Question GREATEST CPU OF ALL TIME (DESKTOP >1999)

lopri · Sep 23, 2024

I voted for Sandy bridge. I had 2 of those that did 100% OC on air. (E2140, E2160) AMD's 90nm stuff (X2 and Opteron) come close and they were actually more fun to play with thanks to unlocked multi and system bus (HTT).

Since then it's all been downhill. Thuban did OK temporarily (1045T 50% OC on air) but it still could not keep up with Sandy and its derivatives.

Today, all CPUs come factory-overclocked and 90% of my testing goes to making sure of system stability. The other 10% to fiddling with memory. Sad!

ElFenix · Sep 23, 2024

is sandybridge really 14 years old? i thought that was nehalem back then

ElFenix · Sep 23, 2024

lopri said:
I voted for Sandy bridge. I had 2 of those that did 100% OC on air. (E2140, E2160) AMD's 90nm stuff (X2 and Opteron) come close and they were actually more fun to play with thanks to unlocked multi and system bus (HTT).

sir those were Conroe
(stupidly never even thought about overclocking my e2140 and sold it cheap here while keeping my operton)

IHAVEAQUESTION · Sep 23, 2024

AMD Athlon was strong out of the gate and also being very over-clockable. It was cheaper and performed way better than the Intel counterpart.

Nothingness · Sep 24, 2024

I vote for Athlon 64 as it showed Intel how things should be done for 64-bit. AMD brought 64-bit to consumers, while Intel insisted it was only for overpriced servers with non-x86 IA-64.

EDIT: too bad 68000 wasn't on the list

SiliconFly · Sep 24, 2024

Thunder 57 said:
You are bs.

You are the biggest bs!

(No personal attacks pls).

DAPUNISHER · Sep 24, 2024

SiliconFly said:
You are the biggest bs!

(No personal attacks pls).

This is an approved official versus thread. You guys getting a little spicy with each other is okay. Just treat it like Vegas, what happens here, stays here.

It is now almost a dead heat! Is Zen 3 winning a bridge too far?

AdamK47 · Sep 24, 2024

IHAVEAQUESTION said:
AMD Athlon was strong out of the gate and also being very over-clockable. It was cheaper and performed way better than the Intel counterpart.

Remember the gold fingers?

NTMBK · Sep 24, 2024

DAPUNISHER said:
This is an approved official versus thread. You guys getting a little spicy with each other is okay. Just treat it like Vegas, what happens here, stays here.

It is now almost a dead heat! Is Zen 3 winning a bridge too far?

Just you wait, Bulldozer is going to make a comeback any day now!

(Just like it was going to make a comeback against Sandy Bridge, any day now... Just needed more multithreaded games, for real guys ..)

IHAVEAQUESTION · Sep 24, 2024

AdamK47 said:
Remember the gold fingers?

Yeah. However, the website DAPUNISHER suggested isn't the site I remember that came up with the term "Gold Fingers".

Hulk · Sep 24, 2024

My first computer was an Atari 800. I've had nearly every generation of Intel since the 8086.

The biggest, most miraculous jump in performance was when I upgraded to Conroe in 2005. No other upgrade was even close in day-to-day usage scenarios, benchmarks, whatever you can think of. It simply far outclassed it's competition in every metric. Overall performance, efficiency, overclockability, etc...

The other jump I remember being big because some of my software went from being basically unusable (CorelDraw 3, Software Audio Workshop, to name a few) was when I upgraded from a 486 to a Pentium 90. That was also a big upgrade.

Now, keep in mind I'm looking at this from the standpoint of making my software usable, not just faster. For example, rendering an extrusion in CorelDraw went from like an hour with the 486 to a few minutes with the Pentium 90. Basically unusable to usable.

gdansk · Sep 24, 2024

Hulk said:
My first computer was an Atari 800. I've had nearly every generation of Intel since the 8086.

The biggest, most miraculous jump in performance was when I upgraded to Conroe in 2005. No other upgrade was even close in day-to-day usage scenarios, benchmarks, whatever you can think of. It simply far outclassed it's competition in every metric. Overall performance, efficiency, overclockability, etc...

