The Worst CPUs Ever Made

[erek]

“Processors are built by multi-billion-dollar corporations using some of the most cutting-edge technologies known to man. But even with all their expertise, investment, and know-how, sometimes these CPU makers drop the ball. Some CPUs have just been poor performers for the money or their generation, while others easily overheated or drew too much power.

Some CPUs were so bad that they set their companies back generations, taking years to recover.

But years on from their release and the fallout, we no longer need to feel let down, disappointed, or ripped off by these lame-duck processors. We can enjoy them for the catastrophic failures they were, and hope the companies involved learned a valuable lesson.

Here are some of the worst CPUs ever made.

Note: Plenty of people will bring up the Pentium FDIV bug here, but the reason we didn't include it is simple: Despite being an enormous marketing failure for Intel and a considerable expense, the actual bug was tiny. It affected no one who wasn't already doing scientific computing, and, in technical terms, the scale and scope of the problem were never estimated to be much of anything. The incident is recalled today more for the disastrous way Intel handled it than for any overarching problem in the Pentium microarchitecture.”
Source: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/the-worst-cpus-ever-made

 

[Dan_D]

I disagree with the list. Itanium was something of a commercial failure but I wouldn't call it a bad CPU. It was very good at what it did. Bulldozer, Prescott CPU's, definitely belong on there. But its ridiculous to put the Cyrix 6x86 on there and not AMD's K5 which was later to market and performed worse. The 6x86 was actually successful and other than a few games at the time that used your CPU's FPU, the 6x86 was a solid performer. It was also cheap and readily available. Also, the earlier Pentium IV wasn't on the list. Willamette P4's sucked and were doomed from the start. Their socket life was known to be super short when they came out and you were effectively stuck with Rambus' RDRAM. You can make a case for the Media GX being bad and when compared to more conventional CPU's of the day but it was a sales success at the time. The 6x86MX/M2 should be on that list. While the 6x86 sold well and was a solid performer in most use cases it's successor was another story.

 

[StevenJamesBorchard]

Well I don't know about the worst but when I was 6 years old in 1994 or so I thought the CPU on a apple macintosh was the best.

Endlessly playing for literally hours on end, Myst, wolfenstein 3d, glider pro, spectre 3D, patriot command, just to name a few. That thing was a BEAST!

Video semi unrelated:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpmGXeAtWUw

 

[gamerk2]

I disagree with the list. Itanium was something of a commercial failure but I wouldn't call it a bad CPU. It was very good at what it did. Bulldozer, Prescott CPU's, definitely belong on there. But its ridiculous to put the Cyrix 6x86 on there and not AMD's K5 which was later to market and performed worse. The 6x86 was actually successful and other than a few games at the time that used your CPU's FPU, the 6x86 was a solid performer. It was also cheap and readily available. Also, the earlier Pentium IV wasn't on the list. Willamette P4's sucked and were doomed from the start. Their socket life was known to be super short when they came out and you were effectively stuck with Rambus' RDRAM. You can make a case for the Media GX being bad and when compared to more conventional CPU's of the day but it was a sales success at the time. The 6x86MX/M2 should be on that list. While the 6x86 sold well and was a solid performer in most use cases it's successor was another story.

Itanium was a well designed CPU architecture that was ahead of its time. Yes, the initial compilers sucked, but they got much better towards the end of its life. Yes, x86 emulation caused a performance hit, but as newer chips came out (and x86 would have been phased out) this issue would have gone away.

I argue we'd be in a *much* better place if Itanium won out.

 

[PurduEE]

But its ridiculous to put the Cyrix 6x86 on there and not AMD's K5 which was later to market and performed worse. The 6x86 was actually successful and other than a few games at the time that used your CPU's FPU, the 6x86 was a solid performer. It was also cheap and readily available.

It was the chip to have right before Quake came out. Cyrix focused on integer performance and didn't redesign their (older) FPU. Mistake in hindsight, but it was a great chip at release. I had a 166+ - very quick.

You can make a case for the Media GX being bad and when compared to more conventional CPU's of the day but it was a sales success at the time. The 6x86MX/M2 should be on that list. While the 6x86 sold well and was a solid performer in most use cases it's successor was another story.

To me, Media GX is the forerunner of modern SOCs - showed what you could combine on a single die. For that reason, I'd argue it's historically important and certainly not one of the "worst" CPUs ever made.

Agreed re the MX/MX2. I blame the IBM fabrication deal and that lawsuit with Gateway 2000... both really crippled Cyrix.

 

[applegrcoug]

you know what the last thing someone says when flying on airplane controlled by an original pentium is? IEEEEEEEE.....


if AMD can't get a handle on zen5 wanting to burn itself up, then it may end up on the list...

 

[StevenJamesBorchard]

I thought my 33 percent air overclock on a amd athlon 3200 was good back in the day.

 

[ochadd]

From a personal perspective, the folks like me who purchased a 7700k and the platform instead of a 1800x and AM4 surely had significant buyers remorse. I had a 1800x, MB, RAM, etc on preorder. I canceled the order on launch day when the reviews came out showing lackluster gaming performance. Ordered a 7700k the same day. Seeing the opportunity for all those sweet AM4 CPU upgrades over the years while I was buying all new platforms hurt a bit.

7700k wasn't a bad CPU by itself, it was a bad decision given how AM4 turned out. The 7700k is still in my home server but I'd still be running AM4 in mine or my wifes PC today.