Worst CPUs ever, now with poll!

[DrMrLordX]

I'm surprised nobody is talking about the rare, recalled Pentium 3 1.13 ghz. I mentioned it in passing earlier in the thread. It was the last P3 to enter the market before the P4 came out (Tualatin was much later).

It was a huge black eye for Intel at the time. No matter how bad were the socket 423 P4a chips, that 1.13 ghz P3 just did not work, period. Intel could not sell them in that state, and they couldn't fix them in a reasonable time frame either, so they pulled the plug on the entire future P3 line until Tualatin.

 

[PPB]

For me its also the Itanium. I even remember a program issued in The History Channel when they started talking about how this new 64 bit ISA will be awesome and change the computing industry and they were talking about the Itanium release. Well, guess they were half right about those statements, as AMD64 proved to be the real breakthrough in computing :awe:

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I'm surprised nobody is talking about the rare, recalled Pentium 3 1.13 ghz. I mentioned it in passing earlier in the thread. It was the last P3 to enter the market before the P4 came out (Tualatin was much later).

It was a huge black eye for Intel at the time. No matter how bad were the socket 423 P4a chips, that 1.13 ghz P3 just did not work, period. Intel could not sell them in that state, and they couldn't fix them in a reasonable time frame either, so they pulled the plug on the entire future P3 line until Tualatin.

Oh, yes, the P3 "panic edition". To be fair it was just a factory OC gone bad, though of course that's no excuse to release a faulty product.

Tualatin, on the other hand, wasn't half bad. Just slightly crippled by the Socket 370 chipsets available.

 

[Lorne]

I am actually amazed no one brought up the Pentium Pro, But it was Intel's look back for design and creating Pentium M and Core 2 generation.

I believe it was Intel's open advertising that confused and pissed off so many buyers.
I had assembled so many P-Pro systems only to have them come back from disappointed buyers because old software incompatibility and after a month we had to start really confirming with buyers that the P-Pro was a server CPU and not best for home use, But the demand and returned continued.
After another month we stopped carrying it all together.

I thought nothing wrong with it otherwise.

 

[exar333]

I am actually amazed no one brought up the Pentium Pro, But it was Intel's look back for design and creating Pentium M and Core 2 generation.

I believe it was Intel's open advertising that confused and pissed off so many buyers.
I had assembled so many P-Pro systems only to have them come back from disappointed buyers because old software incompatibility and after a month we had to start really confirming with buyers that the P-Pro was a server CPU and not best for home use, But the demand and returned continued.
After another month we stopped carrying it all together.

I thought nothing wrong with it otherwise.

Maybe not the best marketing, but the P-Pro was one of the best CPUs Intel ever made. It was way ahead of it's time, relatively affordable and important elements of the design were migrated to later (and better) uarchs.

Great chip!!

Lot's of 'bad' CPUs are missing on this list....

 

[DrMrLordX]

Pentium Pro was awesome as a server chip, especially in 4P configuration. There were people who held on to their 4P Pentium Pro machines for a loooong time since the slot-based successor chips took awhile to get back to 4P configurations.

PPro with 1mb L2 was the bomb for awhile there. If you were running 32-bit software.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Pentium 4. Mostly because Intel kept trying to fix the damn thing for years. It was just a badly performing dog of an architecture. I also think Intel seemed to not even fully understand how bad it was, when you had them claiming it could reach 10 GHz. It showed a lack of understanding of their own CPU.

 

[tynopik]

Tualatin, on the other hand, wasn't half bad. Just slightly crippled by the Socket 370 chipsets available.

"wasn't half bad"? tualatin was awesome

 

[Insert_Nickname]

"wasn't half bad"? tualatin was awesome

No arguments there. A fantastic chip for its time.

 

[PBat51]

Anything made by Cyrix...

 

[Cerb]

I am actually amazed no one brought up the Pentium Pro, But it was Intel's look back for design and creating Pentium M and Core 2 generation.

I believe it was Intel's open advertising that confused and pissed off so many buyers.
I had assembled so many P-Pro systems only to have them come back from disappointed buyers because old software incompatibility and after a month we had to start really confirming with buyers that the P-Pro was a server CPU and not best for home use, But the demand and returned continued.
After another month we stopped carrying it all together.

I thought nothing wrong with it otherwise.

With NT or OS/2, the Pentium Pro was amazing, for the time. But, it indeed wasn't a good typical home user CPU. The OS it ran on was slowed down by it, so even applications compiled for IA32 protected mode got hobbled by all the Win9x code they relied on.

The Pentium Pro on DOS/Win9x can't hold a candle to Celerons without L2, or SDR P4s.

 

[skipsneeky2]

All of those chips are before my time,if i could throw something somewhat modern in i think the celeron chips on the 478 socket should honestly be on that list too.423 based pentium 4 should be on there too,what a failure of a socket.

Yeah i guess compared to you old timers,i'm 10 seconds away from a Xbox 360 type generation but i have toyed with some stinker chips too lol.

 

[Phynaz]

I am actually amazed no one brought up the Pentium Pro, But it was Intel's look back for design and creating Pentium M and Core 2 generation.

