Your best CPU's over the years?

[BeeP]

Q6600 is a legend imho, had mine at 3.6 for years.

2500k is along the same lines, I'd love to upgrade but I don't really feel the need. I guess it is all relevant to what you do with them though.

 

[Vir]

In my own book the real legends of the last decade, looking at the overall package are E6600, Q6600, i7 920.

 

[colinmcr]

I had both the Q6600 and still using 2500k both amazing chips imo.

I also remember when I used to use AMD the old FX50 was pretty good for those days, but I'm sure it was very expensive back then around 2005 maybe, can't remember now !

 

[///Rage]

AMD 64 - dont remember the specifics but I think it was 1800 or sth like that.

Core 2 duo E6850 - monster cpu at the time and great overclocker.

i7-2700k - my current cpu. As above.

 

[spoffle]

Probably a Q6600. I had a few of them over the years in different PCs. The first one I got, I actually managed to get running at 4.0Ghz, it just ran a bit too hot at those sort of speeds.

They seemed to hold their resale value immensely too. I bought mine for about £150, and sold it for £50 5 years later.

Compare that to the likes of the 3930 or 4930K. They've seen the same sort of depreciation in the space of a year or so!

 

[mysticsniper]

AMD Athlon Barton Core 2500 - My first CPU and I had so much fun with this little beauty, along with my Abit NFS-7 Mobo

AMD Athlon 64 4000+ SD Core - In comparison the most expensive and least effective.

Intel Q6600 - To me this cpu is Iconic and represents amazing value and performance.

Intel core i7 4790K - A natural step from the Q6600, loving the performance speeds and another great clocker.

 

[Raiden85]

My favourite three are,

Athlon 64 x2 4800 (Toledo). Very fast chip for it's time and cost a fortune, think I paid £500 to £600 for it . I used that chip until I had the Q6600 GO in Sep 2008 so I got my monies worth out of it. I used the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum board with this chip, 24/7 use and never had an issue.

Q6600 GO, only paid £112 for it from here in Sep 2008, blew the Athlon 64 x2 away and for such a cheap price. Used that until Apr 2012, certainly got my money worth out of that chip, one of Intel's best chips and it will always be my number one favourite. Only board used with this one was the DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS, again not a single issue with this setup either with 24/7 use.

My current favourite is the 4790k I'm using now, fast and cool, think this will be second favourite after the Q6600.

Here are the CPU's I have owned in order, if I can remember them.

Cyrix 233+ (188Mhz) - My first PC (prebuilt in 1998/99) what a slow piece of crap
Pentium 2 266Mhz (second hand prebuilt PC)
AMD Duron 800Mhz
AMD Duron 1.3Ghz
Athlon XP 2100+
Athlon XP 2500+
Athlon XP 2600+
Athlon 64 3200+
Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (last AMD chip I owned)
Intel Q6600 GO
2700K
3770K - My least favourite Intel chip, even with a Noctua D14 and at stock speeds it was a hot chip, with extremely uneven core temps.
4790K - This one in comparison runs much cooler at idle and load than the 3770K (same heatsink and case) plus I get a 500Mhz speed bump.

 

[Jumper118]

My favourite three are,

Athlon 64 x2 4800 (Toledo). Very fast chip for it's time and cost a fortune, think I paid £500 to £600 for it . I used that chip until I had the Q6600 GO in Sep 2008 so I got my monies worth out of it. I used the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum board with this chip, 24/7 use and never had an issue.

Q6600 GO, only paid £112 for it from here in Sep 2008, blew the Athlon 64 x2 away and for such a cheap price. Used that until Apr 2012, certainly got my money worth out of that chip, one of Intel's best chips and it will always be my number one favourite. Only board used with this one was the DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS, again not a single issue with this setup either with 24/7 use.

My current favourite is the 4790k I'm using now, fast and cool, think this will be second favourite after the Q6600.

Here are the CPU's I have owned in order, if I can remember them.

Cyrix 233+ (188Mhz) - My first PC (prebuilt in 1998/99) what a slow piece of crap
Pentium 2 266Mhz (second hand prebuilt PC)
AMD Duron 800Mhz
AMD Duron 1.3Ghz
Athlon XP 2100+
Athlon XP 2500+
Athlon XP 2600+
Athlon 64 3200+
Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (last AMD chip I owned)
Intel Q6600 GO
2700K
3770K - My least favourite Intel chip, even with a Noctua D14 and at stock speeds it was a hot chip, with extremely uneven core temps.
4790K - This one in comparison runs much cooler at idle and load than the 3770K (same heatsink and case) plus I get a 500Mhz speed bump.

i am really surprised you went from the 2700k to 3770k and then to the 4790k. if you had kept that 2700K you could still be running it now!

