favorite CPU in all time?

[Dravic]

Duron 650 OC to just under 1ghz

Made me feel better for not being in on the old Celeron 350(?) OC's hehe.

 

[petrusbroder]

Intel 8008. That was my first. We used it in an home built computer, we even etched the main board ourselves. 16K RAM ... and we calculated all the high school and college math on it.
I/O was an old teletyper (first), then a punched-paper-role (don't know the english name, could it be ticker tape?) and at last a audio-casette recorder.

 

[amdhunter]

Pentium Pro without a doubt. If you owned one you were the envy of everyone that didn't. And those were mere amateurs. (or 16 bit users!) :biggrin:

This sounds stupid, but I loved the day I got my Pentium II (with Win95b) and it said Pentium Pro. It made me feel special. lol

 

[kazryv]

I really liked my old AMD Thunderbird 1400 way back in the day. Now - probably my current CPU (I5 2500k) it's been a good overclocker at 4.7 GHZ.

 

[Rubycon]

Pentium IIs were severely crippled PPros. Klammath was a disaster, especially the 233MHz part. It was funny how Tom Pabst ripped this on debut and Intel threatened him. :biggrin:

 

[Don Karnage]

My E8500/UD3 was a monster combo on water. 4.8ghz stable at the time was incredible

 

[ElFenix]

pentium pro or alpha.

 

[Clinkster]

Q6600. First quad core beast in overclocking.

My new 2500k has won my heart over now, but the Q6600 will muscle through the tides of time.

 

[techforums]

tie between e6600 and qx6700.

 

[colaxs]

My favorite cpus have been the p166 mmx, p2 266, athlon 64 3000+ on socket 754, and my current i5 2400. Never been much of a cpu overclocker sadly..

 

[Zorander]

The A64 X2 3800+. My first dual-core CPU and a fresh upgrade from the P4.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Historically at least I've had a lot that I've really appreciated. I modded an Amiga-100 to use a 68000-14MHz with 1.5MB of RAM with a complete 512K RAM disk with the OS and a C compiler. If I crashed the system, it came back instantaneously! I had a 286-20 that lasted me four years in the Windows 3.0 time frame. I even used the RAM from that system for a 486-100 that was also a real pistol - matched up well against the Pentium-100 I built not too long after. It just scaled up from there. But the 68K and the 286-20 are probably the ones I remember most fondly. True 16-bit CPUs, both data and address buses, no compromises, and decent clock speeds, they represented a really significant improvement over prevailing solutions (6800, 8088 and 286/12) and for me that was when personal computing really took off performancewise. The 286-20 was the poor man's 386.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll trundle off in my walker to bed...

 

[liddabit]

Thunderbird My first build

 

[Magic Carpet]

Because it has served and earned this status.

 

[nyker96]

@MagicCarpet, lovely, still got a PIII nice!

 

[86waterpumper]

Where my son goes to school/daycare, (he is 3) they still are using a fleet of old pIII rigs for the kids to play educational games on etc. They keep them running at all times, no telling how much in electricity they are wasting so that the kiddies can play some oldschool games :biggrin: You also forget how much noise these old systems made, it's funny to actually be able to hear the harddrives spinning. You can tell they are going full out! No sleep settings or anything. But yeah...quite a few of the old dinosaurs around still kickin. I think I have some old pc133 ram around somewhere maybe they want a upgrade? ahhahah

 

[SonicIce]

Because it has served and earned this status.

that is cool. i have two of those cpu's but need a motherboard. what are the best ones?

 

[Magic Carpet]

@MagicCarpet, lovely, still got a PIII nice!

Yeah, that box cost me a lot of $$$ back in the day. It is excellent for old games (up to Battlefield 1942) and web browsing (Firefox 8). Paired with a RAM drive, it is a pleasure to use. Boots up XP SP3 in less than 10 seconds, partly compensates for the lack of proper sleep mode... I do have a few modern systems nearby, this I love the most though, probably due to the amount of work I have put in to it over the years.

