Best and worst CPUs since 1998

[Arkaign]

I like the P4 S423 as the worst, perhaps with cacheless Celeron as a close 2nd. Cyrix 6X86 and AMD K5 were pretty crap as well, but I don't rate them as badly because their pricing wasn't horrible. 6x86 was actually okay for general Windows nonsense, just horrible at most gaming due to the almost complete lack of any FPU performance. K5 was pretty crap, luckily K6 fixed everything and was much better. Too bad Super 7 chipsets sucked for the most part, limiting the fun with the K6-2/K6-3.

Best :

Athlon XP
Pentium 4 Northwood

What a fantastic rivalry that was. On either you could get a cheap low-clocked one and OC to top-tier levels or beyond for bargain pricing.

Core 2 Duo / Core 2 Quad might take the cake though. Still usable today for many things, much faster still than crap tablet processors, and a 3.4ghz+ C2Q will still run basically any game out there.

 

[Fallengod]

Yeah C2D's were badass. Its the last CPU I had too before I upgraded to an i5-2500k. I really didnt even need an upgrade, but the i5-2500k was quite a bit faster. However C2D E6400 @ 3ghz which I only paid $100 for was pretty badass.

 

[Shephard]

I know the Core 2 Quad is ok, that's what I still have.

But weren't the Core 2 Duo worse than the Athlon X2. Athlon X2 5600+, 6000+, and 6400+.

I thought it wasn't until the Quad came that AMD still had the best CPU there.

 

[HeXen]

i had an AMD K2?? 350hz. performance was so bad it was mostly pointless to use Win98 on it with anything other than IE.
Celeron my second.

 

[Z15CAM]

Great CPU's:

I ran and still run an Athlon XP Barton 1.8G at 2300MHz's on a GA-7N400 Pro2 (rev2) / OCZ 2.3.2.5 1T/Radeon HD 2600XT with Win7 Ultimate loaded and it doesn't miss a beat.

I got a Slot 1 Asus P3V4X (200 Mhz Clock gen) with a 100 Mhz Celeron 1.3 Flip Chip Taulatin vidded on a converter card running at 1800Mhz / Radeon 9800XT/ 150Mhz SDRam with WinXP loaded - One of the fastest Slot 1 MB's in the World. Eat your heart out Celeron 300A ;o)

 

[StinkyPinky]

Q6600 - even now they perform quite well.
Celeron 300A - Budget but excellent gaming performance
First Gen Athlon 64 x2 - Got a lot of use out of mine.

Worst:

Early P4's.....total garbage. Still have a few at work and they are just horrible beasts. Noisy as hell too.

 

[Arkaign]

I know the Core 2 Quad is ok, that's what I still have.

But weren't the Core 2 Duo worse than the Athlon X2. Athlon X2 5600+, 6000+, and 6400+.

I thought it wasn't until the Quad came that AMD still had the best CPU there.

No.

Core 2 duo was way better than amd x2. Amd x2 was way better than the previous pentium D .

 

[tynopik]

there was that PIII (1.13GHz or something?) that was the only one i can think of that was released and then completely cancelled because of bugs

other processors have been respun because of bugs (phenom), but none have just been completely cancelled.

 

[Shephard]

No.

Core 2 duo was way better than amd x2. Amd x2 was way better than the previous pentium D .

oh right. Pentium D was Intel's first dual core.

AMD X2 4400+ I think that was AMD's first and one of the most popular chips for a long time.

What was the best Core Duo that was first released?

 

[Centauri]

Can't help but think this thread would be a lot better were it created and guided by somebody who knows about the subject. No offense.

 

[Cerb]

I say 1998 because CPUs started chaning a lot since then.

They changed a lot before then, too. Possibly much more than since. But anyway, Netburst was far from worst. It had a few of Intel's worst CPUs, but the biggest problem with it was deviating too much from what everyone wanted, and what would really work out, just like IA64. People didn't want to change their code, recompile their executables, nor require 50-100% more clock cycles for the same performance.

The worst:
1. Covington Celerons
2. Willamette and Northwood Celerons
3. Anything VIA

The 128KB L2, and no-L2, Celerons were just pathetic. With VIA, it's not merely performance, but that even today, stability and compatibility are major concerns. They never lived up to their potential, and were way too expensive prior to Atom, as well.

The best:
1. A64 X2
2. Core 2 Quad

Recent stuff is great, but those two were game-changers.

My favorite chip from the past decade or so is IBM/Motorola's PowerPC 7410. A very stout CPU with a 4-stage pipeline that punched far above its weight. It just scaled atrociously. But that doesn't take away from how efficient it was.

