• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Your fave/least fave CPU range/architecture in history

Q6600 was obviously ahead of its time and has lasted very well assuming it's overclocked above 3Ghz... Always remember people saying you didn't need four cores and not to buy them, but those who did got their moneys worth! The current i5 CPUs will follow closely in the same way too powering gaming systems for a good few years to come.

Most hated CPU I have ever come across... Not got a specific model number but any of the old single core Celerons I ever used were rubbish! :p
 
P4 Willamette was by far the worst for the reasons Justintime mentioned.

Justintime said:
Most cynical, overpriced rubbish for me is the Pentium 4 Williamette though, Intel really played on the perception of Mhz speed to sell an absolute dud. Along with their attempted takeover of RAM standards in cahoots with RAMBUS and their terrible expensive memory, left a bad taste in my mouth and made me buy a lot more AMD stuff. Northwood was the saving grace and what it was supposed to be from the start.
Click to expand...

For the best I would say the AMD K7 architecture, it's been a gradual downhill slide for AMD ever since though.
 
Favourite: Intel i7 920 D0. I like my current i5 3570K, but only have it as the i7 920 Motherboard needed replacing.

Least favourite: Intel 80486sx25. Even my later 486sx33 outclassed it in everything and it had less RAM (still have that PB PC in the cupboard)....

The person who mentioned an sx33 crashing all the time either had a faulty CPU or a bad Windows installation. Very easily the latter with Windows 3.1!
 
Least faves (hate is such a strong word... ;))

Slot 1 Pentium 2's and those ridiculous early Celerons. It killed off socket 7 and I never went Intel again. Ever. I had to use one at work though and the CPU liked to fall out of the slot every now and again.

Single core Semprons. I mean honestly. Running Vista on one of those was appalling.


Faves

Barton cored Athlon XP's. I had the 3200, 3000 and of course the 2500, which was my favourite CPU of all. They all sold well on ebay too.:D

AMD K63. I had a 450, which was relatively rare and formed the heart of my fondest remembered system. I can't believe I sold it to such a utter ****. :(
 
Lunatic Dreyfus said:
Least faves (hate is such a strong word... ;))

Slot 1 Pentium 2's and those ridiculous early Celerons. It killed off socket 7 and I never went Intel again. Ever. I had to use one at work though and the CPU liked to fall out of the slot every now and again.

Single core Semprons. I mean honestly. Running Vista on one of those was appalling.


Faves

Barton cored Athlon XP's. I had the 3200, 3000 and of course the 2500, which was my favourite CPU of all. They all sold well on ebay too.:D

AMD K63. I had a 450, which was relatively rare and formed the heart of my fondest remembered system. I can't believe I sold it to such a utter ****. :(
Click to expand...

Who did you sell it to?
 
Northwood 'C' P4 :)

Bought the entry level 2.4 when it came out and had it clocked on air at 3.3GHz :cool: Very quick chips at the time, before the Core 2 Duos came along. The Athlon XPs were good but would have been better if they had a head spreader and decent heatsink design like the Intels had.
 
Hated my 486sx as it was old hat by the time it was bought.

Loved our Pentium 200Mhz that was absolute cutting edge as part of a £2500 rig!!! it had an S3 Virge graphics card that struggled with Descent. I put a 3dFx in as soon as I could afford one...EF2000 and Quake 4 made for happy times but then disappoinment came as F22 ADF needed a Pentium II and I had to wait before I could afford a PII 450 which I also loved.

Also loved the Athlon 1.4Ghz which U paired with a Geforce 3 (£300 at the time!!)

I like to buy mid range nowadays.
 
linktoinsanity said:
Favourite: Intel i7 920 D0. I like my current i5 3570K, but only have it as the i7 920 Motherboard needed replacing.

Least favourite: Intel 80486sx25. Even my later 486sx33 outclassed it in everything and it had less RAM (still have that PB PC in the cupboard)....

The person who mentioned an sx33 crashing all the time either had a faulty CPU or a bad Windows installation. Very easily the latter with Windows 3.1!
Click to expand...

Most likely the crashing SX33 was actually an SX25.
It was very common for them to be either remarked or have a heatsink glued on top so you couldn't see the markimgs.
It was easy for the dodgy retailers to scam people, just move the jumper to 33mhz, or an older boards just use a 33Mhz crystal oscillator instead of a 25Mhz one.

My favourite chip was the AMD 486 DX4 133Mhz.
Overclocked to 160Mhz easily and was able to hold it's own with the early pentiums.
I didn't retire it from gaming duty until the Pentium MMX launched.

During that time my vote for least favourite chip was launched the AMD K5.
It was a terrible performer and i returned it to the shop in disgust.
It was the first time AMD used the dodgy PR rating, the clock speed was quite a bit lower than the numbers in the model name would suggest.

Even the awful Cyrix P5's were better.
 
PCZ said:
Most likely the crashing SX33 was actually an SX25.
It was very common for them to be either remarked or have a heatsink glued on top so you couldn't see the markimgs.
It was easy for the dodgy retailers to scam people, just move the jumper to 33mhz, or an older boards just use a 33Mhz crystal oscillator instead of a 25Mhz one.

.
Click to expand...

I think i saw maybe 3 legit ones out of a few dozen :D
PCZ said:
.
It was the first time AMD used the dodgy PR rating, the clock speed was quite a bit lower than the numbers in the model name would suggest.

.
Click to expand...

To be fair, in the early Athlon XP days the PR system was actually conservative when compared to a Pentium 4 (everyone knows it was really the PIV it was compared against, not the Thunderbird as AMD stated :D ). Only later on were they off the mark when the proper Northwoods etc.. started ramping up speed.
 
Last edited:
Justintime
The K5 predates the XP's by several years.
I think AMD did the PR rating against a 486 but let eveyone think it was rated against the Pentium.

I thought the XP ratings were generally OK.
With the exclusion of heavy FP use where they never matched the P4 equivalents.
As most people weren't into DC number crunching it wasn't really picked up on much in reviews and for the majority the ratings were OK.

As you say the later chips specifically the Bartons were very 'wishfull' though.
 
PCZ said:
Justintime
The K5 predates the XP's by several years.
I think AMD did the PR rating against a 486 but let eveyone think it was rated against the Pentium.
.
Click to expand...

I know, i thought you meant 'dodgy PR rating' in general. The K5 was really really late to market if i remember well (forgive me but i was only 14 at the time haha) and by the time it came out Intel and Cyrix were batting in another league clockspeedwise, good chip but too darn slow.
 
Yes thats it a nutshell.
Late to market and ran extremely hot.
Fastest one they did had a PR166 rating and actually ran at 116 Mhz
A PR200 was planned but never saw the light of day as the K6 was out by then.

AMD killed it off early and concentrated efforts on the K6 an altogether better chip.
 
Best:

Little biased as it's my current CPU but I bought a Athlon II X3 460. What I've ended up with is a Phenom X4 B60 after core unlock. I was told that cores are generally locked because of a defect however after stress testing and now after a few days of normal use it's fine.

Worst:

Intel P2 (the game cartridge). It never worked right, it was slow and sluggish to a point where the setup it replaced was reconsidered. The CPU itself failed after 7 months
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom