Having owned a q6600 @3.8ghz, q9550 @3.8ghz and my current 4ghz 17 920, theyve all been great cpus, the only reason i rated the q6600 as best was the fact that eeking 3.8ghz from it was a bit of a challenge, both my s775 chips were great cpus but the main incentive for i7 in my case was native dual x16 pcie for crossfire/sli.
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Greatest CPU of all time ? what gets your vote?
- Thread starter Neverwhere
- Start date
I find the lack of L2 cache on these sorts of CPUs holds them back somewhat. I had an E2200 but could only get to 3.4GHz.
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 May 2005
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- 6,897
Yeah the cache is the only down side. But at £20 it's great VFM.
Yeah I think so too, £20 is cheap bey. I paid £50 for me E2200 when it was new but sold it for similar and got an E6850, Gigabyte 965P DS3 3.3 and 2GB Geil ULL For a very nice price so I got it upgraded.
The graphics is bad though but as I dont game I dont give a @*** 7800 gtx bey
Spooky..I just this second finished putting together a Barton XP2500 machine from some old bits including a geforce 6800gt card...runs great too after all those years chucked in a box. And the time and date was still correct in bios lol
Yes, but dont forget intel actually produced the Tualatin P3, at 1.4Ghz it worked perfectly because they switched to 0.13 micron process which was then later used to make Northwood P4's. And that process was good enough for 3.2Ghz Northwoods. In theory intel could have abandoned netburst right there, and most likely could have dished out 32bit Tualatin P3's @ 2.66Ghz which would have performed frighteningly close to a single core from a Core duo processor. But intel had made such a song and dance about how good Netburst was it would have been almost impossible to turn around and say well actually, this new Pentium III is better. Perhaps they should have just tweaked Tualatin a bit more (added P4's quad pumped FSB, and changed it to use the P4's motherboard/socket) and called it Pentium 5
.Glad they didnt though, AMD64 would have had a marginal advantage over a highly clocked Tualatin, but probably not enough that Intel would have done the grand work improving the design and giving us the Core 2 series.
Pentium 1
Barton / Thunderbird
AMD 64
E6600
What makes these so special is that they all lasted ages, you would buy one when it came out and it will pass through few next generations and still handle the new stuff coming out.
Take E6600 in example, came out in 2006, havn't been beaten by anything back then and even now OCed easily to just 3ghz can cope with any newest games up to date.
San Diego AMD64 has been out for ages and just about a year ago it still could handle most of the games fine.
Same went for thunderbirds and the first pentium I remember I had mine for ages.
Can't say that about i7, it's hardly any better than lots of other CPUs that are around for quite long time already and will be replaced by new stuff within the next year and forgotten.
So what will be the next CPU that will last for 4yrs+ ? I bet on one of the 6-8core 32nm coming out in 2012 I'd say, most games or normal software still doesn't even utilise quads properly yet so I think it will take designers some time to catch up with the 6-8 cores and they will last just as long as duals did after switch over single cores.
just my 2p
Barton / Thunderbird
AMD 64
E6600
What makes these so special is that they all lasted ages, you would buy one when it came out and it will pass through few next generations and still handle the new stuff coming out.
Take E6600 in example, came out in 2006, havn't been beaten by anything back then and even now OCed easily to just 3ghz can cope with any newest games up to date.
San Diego AMD64 has been out for ages and just about a year ago it still could handle most of the games fine.
Same went for thunderbirds and the first pentium I remember I had mine for ages.
Can't say that about i7, it's hardly any better than lots of other CPUs that are around for quite long time already and will be replaced by new stuff within the next year and forgotten.
So what will be the next CPU that will last for 4yrs+ ? I bet on one of the 6-8core 32nm coming out in 2012 I'd say, most games or normal software still doesn't even utilise quads properly yet so I think it will take designers some time to catch up with the 6-8 cores and they will last just as long as duals did after switch over single cores.
just my 2p
The intrinsic problem here is that a lot of guys can only talk about CPU's they've had and many don't have the same frame of reference of those that have been overclocking since the last century. 
While the Q6600 is indeed a great CPU, with some guys getting to 3.8Ghz (58% o/c) I see a lot more guys getting around 3.5 Ghz or less. (46% o/c)
The Barton 2500+M would clock to around 2.4-2.7 (31%-47%) but was a cheap processor, something that couldn't be said of the Q6600.
I contend that greatest (overclocking) CPU of all time was the Celeron 300a. Not only was this chip comparatively very cheap at time but it would give you a guaranteed 50% o/c to 450Mhz, the only thing you needed to do was raise the bus from 66MHz to 100MHz. Even with the lower cache this would make it almost exactly the same speed in any application as the much more expensive PII 450Mhz.