I concur. Apple trying to hang on to IBM gave the "G4" a much worse rep than it deserved, either early on, or outside of Apple. It scaled fairly well, but >1GHz was a bit too much, and it was being retired by the time power efficiency started to matter to most users.

i had an AMD K2?? 350hz. performance was so bad it was mostly pointless to use Win98 on it with anything other than IE.
Celeron my second.

There never was a K2, AFAIK. There was a K6-II 350MHz, but the only case where it was really slow was games with no 3DNow! support, and it tended to be passable even then. My gaming box back then was one, and it was pretty nice. Even with 192MB of RAM, it was cheaper than any PII PC of the time. I can't speak to Win98, as I had already gotten rid of MS-DOS for good, by the time I made that upgrade.

AMD X2 4400+ I think that was AMD's first and one of the most popular chips for a long time.

3800+, and it stayed at a high price for a long time.

What was the best Core Duo that was first released?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_microprocessors#Core_Duo
2.33GHz Yonah

AMD had a couple faster CPUs, at the time, and the Core Duo was made primarily as a mobile CPU.

 

[SPBHM]

The 128KB L2, and no-L2, Celerons were just pathetic.

what?!

128k l2 Celeron was excellent, it could be overclocked to 450MHz, and it would perform just like a PII 450 in many cases...
the Celeron had 1/4 the l2, but it worked at full speed, while PII had half-speed l2 cache...

even the first Celeron without L2 was a fun CPU to overclock and was not to slow at 400MHz.

 

[Idontcare]

I know the Core 2 Quad is ok, that's what I still have.

But weren't the Core 2 Duo worse than the Athlon X2. Athlon X2 5600+, 6000+, and 6400+.

I thought it wasn't until the Quad came that AMD still had the best CPU there.

You should read this: Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back (by Anand Lal Shimpi on 7/14/2006)

 

[exar333]

inb4 Bulldozer bitchfest

Williamette: slower than previous archs and crappy.

Bulldozer: slower than previous archs and crappy.

See a corollary here?

 

[exar333]

Bulldozer obviously has power-usage issues when you compare to the performance in a competitive landscape. It is hard to blame bulldozer though, for all we know the power usage issue is static leakage that is the fault of GloFo and their 32nm process.

Prescott was also a cpu that had power-issues and it could hardly hold its own against a comparably clocked northwood.

Willamette was not good compared to a P3 or the Athlon XP. But it wasn't the end of the world either, so I don't think it should be labeled the worst cpu "ever".

When I think of "worst" cpu I think of things like the pentium with its FDIV bug, or the 1.13GHz P3 that could barely run stable at stock. I had a cyrix P150+ chip that was like that, at stock it was buggy as hell and routinely crashed in the summer when it was naturally running hotter versus the winter.

And in the end, to me anyways, that is what makes a cpu the worst. When you've been up all night pounding away on the keyboard typing out a report for your semester term project and the damn computer borks on you and corrupts your file (even though you've been diligently saving it every 10 minutes) then that elevates that cpu to the podium of "worst cpu ever" in my book.

Cyrix P150+, consider yerself nominated, ya POS

I had this Cyrix too and it SUCKED. Glad my mobo fried and I replaced the computer with a 166MMX (which I flipped a jumper to up to 200).

 

[exar333]

what?!

128k l2 Celeron was excellent, it could be overclocked to 450MHz, and it would perform just like a PII 450 in many cases...
the Celeron had 1/4 the l2, but it worked at full speed, while PII had half-speed l2 cache...

even the first Celeron without L2 was a fun CPU to overclock and was not to slow at 400MHz.

Yup. Those rock.

 

[JumpingJack]

Worst from Intel -- hands down,Prescott. Best From Intel -- the quad penryns OCed nicely, then Sandy turned out very good, hard to pick.

AMD best? opty 130 or the x2 3800. Worst from AMD -- K5 or Agena (Phenom I) would be my votes.

The worst CPU I have ever owned has to be a tie between the Cyrix 6x86 and the K5.

 

[FrankSchwab]

Well, the most notable in my experience:
The NEC V20/V30. Pin compatible and 30% faster, or put it in a clone for some 8 MHz speed.
The Celeron 300A. Budget overclocker of the decade.
The AMD K6-2.
The AMD Athlon "Thunderbird". Overclocked with a pencil. Superior performance to everything Intel, and what the Cool Kids had.
The I5/2500K.

