was a one trick pony. Aside from overclockability, it brought nothing to the table we didn't already have in other CPUs. It was essentially a modified Pentium II that offered an integrated L2 cache like the Pentium Pro had years earlier.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Actually my Q6600 system is still in use. Gave it to my brother in law who needed a PC that could do some light gaming. He bought a video card and SSD for it and continues to use it, and says it works great for him. So its service life has actually been 2007 to 2017, so far. What other CPU stayed relevant for 10+ years? Core 2 should be #1 on this list. The jump from the Pentium 4/D to the Core 2 was the single biggest leap in CPU technology of all time. I would argue that it was an even bigger jump than the one from the 486 to the Pentium.

Core 2 certainly caught up with and surpassed the Athlon 64, but was it really by THAT much? I don't recall C2D's being more than like 25% faster at most than the previous fastest chips, AMD's Athlon 64 X2's.

The Pentium launch was a MUCH bigger leap than that, especially in the FPU, where it doubled the performance of the 486, if I recall. Heck, lower end 486's didn't even come with an FPU.

The first two Pentiums (P5, 60 and 66Mhz) were a good improvement, but where it really took off was starting with the P54C (75Mhz - 120Mhz) models.

Don't get me wrong. C2D was pivotal, as it marked the beginning of the decline of AMD's brief performance crown, but I think there is a little hyperbole in the statement above.

 

[Dan_D]

Core 2 certainly caught up with and surpassed the Athlon 64, but was it really by THAT much? I don't recall C2D's being more than like 25% faster at most than the previous fastest chips, AMD's Athlon 64 X2's.

The Pentium launch was a MUCH bigger leap than that, especially in the FPU, where it doubled the performance of the 486, if I recall. Heck, lower end 486's didn't even come with an FPU.

The first two Pentiums (P5, 60 and 66Mhz) were a good improvement, but where it really took off was starting with the P54C (75Mhz - 120Mhz) models.

Don't get me wrong. C2D was pivotal, as it marked the beginning of the decline of AMD's brief performance crown, but I think there is a little hyperbole in the statement above.

Bingo, I couldn't agree more. You are also correct in that the lower end 486 and even the entry level 80386 CPU's didn't come with FPU or mathco processors as they were known at the time.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Bingo, I couldn't agree more. You are also correct in that the lower end 486 and even the entry level 80386 CPU's didn't come with FPU or mathco processors as they were known at the time.

Yep, I had a 486sx25 back in the day.

No FPU, but it hit 50mhz once I added an HSF. To this day it has been my only 100% overclock.

 

[Calavaro]

This point has already been addressed. Once again, this was a five CPU list, not a 10 CPU list. Overclocking was only ONE factor considered. While overclocking is hugely important to many enthusiasts, not all of them overclock, nor is it the only classification we judge CPUs on. I had a Celeron 1.8GHz that would do 3.0GHz or better. It was still a slow ass piece of shit. It greatly suprassed the Celeron 300A in overclocking prowess and performance. So should it outrank the 300A? You see the issue? Many CPU's can overclock beyond the Celeron 300A on a percentage gained basis. The 300A only holds a distinction for being on of the earliest CPUs that took us as far as it did, and for little money. Recognizing this, I created a separate list for overclocking CPUs, where only overclocking and dollar value were considered.

The Celeron 300A was a one trick pony. Aside from overclockability, it brought nothing to the table we didn't already have in other CPUs. It was essentially a modified Pentium II that offered an integrated L2 cache like the Pentium Pro had years earlier.

The 300A should be in a top 10 list for the impact it had. It made enthusiasts talk about and recommend Intel in a big way. It also helped many online HW reviewers grow from small to large, and that impact is still felt today.

 

[Deleted member 243478]

Yup the 300a should have been at the top, it is the daddy that started everything really. Sure there was overclocking before but that CPU is what really kicked everything off. It wasn't a 1 trick pony lol, it overclocked 50% on the stock cooler...