 

[Raiden85]

i am really surprised you went from the 2700k to 3770k and then to the 4790k. if you had kept that 2700K you could still be running it now!

Love upgrading, can't help it

My 2700K was a very nice cool chip, used the Noctua D14 on that as well. At stock it was rare to see it passed 50c with all threads at 100% even when video encoding (room temp around 20c).

Upgraded as I wanted PCIe 3.0 (not that it made any speed difference) and native USB 3.0. I had the ASRock P67 Extreme 6 with the 2700K, needed the 3770K along with the Z77 chipset if I was to have PCIe 3.0 as it was CPU dependant.

Only upgraded to the 4790K as I just wanted to get shot of the hot 3770K.

 

[d1am0nd g33z3r]

In my own book the real legends of the last decade, looking at the overall package are E6600, Q6600, i7 920.

Having owned all three of these I have to agree, all delivered amazing price performance once clocked.

Overall honours would have to go to the i7 920 though, still going strong after all these years and without question the best money I ever spent on silicon.

 

[jp7152]

My first proper (fast!) CPU.

A Cyrix 6x86MX-PR233.

Faster than a Pentium and about 1/8th of the price.

 

[WingZero30]

For me it has been E6600, Q6600 and Q9650.


E6600 overclocked to 3.2Ghz provided a tremendous cpu power boost over my purple shirt desktop housing an AMD athlon XP cpu (can't remember the exact model). This was also my first dual core cpu and playing CS Source on it became a smooth sailing experience.

Q6600 overclocked to 3.5Ghz consolidated my gaming experience further and was a solid chip. Played lots of different cpu demanding games on it including BF3. I was very surprised that it overclocked higher than my E6600 on the same setup. Indeed a legendary chip.

Q9650 overclocked to 4.2GHz and currently my favourite cpu. I am highly impressed with this cpu and it has proven to be an overclocking beast requiring only 1.280v for this clock speed under heavy load (IBT stable). Runs very cool and way more efficient than my previous two cpus mentioned above. Still plays modern games fine but obviously at nowhere near the level of latest cpus. I have been using it for almost 3 years now and my next upgrade will be Skylake-E.

Overall I have been well impressed with socket 775 and have been using it for more than 5 years now. However I can see that it has heavily aged now.

 

[UTmaniac]

My Q9300 is still just about hanging in there for me and my driving sims, while my old Opteron 146 still runs ok for my better half's mostly The Sims 3/4, both bought soon after their release (2008 and 2005, IIRC).

I keep thinking about an upgrade, probably to X99, but I struggle to justify spending £600+, basically for the sake of turning up a few details in pCARS!

 

[Ryan-3]

Had a Q6600 and an i7 920. Both excellent chips. The Q66' still working; i7 pulled from a working system.

 

[rene.agac]

Clocked Celeron 300A. No competition at a price enough said.

Clocked E8500 was better choice than Q6600 when they came out and it took a while (2+ years) for q6600 to come out stronger for gaiming

i7 920 and 2500k also fantastic chips

 

[DragonQ]

I suppose the Q6600 was a bit ahead of its time. When it was first out, the E series was better in most cases (especially games). Once quad cores took a foothold, Bloomfield and Lynnfield were already around.

 

[Yakyb]

still sitting here on an i7 860 and struggling to justify an upgrade, thinking maybe in January (just realised it's 5.5 years old!)

 

[Stolly]

My current 2500k...bought at the end of 2011 and will still be going strong well in to 2016 Allah willing.

In fact, if the leaked Skylake performance is true, no point upgrading until 2017.

 

[Tattysnuc]

My favourite chip was the AMD X2 4200 until I bought the i7 920.
The 4200X2 wastruly ahead of it's time and WOW did it overclock, plus it had 2 cores!!!!
Up to that point I'd been dabbling with overclocking on Intel S478 chips along with the AMD Atholon XP "Barton" cobined with a vapochill until, all of which had been completely underwhelming in their "real-world" gains. The X2 just seemed to be a country mile ahead of the blue team at that time and gave me years (not months) of pleasure. The good old days when NVidia and DFI made consumer motherboards....

The 920 was, and still is just an awesome chip. I've replaced mine now, but I've lost my interest in overclocking since moving to the X79 platform. I don't need to at the moment

 

[faceman123]

Q6600 and 2600k