 

[Shephard]

You should read this: Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back (by Anand Lal Shimpi on 7/14/2006)

nice article.

A lot of competition back then. Now Intel just wipes the floor with AMD.

thanks to AMD though we have low prices for amazing Quad Core aka i5 3570k!

 

[Cerb]

what?!

128k l2 Celeron was excellent, it could be overclocked to 450MHz

I meant the Willamette and Northwood ones with that comment, sorry about that. I wasn't even thinking of Medicino and Coppermine, which were good CPUs for the money, OCed or not.

 

[RU482]

Coppermines, First Athlons (forgetting that they melted if you took the heatsink off) , Nehalem, Sandy.....lots of greats
anything P4, AMD-K6, Pre-P3 Intel Clones - bad

 

[AznAnarchy99]

AMD X2 3800+

One of the first dual cores paired with my DFI mobo (one of their lasts). System lasted me 5 years before I definitely needed the upgrade (which is to the one in my sig now). A computer lasting 5 years was pretty much unheard of back then. The one I have now is going on 3 and hasnt slowed me down at all yet.

 

[AtenRa]

I had this Cyrix too and it SUCKED. Glad my mobo fried and I replaced the computer with a 166MMX (which I flipped a jumper to up to 200).

Yeap, i had the Pentium 166MHz (non MMX) OCed to 200MHz via jumper on a ABIT motherboard (first ABIT mobo i owned). It lasted me two years when i replaced it with a cache-less Celeron 300 OCed to 450MHz. It wasn't that bad at 450MHz but then i got my self one of the best CPUs of all time.

Intel Celeron 366MHz (Mendocino) OCed to 550MHz. It could put the Pentium III 500MHz in to shame at a fraction of the cost. Paired with ABIT BE-6 II and ThermalTake Golden Orb was a killer combination at the time.

Also, Pentium III 650MHz(100MHz FSB) was one of the best chips at the time, I had mine OCed to 975MHz and it could go above 1GHz with a cood cooler. The only prob was the lack of PCI dividers that resulted in HardDrive failures (2 or 3 HDDs gave up on me with OCes above 133MHz FSBs at the time)

Pentium 4 Willamette was the worst CPU at the time, AMD Athlon 1400MHz was the king (pencil unlock). Although AMD Athlon was considered the best i believe Pentium 4 1.6A (Northwood) OCed to 2-2.2GHz was excellent as well the Pentium 4 2.4GHz Northwood.

First AMD Athlon X2 was the start of a new era for desktop followed by the Core 2 in 2006.

Those were good times

 

[Arkaign]

Coppermines, First Athlons (forgetting that they melted if you took the heatsink off) , Nehalem, Sandy.....lots of greats
anything P4, AMD-K6, Pre-P3 Intel Clones - bad

What?

P4 Northwoods were fantastic, and the fastest at the right clocks for most gaming and basically all encoding/compression. Athlon XP was also awesome of course, good balance between them there.

I agree that :

P4 w/Rambus = bad (super expensive, not much gain in performance)
P4 Socket 423 as a whole (Willamette, not enough cache or FSB to really do that well)
P4 Prescott was a waste, they were slower per clock than Northwood and hotter to boot
P4 Cedar Mill was largely a fixed Prescott and worked well, but by that time the Athlon 64 had clocked high enough to just annihilate it
P4 Emergency Edition / Gallatin was overpriced

But for a long time, from the 1.6A to the 3.2 (and extremely rare 3.4 models), the Northwood P4s stood as some of the best chips you could get. Some people forget that by the end, P4 3.2 was flat-out faster than Athlon XP 3200+ in virtually every single benchmark. They even stood fairly well against Athlon 64 3000+ and 3200+, splitting the benches enough that there was no compelling reason to drop a 3ghz+ northwood for an early A64. Of course then came 3400+, 3500+, etc, etc, and A64 rightfully destroyed the P4, just as A64 X2 destroyed Pentium D. Another lost point is that there were some outright terrible Athlon chipsets during the P4 era. Personally I disliked working with them until the outstanding Nforce2 came about, it really boosted performance quite a bit, great stability, overclocking, and audio as well.

K6 was really nice, because Intel topped out the desktop Pentium MMX at 233Mhz, and the K6 let you get faster chips in 66mhz bus Socket 7 systems. Then when Pentium II was super expensive, K6-2 offered a decent alternative for a ton less money.

 

[jhu]

Best is Itanium, at least for Intel. Why? Just the announcement ensured the destruction of Alpha and PA-RISC. MIPS soon follows to relative obscurity.