Probably mean 2006, not 2005.
I don't have as extensive of an upgrade history but I agree. Vista was slow on the system I had before. It ran perfectly on the new Core 2 Duo. I'm surprised it is 4th in the poll. That and the later Intel X25-M G2 SSD were the two most "felt" upgrades I've ever made.

Hulk · Sep 25, 2024

gdansk said:
Probably mean 2006, not 2005.
I don't have as extensive of an upgrade history but I agree. Vista was slow on the system I had before. It ran perfectly on the new Core 2 Duo. I'm surprised it is 4th in the poll. That and the later Intel X25-M G2 SSD were the two most "felt" upgrades I've ever made.

Yes, writing from memory, Conroe was 2006.

cytg111 · Sep 25, 2024

cytg111 · Sep 25, 2024

Eug said:
Ah yes. 100 MHz FSB for 450 MHz.

Noobs 112 for 504

Flagship back then was P2-450 with half speed level 2 ... our overclocked celerons smoked top of the line commercially available

Hulk · Sep 25, 2024

cytg111 said:
Noobs 112 for 504

Flagship back then was P2-450 with half speed level 2 ... our overclocked celerons smoked top of the line commercially available

The 300a era was nuts. Every one did 450 and a select few did the 504 trick. There was absolutely no reason to spend 3 to 4 times as much on a PII 450.

AdamK47 · Sep 25, 2024

cytg111 said:
Noobs 112 for 504

Flagship back then was P2-450 with half speed level 2 ... our overclocked celerons smoked top of the line commercially available

Me: But is it stable at 504MHz?
My Friend: It plays games just fine at this speed.
Me: Okay then.
My Friend: *Quake 2 crashes 3 minutes into a session.*

cytg111 · Sep 25, 2024

AdamK47 said:
Me: But is it stable at 504MHz?
My Friend: It plays games just fine at this speed.
Me: Okay then.
My Friend: *Quake 2 crashes 3 minutes into a session.*

I played Quake competitively on that rig, crashing is not an option.

PingSpike · Sep 25, 2024

AdamK47 said:
Me: But is it stable at 504MHz?
My Friend: It plays games just fine at this speed.
Me: Okay then.
My Friend: *Quake 2 crashes 3 minutes into a session.*

Goddamn nvidia drivers!

lopri · Sep 26, 2024

IHAVEAQUESTION said:
AMD Athlon was strong out of the gate and also being very over-clockable. It was cheaper and performed way better than the Intel counterpart.

Oops you are right those are pre-Sandy. My bad, lol. As to Sandy, I had an 2500K that did overclock very well (5.0 GHz on air) but I honestly did not have much fun out of it because Intel locking down bus clocks.

I dug up some old screenshots of E2140 and Opteron 146. My goodness the E2140 did 125%, not 100%. I misremembered.

lopri · Sep 26, 2024

I meant to reply to this post of Elfenix above.

ElFenix said:
sir those were Conroe
(stupidly never even thought about overclocking my e2140 and sold it cheap here while keeping my operton)

itsmydamnation · Sep 26, 2024

Sandy is peak in terms of that's the process before Moore's law/ 50 years of planar transistor scaling died( we just didn't know it yet). And Intel delivered a core that was better in everyway.

I think zen4 x3d will be more goat then zen3 x3d. The only thing that can disrupt it is zen5 x3d and only if that huge glob of cache allows that wide core to stretch its legs further then what the extra charge did for zen3/4.

AnandThenMan · Sep 26, 2024

Remember when Intel tried to convince us all that 64 bit on the desktop was not necessary?

igor_kavinski · Sep 30, 2024

I voted P4 and I encourage new voters to vote for it too so we can finally get Tejas!

One last CPU before Intel goes under

NTMBK · Sep 30, 2024

igor_kavinski said:
I voted P4 and I encourage new voters to vote for it too so we can finally get Tejas!

One last CPU before Intel goes under

They can go out in a blaze of glory and/or flaming heatsinks

Question GREATEST CPU OF ALL TIME (DESKTOP >1999)

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