My personal list from my own experiences is:

1. Celeron 300A
2. Athlon XP (so many were fun from those days!)
3. i7 920
4. 2600k

 

[Olle P]

The reason I specifically excluded the Core i5 2500K was due to the fact that it's less relevant today than the 2600K due to the lack of Hyperthreading. ... the responsiveness of the system was terrible compared to HT enabled CPUs...

Just last year I compared the 2500K to the 6600K, and the difference in performance was only about 10%.
It's still "good enough" for the vast majority of games and such and, as I've pointed out before, I'd still be using it myself if it wasn't for other factors. The entire Sandy Bridge generation of CPUs does indeed hold up well compared to its Kaby Lake counterparts.

 

[FrozenSun]

Nice list, hard to argue with any of the choices. I think the Q6600 and 980X are definitely honorable mentions, for similar reasons as the 2600k. OC'd they stayed relevant for a long, long time.

 

[Cmdrmonkey]

Core 2 certainly caught up with and surpassed the Athlon 64, but was it really by THAT much? I don't recall C2D's being more than like 25% faster at most than the previous fastest chips, AMD's Athlon 64 X2's.

The Pentium launch was a MUCH bigger leap than that, especially in the FPU, where it doubled the performance of the 486, if I recall. Heck, lower end 486's didn't even come with an FPU.

The first two Pentiums (P5, 60 and 66Mhz) were a good improvement, but where it really took off was starting with the P54C (75Mhz - 120Mhz) models.

Don't get me wrong. C2D was pivotal, as it marked the beginning of the decline of AMD's brief performance crown, but I think there is a little hyperbole in the statement above.

Yes. It not only caught up, it left AMD in the dust. It left everything in the dust. Most people were using Pentium 4s at the time. The Q6600 was about 8 times as fast as the fastest Pentium 4s.

Passmark:

Core 2 Quad Q6600: 2969 points
Core 2 Duo E6600: 1554 points
Pentium 4 Prescott 3ghz: 354 points
Pentium 4 Northwood 2.8ghz: 322 points
Pentium 4 Williamette 1.8ghz: 160 points
Athlon 64 3200+ : 490 points

Core 2 was basically the CPU equivalent of discovering FTL travel. There's never been that big of a jump in performance before or since. No hyperbole. This is the biggest jump in CPU tech ever and it deserves to be #1, yet it's not even mentioned.

 

[Deleted member 83233]

Core 2 was basically the CPU equivalent of discovering FTL travel. There's never been that big of a jump in performance before or since. No hyperbole. This is the biggest jump in CPU tech ever and it deserves to be #1, yet it's not even mentioned.

I agree that this was a very remarkable jump in performance. It was actually one of the first times I got excited about a new CPU during the couple of years surrounding its release (C2 arch). However, in the scheme of things, going back (let's stick to just PC X86 and not other architectures for this comment) I think there were many more, greater PERCEIVED jumps in performance. It may also be tinted through the viewpoints of the eras everything came out a bit. However, 808x to 286 was pretty amazing. 286 to 386 was. 386 for 486 was less exciting, but once Doom was released we started seeing what it could do. 486 to Pentium once again not huge until maybe the P90s hit, but still pretty good jump. Then the P166 era to the PII and PIII were pretty insane, but you wouldn't have noticed (at least in gaming) during that time because everyone was too busy getting excited about 3D acceleration, 3DFX, PowerVR, Rivas, AGP ports, etc. etc. CPUs kind of took a back seat I think right then as far as excitement just because of all the other tech. They were still jumping. I think the next time I got excited was the Athlon 64 though. (OK, maybe the PIII Flip-Chip era was pretty cool for OCing) I wasn't really again though until the Core 2 like you say. It was a huge jump. I'm just saying based on perception alone, there were larger ones. (just due to the landscape of the time things were released)

If you start talking about other architectures though, some cool shit was happening on the RISC side with the MIPS processors for example in the early-mid 90s. Motorla was still pushing the 680x0 series pretty hard in the early 90s. Then the PowerPC chips started surfacing a little later, which while not that exciting in the PC world, were still pretty cool.

