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Your fave/least fave CPU range/architecture in history

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

Soldato
Joined
10 May 2004
Posts
13,049
Location
Sunny Stafford
A blast-from-the-past type thread. We've seen Athlon XP, Pentium D, Centrinos, Turions, Semprons, the E range, Core 2 Quad (Q range), the oldskool Cyrix and many more. What architecture do you guys think was good for its time and what was under par?

For me, my fave would have to be the Thunderbird in 2001, which was the last batch of AMD's true-speed processors before they became Athlon XP speeds. I had a T-bird 1400MHz and that thing flew. United Devices reckons that it benched well beyond a P4 1500MHz. It remained substantial for me, then I upgraded in 2004.

Worst chip for me was probably the Prescott. I think it was just after the hyperthreaded Springdale range in late 03 / early 04. Although the Prescott had extra cache, I recall that it was blighted with temperature issues.

Discuss :-)
 
sandybridge for me, just does everything so well, overclocks well, great single threaded, good multithreaded, no real flaws. Also like my two phenom ii chips x4 965 and 1090t, good all round although long in the tooth these days. worst for me was a pentium 4 3ghz with ht, was a good heater though.
 
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The AMD K6 2 will always be special to me. My first self build had one and it lasted me my two years of college and a few more when I passed it on to my brother.
 
Monserrat said:
. Although the Prescott had extra cache, I recall that it was blighted with temperature issues.
Click to expand...

I think the cache had higher latencies as well than Northwood, coupled with the longer pipelining that would technically allow faster frequencies hence bridging the performance gap but couldn't due to heat/leakage issues (:D) and only made it slower clock for clock than a Northwood, Prescott was definetly a non event.

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.


I think my most fond memories come with K6-2 and definetly K6-3 (especially the + version) , the Athlon Classic and T-bird are favs as well. My 300A Celeron was a blast too and @ 450Mhz was a scorcher.
 
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Favourite was Deneb as that's what I had most experience in with clocking etc.

Since I'm fairly new to the PC scene, I'd have to say Agena was my least favourite, as had AMD released Deneb at the time of Agena, they might be closer to Intel today.
 
+ Definitely 2500K. Can't see upgrading for a loooong time (unless I get bored).
- Don't think I've had a bad processor to comment on. 1055T, E6400, Athlon 64. Had some Amstrad Cyrix from way back at school. Now, those were ****e.
 
My favourite has to be the Core 2 E6300 I had back in 2006. Bottom of the range, but overclocked to 3.3ghz which made it about as fast as the top of the line EE chip.

Least favourite... probably the Pentium 2 in my old family PC. But that was only because I was made to use it for so long and it was soooo old...
 
Looking at all time favourite (the one I had most fun with) and obviously not comparing performance with todays processors.

Favourite has got to be the early 'Thoroughbred' Athlons. 1700+ to 2600+ before barton. They were very overclockable even if notionally multiplier limited. There were lots of options for mods and if you had a good mobo and cooling you could get high FSB.

Least favourite was an original pentium 60 although the first AMD K6 ran it close for poor OC capability.
 
Fave: Pentium D 805, cheap and with its 20x multiplier got to 4ghz fairly easily, was great for me on a budget. I think its fair to say I should give SB/SB-E/IB a mention too :)

Least fave: Q9300, thing was an absolute stinker for overclocking.
 
Fave : i7 920, one of the longest lasting, best overclocking chips i have ever had

Worst : Pentium 4 Prescott 3.2, idle at 50c and shutdown when i tried gaming
 
Apart from my i7 I've always paid around the 60-100 mark for a cpu.
Had many athlon xps, socket 939s,

My top personal 3 best have been.

1.x2 555C3, this monster cost me £69,(955be was around 135+), unlocked to a stable x4 b55, and overclocked like a mother....er. 4.6ghz as an x2 and 4.2ghz as an x4 on a titan fenrir. Its now living in my dads pc as an x2.

2.e2140. This little beasty was my first turn to the evilside back when I was still on socket 939 x2. am2 was a pointless upgrade and the phenom was even more of a disaster. So I turned to intel and this £50 beast overclocked from 1.6 to 3.2 ghz.

3. Athlon k6 II 500. My first amd back when I was 14/15. I upgraded from an idt winchip c6 225 to this and wow what a difference, back in the day when you had a jumper for the fsb, and a dip switch for the multiplier. !!!!


Worst chip.
Athlon x2 4400 ToledoE6, Piece of poop wouldnt go over 2.640ghz from a 2.2ghz standard.
 
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Fave = The cpu I have now (2500K) Does everything I ask it to without breaking a sweat.

Hated = My 1st CPU (486SX33) did the complete opposite, crash, freeze if I so much dared to click on anything in Windows 3.1 (OK in DOS though)
 
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