Question GREATEST CPU OF ALL TIME (DESKTOP)

[fastandfurious6]

best longevity, price-perf ratio, bang4buck, overclockability etc

no budget/extreme models

current era undisputable king of CPUs is the 5800X3D

strongest dinosaur still holding up is i7 sandy/ivy bridge (~14 yr old CPUs)

 

[Thunder 57]

Ivy Bridge. Sandy Bridge perfected. No chipset bugs. Z series available at launch. Native USB3/PCIe 3.

I think Zen 3 might have a chance to meet that.

 

[Eug]

6502

 

[Sable]

Clearly Sandy. Still running my 2500k, still overclocked to 4.5ghz. I've been planning a 7800x3D build for a while but I just can't pull the trigger as I don't game much any more.

 

[CakeMonster]

Sandy Bridge is overrated. Sure it held up OK, but so many people would brag about still being on it almost 10 years later while benchmarks would tell them their games were greatly held back by CPU limitations. Ivy (PCIE3), Haswell (AVX2) also brought major improvements that helped with longevity that the SB holdouts tend to ignore. Lots of evolution happened almost on a yearly basis after SB, despite the 4c/8t stagnation, yet the SB fanbois would feel superior for almost a decade and use every chance to tell the rest of us. My point is just, SB was not as special as its fan club would have you think, and the users and fans of the other generations are not nearly as loud.

 

[moinmoin]

Zilog Z80

 

[poke01]

None of these. It’s actually Haswell

 

[NTMBK]

Bulldozer, for the sheer amount of memes and forum arguments it started

 

[Eug]

6502

Zilog Z80

Z80 is a very good thought, but I think 6502 still wins, considering the 6502 drove the home computer revolution, and despite being almost 50 years old is still being manufactured. None of the Intel and AMD chips mentioned here are even in the same league IMO.

Interestingly, MS sold a couple of Z80 adapters for the Apple II lines. They sold very well, but depended upon the Apple II series’ existence to drive sales.

PS. This guy runs off a 6502:



EDIT:

Hmm… Apparently he runs off two CPUs.





^^^ I ran an Athlon II X3 435 for a very long time, and then upgraded the same machine with a drop in Phenom II X6 1100T. That would have been in my top 3 CPU upgrades of all time. My other two were a Celeron 366 upgraded to a Celeron 800 then a Pentium III Tualatin 1.4 GHz using a Slot-T adapter on the legendary Asus P2B 440BX motherboard, and an Apple Cube G4 7400 450 MHz upgraded with a Sonnet G4 7445 1.7 GHz board.

 

[GTracing]

Hot take, but the idea of a greatest CPU of all time is an oxymoron. CPUs are continually improving at a rapid pace. Every CPU will be surpassed sooner or later.

Furthermore, how good a CPU looks for can depend on a lot of things outside of the CPU itself. Sandy Bridge would not be remembered nearly so well if it wasn't followed by the worst period of stagnation in Intel's history. The 5800X3D would not be nearly as impressive if a competitor made their own big-cache CPU.

 

[cebri1]

486

 

[In2Photos]

I have an i7-920 that I was gaming on up to a little over a year ago. Still runs folding at home 24/7. Only a modest 3.6 GHz overclock, but still rather impressive.

 

[Eug]

I have an i7-920 that I was gaming on up to a little over a year ago. Still runs folding at home 24/7. Only a modest 3.6 GHz overclock, but still rather impressive.

I still have an iMac i7-870 in use in this house. Fine for surfing.

Apparently the i7-870 scores about 550/1825 in Geekbench 6.

 

[SamMaster]

I remember as well the socket A era CPUs. It had similar span of CPU and chipset variety. It also had the CPU that beat Intel to the GHz punch without any crippling bug. Does Thunderbird qualify to be on the list perhaps?

Edit: forgot to add it also competed against two or more generations of Intel CPU as well.

 

[coercitiv]

None of these. It’s actually Haswell

Mildest CPU of all time. Everything was good, nothing was spectacular with the exception of idle power consumption in laptops.

 

[Thunder 57]

I thought for sure the Bulldozer vote was Nostra.

 

[WelshBloke]

For home users?
5800x3d is probably king of anything in the modern era.
I still think fondly about my Q6600 C2D, that thing could overclock like a champ. You were pretty much guaranteed to get a 25% overclock with them.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Celeron 300A

 

[Eug]

Celeron 300A

Ah yes. 100 MHz FSB for 450 MHz.

 

[Markfw]

Actually, there are many, and I can't decide which one is better, all being from different times. Several in the 90s and early 2000's. Then the Athlon X2, then conroe, than in 2017, the Ryzen batch. Each was a big jump for the day. I am not going to vote.

 

[digitaldreamer]

Intel 4004 in desktop calculator.

 

[alcoholbob]

For home users?
5800x3d is probably king of anything in the modern era.
I still think fondly about my Q6600 C2D, that thing could overclock like a champ. You were pretty much guaranteed to get a 25% overclock with them.

Maybe if you only play games...doing anything else CPU intensive on the desktop it would be quite a liability compared to a higher core count CPU.

 

[gdansk]

If there ever is a greatest CPU of all time human ingenuity has stalled.
But I reinterpret it as outstanding CPUs of their time: Conroe or Zen 3D. LGA775 and AM4 are both legendary, in my opinion.

Honorary mention to the MIPS R4000. It really got around in the early 90s.

 

[WelshBloke]

Maybe if you only play games...doing anything else CPU intensive on the desktop it would be quite a liability compared to a higher core count CPU.

I doubt many home users utilise 16 threads fully tbh. Most people are browsing the web, streaming videos or playing games.

 

[kschendel]

One more vote for the 6502. If limited to the poll selection, the initial Sandy Bridge series.

I have a soft spot for the 80386 as well, as the first x86 with rational memory management.