Fave CPU's you've owned of all time?

[jiffylube1024]

Faves:

Tualatin Intel Pentium 3 1.0 GHz - ran at 1.4 GHz, which smoked the new Pentium 4 chips.
Intel Pentium 4 2.4C - overclocked to 3 GHz, was my first chip with hyperthreading. It was a beast in its day. Almost equal to one of the first Pentium Extreme Editions.
AMD Athlon64 3000+ - ran at 2.7 GHz and made my games fly. Smoked my old Pentium 4.
AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ - overclocked to a modest 2.5 GHz, but it really didn't even need to be overclocked, it was so fast for its time. Dual Core really was as good as advertised!
Intel Core2Duo E6320 - overclocked to 2.9 GHz, and I got it for cheap.
Intel Core2Duo E8400 Wolfdale -- the first chip I ever had that even hit the 3 GHz mark with any stability, and that was out of the box!!! It o/ced to 3.8 GHz, and made for a screaming fast system.
Intel Core2Quad Q9300 - I got it on sale, and it oc/s to a modest 3 GHz. Quad Core is a dream, it's so fast for just about anything I throw at it!

Not-so faves (going backwards in time):

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 - my first C2D, it didn't overclock that well and was very pricey (at least for me, at the time)
Intel Pentium 4 1.8A @ 2.2 GHz - didn't overclock like other people's chips here on Anandtech (most were getting mid to high 2 GHz). Maybe because I'm in Canada and we got different versions.
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ / Barton 1700+ - both of these chips o/ced a lot, but were inferior to Pentium 4's of the time

Intel Pentium 3 533 MHz coppermine - didn't overclock at all, since I got the 133 MHz FSB version and not the 100 MHz FSB chip. Back when I wanted to o/c but didn't have the balls to buy a chip that would be slower out of the box, unless I overclocked it. The real pain was that this was an era before lots of memory dividors, so everything was bumped up - your PCI clockspeed, your memory speed, everything. It was an all-or-nothing proposition of overclocking from 100 FSB to 133 FSB, you either hit 133 and got a great CPU overclock and kept your PCI/Memory at stock speeds, or you were running at something weird.

Intel Pentium II 233 MHz - my first PC, it was not that fast (I bought it second hand) and I quickly yearned for something faster.

 

[CurseTheSky]

AMD X2 4200+ (s939). I bought it when most people were arguing that having more than one core was pointless, and a waste of money. Everyone I talked to tried to get me to get a single core 4000+ instead, since it ran at a higher stock frequency.

I managed to get it up to 2.78GHz (2.2GHz stock) on reasonable voltage when most people were hitting 2.5, 2.6 if they were lucky. About 6 months ago, I decided to clock it down a bit (gave it, the motherboard, and the memory to my girlfriend) to ensure stability and I haven't been able to get it back up that high again.

 

[cuttergallery]

Pentium II 300Mhz - GOOD
Celeron 600Mhz - AVERAGE
AMD Athlon 64 2100+ - FIRST BUILD
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ - STILL IN USE
AMD FX-55 - SHORTEST OWNERSHIP
AMD x2 4200+ FIRST 2X CORE
AMD x2 6000+ LATEST

 

[Zapper48]

Till I switched to Intel my fave was the 165 Opteron

 

[faxon]

my all time favorite cpu is usually whichever one i have that is fastest, or gives me the best bang for my buck. currently, thats my e5200 OCed to 3.3GHz. i must say that my all time favorate upgrade had to be when i went from a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 (Northwood) to an A64 4000+. i was really into everquest2 at the time, which has a never ending hunger for CPU power because of how they coded the engine. they wanted a ton of graphics features which werent yet programmed into the current shader model/DX when they started developing it (in 2000), so they put them all on the CPU. needless to say, it made my gaming experience a ton more fun, since i could actually get "playable" framerates at 2048x1536. playable in an MMORPG is about 15-20fps for me lol.

 

[PeteRoy]

I didn't go through many CPU's

Good:
Pentium 166Mhz MMX, was a huge leap from my previous 286 machine
Pentium 3 733Mhz socket 370 Coppermine
Pentium 4 2.8Ghz HT Prescott 478, my current machine, it still does what I want more or less

Bad:
286, my first machine got it when I was 5, was good at first but my parents didnt help me replace it til I was 13
Pentium 2 233Mhz, was slow, wasn't faster than my previous Pentium 166Mhz MMX
Pentium 4 2.8Ghz HT Prescott 478, it was good but I'm starting to hate it a bit, in summer it gets loud, it is feeling slower and slower compared to new machines

 

[ajaidevsingh]

Best - Athlon Thunderbird Oced to 1000Mhz
Core 2 "Kentsfield" Oced to 3.2 Ghz
Pentium 3 cooper mine Oced
Athlon 64 oced
Celeron D Oced to 3ghz

Worst - Pentium Gallatin OEM "Came with an HP gaming system"
Sempron Paris "Did bad over clocking"

 

[bwatson283]

The days 486 dx2 66, and K6-2 series

 

[reallyfull]

I would have to say my P4 Northwood 1.6a @ 2.2Ghz, I was coming from a AMD K6-2 @ 400Mhz. It was a huge jump.

 

[jzodda]

P233 MMX @290 my first OC project in 1997 I think. I had to run with the case off
cele 300a 450 I think
P3 733@ 1.0Ghz and that was with a custom TEC cooler- I don't even remember where I got it. I had to silicone the motherboard, was a lot of fun with those really low temps
Barton XP2500@ I don't remember lol
E6700@ 3.6Ghz
E8400 @ 4.1Ghz

My fav has to be the P3 733 because of all the work I put into running it with that TEC. Was loads of fun.

 

[Slappy00]

celeron 300a --> 400mhz rock stable

nothing else sticks out in my mind, that was the best. And it was much harder to oc in those days... you whipper-snappers have it easy.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Originally posted by: PeteRoy
I didn't go through many CPU's
Bad:
286, my first machine got it when I was 5, was good at first but my parents didnt help me replace it til I was 13

That amounts to child abuse! (/kidding)

Can't believe how many Celerons are on this list. That looks like the first real big OCing hobbyist chip. And I never had one!