 

[AFD]

"AMD Athlon 64 (2003) - The original Athlon often gets credit for being the first CPU to best Intel at anything and raced ahead of Intel to the 1GHz mark."

How so? Pretty sure I bought my pair of 1GHz Pentium III Coppermines back in 2001, which launched in early 2000 (pretty sure even the 1.1 & 1.13GHz variants released that same year).


EDIT: Lol, nevermind. Thought the quote was referring to the Athlon 64 being first to 1GHz in 2003 (and not the OG Athlon possibly doing so in 2000). Reading is fundamental =p

 

[Nimisys]

AMD did beat Intel to 1ghz, if only by a few days and by basically binning chips to do so. they went from the 850mhz on feb 11 2000 to the ghz release on march 6 2000. this was on Slot A that had the 1/2 to 1/3 speed L2 cache. in October 2000 they released the socket A thunderbird, complete with naked core, but with integrated L2 cache.

Intel released the 1ghz PIII on socket 370 and slot 1 March 8th, but reality it took until closer to the summer and later for them to become stable

 

[_mockingbird]

I am surprised that Ryzen 7 1700 isn't up there.

Before, you had to pay Intel ~$1000 to get an 8-cores processor.

Suddenly, AMD sold a competitive 8-cores processor for $300.

 

[OrangeKhrush]

If the "Best overclocking" doesn't have the Celeron 300a, we're gonna fite.

But yeah, the 2600K is an amazing CPU; having one that's able to still do day-to-day and gaming fully 6 years after its debut is unprecedented.

I agree with this, the Sandybridge generation remains more than enough for gaming today, likely to do with the fact that gaming has gone from CPU driven to GPU driven performance.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

Yes. It not only caught up, it left AMD in the dust. It left everything in the dust. Most people were using Pentium 4s at the time. The Q6600 was about 8 times as fast as the fastest Pentium 4s.

Passmark:

Core 2 Quad Q6600: 2969 points
Core 2 Duo E6600: 1554 points
Pentium 4 Prescott 3ghz: 354 points
Pentium 4 Northwood 2.8ghz: 322 points
Pentium 4 Williamette 1.8ghz: 160 points
Athlon 64 3200+ : 490 points

Core 2 was basically the CPU equivalent of discovering FTL travel. There's never been that big of a jump in performance before or since. No hyperbole. This is the biggest jump in CPU tech ever and it deserves to be #1, yet it's not even mentioned.

i think core 2 loses some of it's glammer because people try to forget that the core architecture came after the failure of the pentium D.. so you have to look at P4 -> Pentium D -> core 2 and because of that the performance gains don't look as amazing.

 

[Below Ambient]

Socket A Duron, Slot A Thunderbird, Celery 300A, Northwood 1.6, palomino 1800x, Ryzen 7...

 

[chithanh]

2: ARM (Mobiles anyone?)

But ARM isn't a CPU. I have thought about whether any of the ARM CPUs stands out and deserves to be included in the short list of Best CPUs of all time, but nothing actually new or revolutionary came to mind.

I'm thinking EPYC will prove to be this generations Opteron. And it deserves a mention even though it's just barely released.

I think that the concept that AMD uses with Infinity Fabric will be the way forward, but I will reserve judgement whether EPYC deserves a place among the best CPUs of all time for at least another couple of years.

 

[Calavaro]

But ARM isn't a CPU. I have thought about whether any of the ARM CPUs stands out and deserves to be included in the short list of Best CPUs of all time, but nothing actually new or revolutionary came to mind.

ARM are processors. That others take the core design and package them up with other things as an SoC doesn't make the ARM CPU designs less of a CPU.
We're talking about the first proper PDA's having StrongARM CPU's to iPhones using the designs (A4, A5 and A5X). Huge impact. Massive impact in fact.
Todays ARM Cortex A75's are still processors (very powerful at that), and designed in such a way to make easy integration with anything from GPU's, display controllers to image processors to DSP's in what you are thinking about - the venerable System on a Chip.