Also bear in mind this was with the stock heatsink. (no need for water cooling or after market cooler) No need to increase the voltage. Around 30 people I knew at the time got one and all ran them with the 50% o/c.
The Q6600 would have to be able to go 3.6Ghz with the stock heatsink and no voltage increase. I think not.
Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you the Celeron 300a. Pound for pound the greatest CPU.
While the Q6600 is indeed a great CPU, with some guys getting to 3.8Ghz (58% o/c) I see a lot more guys getting around 3.5 Ghz or less. (46% o/c)
The Barton 2500+M would clock to around 2.4-2.7 (31%-47%) but was a cheap processor, something that couldn't be said of the Q6600.
I contend that greatest (overclocking) CPU of all time was the Celeron 300a. Not only was this chip comparatively very cheap at time but it would give you a guaranteed 50% o/c to 450Mhz, the only thing you needed to do was raise the bus from 66MHz to 100MHz. Even with the lower cache this would make it almost exactly the same speed in any application as the much more expensive PII 450Mhz.
Also bear in mind this was with the stock heatsink. (no need for water cooling or after market cooler) No need to increase the voltage. Around 30 people I knew at the time got one and all ran them with the 50% o/c.
The Q6600 would have to be able to go 3.6Ghz with the stock heatsink and no voltage increase. I think not.
Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you the Celeron 300a. Pound for pound the greatest CPU.
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I was still at my parents house back then and in the winter it literally heated my room!
It was the first time I had a stable 100 fps on cs_assault in Counter-Strike, even with smoke, no one did believe me The memories, and what a CPU!Going oldschool, the i80386 was a great chip, it was revolutionary as it upgraded the IA16 to IA32 with virtually 100% compatibility, it was overclockable (I had a 20mhz 386 running happily at 40mhz, but you did have to phyiscally replace the clock crystal on the motherboard), anyway in my opinion the 386 set the precedent for upgrading the design of a processor from 16 to 32bit, proved it was both possible and efficient, and paved the way for our current 64bit parts.
While AMD are typically given credit for upgrading X86 to X64, if you look back, all they really did was copy how intel had upgraded the platform from 16bits to 32bits.. Its not exactly rocket science. (Although credit where its due, AMD adding a bunch of new general purpose 64bit registers in addition to stretching the existing ones was a very good idea)
I dont really consider the overclocking ability of a processor to be a really high redeeming factor, it simply shows that Intel (or whoever) was simply speed binning higher end parts because their yields were actually too good, and they could afford to dump high end cores into the bargain basement bins.
I sometimes wonder if intel are conservative with their stock clock speeds, but I suppose its still necessary to ensure parts are kept within the TDP's, and arnt accused of making hot powerhungry processors.
RE: the Celeron 300a, yes it was a good clocker.. The Conroe E6300 was easily capable of a 50% overclock (1.86Ghz -> 2.79) on air, at stock voltages, and with a decent motherboard would do 3.2Ghz pretty easily(a 75% overclock). Certainly a contender for the overclocking crown, although I believe its the low cache pentium "core 2" processors that really overclock to crazy levels.
While AMD are typically given credit for upgrading X86 to X64, if you look back, all they really did was copy how intel had upgraded the platform from 16bits to 32bits.. Its not exactly rocket science. (Although credit where its due, AMD adding a bunch of new general purpose 64bit registers in addition to stretching the existing ones was a very good idea)
I dont really consider the overclocking ability of a processor to be a really high redeeming factor, it simply shows that Intel (or whoever) was simply speed binning higher end parts because their yields were actually too good, and they could afford to dump high end cores into the bargain basement bins.
I sometimes wonder if intel are conservative with their stock clock speeds, but I suppose its still necessary to ensure parts are kept within the TDP's, and arnt accused of making hot powerhungry processors.
RE: the Celeron 300a, yes it was a good clocker.. The Conroe E6300 was easily capable of a 50% overclock (1.86Ghz -> 2.79) on air, at stock voltages, and with a decent motherboard would do 3.2Ghz pretty easily(a 75% overclock). Certainly a contender for the overclocking crown, although I believe its the low cache pentium "core 2" processors that really overclock to crazy levels.
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Celeron 300A
I had only 4 chips so far in my life. Celeron 300A @ 450Mhz, Duron 1800+ @ 2600, Barton 3200+ and now C2D E8500 @ 4Ghz and I must say Cel 300A wins by far with having no real competion on a market at that time (top of the range P II 333Mhz was rudicilously overpriced and AMD was well behind Intel).