Where my son goes to school/daycare, (he is 3) they still are using a fleet of old pIII rigs for the kids to play educational games on etc. They keep them running at all times, no telling how much in electricity they are wasting so that the kiddies can play some oldschool games :biggrin:

They cost close to nothing these days, why not? If you use appropriate software, I don't see a problem. I am sure, electrical bills for these systems are least of their worries, unless they run mammoth CRT screens too.

You also forget how much noise these old systems made, it's funny to actually be able to hear the harddrives spinning. You can tell they are going full out! No sleep settings or anything. But yeah...quite a few of the old dinosaurs around still kickin. I think I have some old pc133 ram around somewhere maybe they want a upgrade? ahhahah

Power management was little but most equipment (pre P4) was fairly low power to begin with. The abundance of smaller (louder) fans in old systems could wrongly alarm of a sleeping beast under the hood.

I had a Hitachi drive that meowed every now and then... my friends kept looking for a cat. In response to my e-mail, Hitachi decided to send me a firmware update (they shipped a CD, in fact) that silenced it. Technical support *was* actually useful.

I'd keep that stick around. Some systems allowed up to 1.5gb of ram, you never know what you encounter next. Or you can make a keychain with it :biggrin:

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

AMD 5x86 DX4 133. ran it at 160 Mhz. hung toe to toe with pentium 90s back in the day.

 

[Stuka87]

I will probably catch all kinds of flak for this, but my favorite of all time was the PPC 750, followed closely by the PPC 7410.

The 750 really changed what was considered fast at the time. You had the power sucking Pentium II on one side, and then the very low power PPC750 on the other. It was leaps and bounds faster than the 603E's it replaced (tiny bit faster than the 604e's), and was the first chip to really let a laptop perform well and still get good battery life.

I like the 7410 because it was also low power (7-12W), but also had great performance and over clocked decently.

If I had to choose one from the x86 side of things, it would be the Athlon 64. Its what really spurred Intel into upping there game, which is why we have the fast, low power chips we have today (from Intel).

 

[IndianScout]

my QX9770, it still gives my sandy a run for its money..

gaming wise there is hardly any difference in the 2.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Dual PIII/733 on an OR840 board w/ 1GB of RDRAM. Gave my XP2400 a run for its money. (That damn chip never took a happy overclock, even with an MCX462 and an 80mm Tornado. Ran @ 200MHz FSB with no hiccoughs though, and lasted a solid 5 years, almost as long as I've had my Q6600.)

Those three would be my top 3 anyways.

 

[Centauri]

The PowerPC 7410.

 

[Rvenger]

1. VIA C3 700mhz chip on a socket 370. Didn't even need an HSF it ran so cool!
2. Athlon XP Barton 2500+
3. Opteron 146 @ 2.8ghz
4. Opteron 144 @ 2.7ghz
5. i5-2500k

2600k didn't make the list because performance/$ just wasn't there.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Yeah, that box cost me a lot of $$$ back in the day. It is excellent for old games (up to Battlefield 1942) and web browsing (Firefox 8). Paired with a RAM drive, it is a pleasure to use. Boots up XP SP3 in less than 10 seconds, partly compensates for the lack of proper sleep mode... I do have a few modern systems nearby, this I love the most though, probably due to the amount of work I have put in to it over the years.


They cost close to nothing these days, why not? If you use appropriate software, I don't see a problem. I am sure, electrical bills for these systems are least of their worries, unless they run mammoth CRT screens too.


Power management was little but most equipment (pre P4) was fairly low power to begin with. The abundance of smaller (louder) fans in old systems could wrongly alarm of a sleeping beast under the hood.

I had a Hitachi drive that meowed every now and then... my friends kept looking for a cat. In response to my e-mail, Hitachi decided to send me a firmware update (they shipped a CD, in fact) that silenced it. Technical support *was* actually useful.

I'd keep that stick around. Some systems allowed up to 1.5gb of ram, you never know what you encounter next. Or you can make a keychain with it :biggrin:

Look's like you got chrysler or plymouth the key on the far right in your hand

Am i right?