 

[Dan_D]

I think that the concept that AMD uses with Infinity Fabric will be the way forward, but I will reserve judgement whether EPYC deserves a place among the best CPUs of all time for at least another couple of years.

Agreed. I am a big fan of Threadripper and Epyc, but only time will tell just how influential or how much "greatness" those CPU's truly have in them.

 

[reb00tin]

Whoever came up with the name thread-ripper surely had something else in mind because they knew they were ripping a new one on Intel, and that's epyc. So this fat wafer is by definition on the list.

 

[Deleted member 83233]

Whoever came up with the name thread-ripper surely had something else in mind because they knew they were ripping a new one on Intel, and that's epyc. So this fat wafer is by definition on the list.

If we're going to use ripper and epyc like that you have to spell fat with the ph. Phat wafer!

 

[reb00tin]

If we're going to use ripper and epyc like that you have to spell fat with the ph. Phat wafer!

Or soldered φατ waφer for Greek scholars, λολ

 

[NamelessPFG]

ARM are processors. That others take the core design and package them up with other things as an SoC doesn't make the ARM CPU designs less of a CPU.
We're talking about the first proper PDA's having StrongARM CPU's to iPhones using the designs (A4, A5 and A5X). Huge impact. Massive impact in fact.
Todays ARM Cortex A75's are still processors (very powerful at that), and designed in such a way to make easy integration with anything from GPU's, display controllers to image processors to DSP's in what you are thinking about - the venerable System on a Chip.

Too many people forget that ARM started out as a desktop CPU architecture; look up the Acorn Archimedes and its RISC PC descendants. Hell, it even stood for "Acorn RISC Machine", an in-house architecture that stood in the face of all the off-the-shelf CPUs everyone else used, and it paid off in terms of how ARM Holdings or whatever the company is now has long outlived the original Acorn Computers (otherwise best known for the BBC Micro/Acorn Electron that's a huge thing in the UK, but unknown everywhere else).

The RISC PC had some major CPU upgrades over its life, as I recall reading about; some of them involved the very Intel StrongARM CPUs you mentioned, many times faster than the stock CPUs they shipped with. Heck, the RISC OS is still a thing that you can install and run on Raspberry Pi boards.

Speaking of which, people also forget that Intel made ARM CPUs at one point. The StrongARM developed into the XScale line that powered a lot of Palm OS 5 and Pocket PC/Windows Mobile devices (a lot of people with a PDA or smartphone probably had a PXA255 or PXA270 in their pocket at some point a decade ago), and then Intel decided to sell that division off to Marvell for whatever reason later on, presumably because they wanted to go all-in on their own x86 architecture/ISA and decided that Atom was a better idea for low-power computing.

Sometimes I wonder if Intel would even be relevant today if IBM didn't choose the 8086 for the 5150 Personal Computer that everyone cloned the hell out of once they figured out how to work around the proprietary IBM BIOS. Everyone else in the Western world who made a 16-bit microcomputer back then and wasn't Acorn (see above) used the Motorola 68000 and its descendants; ARM aside, the only exception was the Apple IIGS and its 65C816, to my knowledge. Would Motorola/Freescale/NXP be in the position Intel is now, dominating the high-end desktop computing scene today through 680x0, 880x0, PowerPC or some other architecture that might have arisen in such an alternate timeline?

 

[Carl224]

The i5-2500K was definitely my favorite by far. It is still pretty solid, plays my WOW just fine

 

[Valnar]

I'd say the 486DX2/66. It was then we realized for the first time we're in the big leagues, and CPU leapfrogging started to begin.

 

[Dan_D]

I'd say the 486DX2/66. It was then we realized for the first time we're in the big leagues, and CPU leapfrogging started to begin.

The 486 was interesting because it covered speeds ranging from 33MHz to 133MHz, though the last couple increments were AMD only. There was plenty of leap frogging within it's generation, then the Pentium came along and did the same thing. So on and so on.