Celeron 300A was incredible value for money too even at stock speed not to mention that every-chip-33%-overclock and it lasted me for years! Even though today is 33% oc pretty much expected, at those days it was rather unusual.
I had only 4 chips so far in my life. Celeron 300A @ 450Mhz, Duron 1800+ @ 2600, Barton 3200+ and now C2D E8500 @ 4Ghz and I must say Cel 300A wins by far with having no real competion on a market at that time (top of the range P II 333Mhz was rudicilously overpriced and AMD was well behind Intel).
Celeron 300A was incredible value for money too even at stock speed not to mention that every-chip-33%-overclock and it lasted me for years! Even though today is 33% oc pretty much expected, at those days it was rather unusual.
The intrinsic problem here is that a lot of guys can only talk about CPU's they've had and many don't have the same frame of reference of those that have been overclocking since the last century.
While the Q6600 is indeed a great CPU, with some guys getting to 3.8Ghz (58% o/c) I see a lot more guys getting around 3.5 Ghz or less. (46% o/c)
The Barton 2500+M would clock to around 2.4-2.7 (31%-47%) but was a cheap processor, something that couldn't be said of the Q6600.
I contend that greatest (overclocking) CPU of all time was the Celeron 300a. Not only was this chip comparatively very cheap at time but it would give you a guaranteed 50% o/c to 450Mhz, the only thing you needed to do was raise the bus from 66MHz to 100MHz. Even with the lower cache this would make it almost exactly the same speed in any application as the much more expensive PII 450Mhz.
Also bear in mind this was with the stock heatsink. (no need for water cooling or after market cooler) No need to increase the voltage. Around 30 people I knew at the time got one and all ran them with the 50% o/c.
The Q6600 would have to be able to go 3.6Ghz with the stock heatsink and no voltage increase. I think not.
Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you the Celeron 300a. Pound for pound the greatest CPU.
Not forgetting to mention that PII 450Mhz came out not only at higher price but also way later than C300A. If I remember it right, O/Ced Celeron 300A was the most powerfull CPU money can buy for about a year.
Soldato
- Joined
- 26 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 9,897
- Location
- Milton Keynes
Haha, this thread takes me back, I remember overclocking the processor in my aunt's Celeron from 333 was it to 400. Also my first proper overclocked chip was a good old early P3 450, which overclocked happily to 600Mhz (was a TINY PC with a MSI mobo my dad had for business), was a stonking PC at the time, and twas the RAM that eventually became unstable at the clocks, not the processor.
Then the AMD XP came along later, proved a cheap chip could hold its own, ended up getting a XP 2800+ and overclocking it from 2087Mhz to about 2.4Ghz 24/7, was an IQHYA but got a bit toasty with the stock cooler so never took it further on the classic NF7 (I didnt have the soundstorm version at the time as I couldnt afford it), nor the decent coolers at the time. Only got retired this year because all the motherboards I had died and it ended up getting chucked. RIP.
This was swapped out about 2 years later for a AMD X2 3800+ which I ran at 2.4-2.5Ghz 24/7 and is still going strong in a family PC, I then moved to the Q6600, I had one of those chips that clocked really well on low voltage and then suddenly went on a heat/voltage bender after 3Ghz, before jumping over to a laptop.
My vote goes to the Celly 300, or the XP 2500, both chips were big runners in really cracking open the popularity of overclocking. Remember being jealous of the guys with the XP2500Ms running at 3Ghz+!
Then the AMD XP came along later, proved a cheap chip could hold its own, ended up getting a XP 2800+ and overclocking it from 2087Mhz to about 2.4Ghz 24/7, was an IQHYA but got a bit toasty with the stock cooler so never took it further on the classic NF7 (I didnt have the soundstorm version at the time as I couldnt afford it), nor the decent coolers at the time. Only got retired this year because all the motherboards I had died and it ended up getting chucked. RIP.
This was swapped out about 2 years later for a AMD X2 3800+ which I ran at 2.4-2.5Ghz 24/7 and is still going strong in a family PC, I then moved to the Q6600, I had one of those chips that clocked really well on low voltage and then suddenly went on a heat/voltage bender after 3Ghz, before jumping over to a laptop.
My vote goes to the Celly 300, or the XP 2500, both chips were big runners in really cracking open the popularity of overclocking. Remember being jealous of the guys with the XP2500Ms running at 3Ghz+!
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For me my favourite was the Opteron 146 or Barton 2500. As for best of all time, that's hard to define. I think credit needs to be given to any of the early Core2Duo CPUs when they came out. I mean they were literally miles better than any AMD cpus on the market for a long time.