I believe it was Intel's open advertising that confused and pissed off so many buyers.
I had assembled so many P-Pro systems only to have them come back from disappointed buyers because old software incompatibility and after a month we had to start really confirming with buyers that the P-Pro was a server CPU and not best for home use, But the demand and returned continued.
After another month we stopped carrying it all together.

I thought nothing wrong with it otherwise.

Worse PC I've ever owned. Soooooo slooooooow.

 

[waltchan]

I always believe the AMD C-50 1.00 GHz is the worst CPU ever built in history, exceeding Pentium 4 and Pro by 3 times in my opinion. Anyone agree with me... It once flooded the budget 15" laptop market back in 2011 that experienced 80% return rate back to retailers.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+C-50

Because the C-50 was insanely too-slow to support Windows 7 64-bit (most laptop models only had 2GB RAM installed priced below $250), AMD was forced to release the revise C-60 with 300MHz turbo-boost in 3 months.

Another worst processor out there (still available for purchase today) is AMD E1-2100 1.00 GHz as well (but a tiny-bit faster than C-50, thankfully).

 

[waltchan]

The current Celeron in all the cheap laptops. As bad as all the above listed and still being put in machines!

Excluding Haswell Celeron 2955U, 2957U and 2980U, 2981U, right?

 

[waltchan]

While some users seem to agree that Pentium 4 may be the very worst, I truly beleve that AMD C-50 is even worse by 3 times the amount. Pentium 4 had moderate success back in the mid-00s, high-heat and failure in CPUs were normal back then, and single-thread score was pretty decent too. On the contrary, AMD C-50, released in 2011, was a total failure at start that couldn't handle and work with Windows 7 64-bit at all, and it's the only AMD APU that stutters in video every 5 seconds gap. Plus, most C-50 laptop models only had 2GB 1066 memory RAM inside, which was another doom failure.

 

[Shivansps]

If you belive C-50 is the worst i dont want to know what you think of the C-30... or the 2013 version of the C-50, the A4-1200.

 

[skipsneeky2]

A 2002 based Athlon xp 2300+ scores nearly the same as a c-50.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

A 2002 based Athlon xp 2300+ scores nearly the same as a c-50.

Because a lot of the time, people use single threaded software, the 2002 processor (single core), would be about twice as fast, in practice, compared to the C-50 (dual core). Or about the same speed, for multi-threaded software.

It's crazy that the 2002 cpu can be double the speed (single thread estimated speed), of the modern one.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Because a lot of the time, people use single threaded software, the 2002 processor (single core), would be about twice as fast, in practice, compared to the C-50 (dual core). Or about the same speed, for multi-threaded software.

It's crazy that the 2002 cpu can be double the speed (single thread estimated speed), of the modern one.

When you word it like that,i wonder why this stinker of a cpu isn't on the poll list.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

A 2002 based Athlon xp 2300+ scores nearly the same as a c-50.

9w vs 62w

Because a lot of the time, people use single threaded software, the 2002 processor (single core), would be about twice as fast, in practice, compared to the C-50 (dual core). Or about the same speed, for multi-threaded software.

It's crazy that the 2002 cpu can be double the speed (single thread estimated speed), of the modern one.

8 years later, 6.8 less times power consumption (C-50 takes only 14% of the power of the athlon), sold for pennies compared to the Athlon, Dual-Core responsiveness, and is an APU with graphics onboard for many video accelerated tasks.

Use Chrome or any modern browser on both. The C-50 will smoke the Athlon.

 

[DrMrLordX]

It's crazy that the 2002 cpu can be double the speed (single thread estimated speed), of the modern one.

It is until you look at the TDP. The anemic C-50 was a 9W TDP CPU.

It's funny, lots of people will give a nod to AMD for doing a decent-to-good job of getting Brazos into an unfilled market niche when they were going downhill elsewhere.

 

[waltchan]

If you belive C-50 is the worst i dont want to know what you think of the C-30... or the 2013 version of the C-50, the A4-1200.

C-30 is a 1.2 GHz solo-core, even worse than C-50 and A4-1200, but not many were produced to establish any reviews. C-50 was the most-popular, but single-thread was dreadful and worse than C-30.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+C-30

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+C-50

It's just me, but I'll rate C-50 worse than C-30 by specification, because it loses 20% (200MHz) of single-thread speed, which is a lot. But some people may like the C-50 since it uses a Radeon HD-6250 GPU built-in.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6250.40958.0.html

But overall, satisfaction rate on C-50 is very poor. People are mad and there are just way too many used C-50 laptops on eBay priced at $99.99 shipped or less.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

9w vs 62w



8 years later, 6.8 less times power consumption (C-50 takes only 14% of the power of the athlon), sold for pennies compared to the Athlon, Dual-Core responsiveness, and is an APU with graphics onboard for many video accelerated tasks.

Use Chrome or any modern browser on both. The C-50 will smoke the Athlon.

That is a good point. Significantly lower power consumption cpus, can have lower clock frequencies, which slows them down.

On the other hand, I was mainly trying to illustrate, how SLOW, its (C-50) performance was, even compared to relatively ancient technology, which has been mostly abandoned, these days.

In all fairness to the 2002 vintage AMD (made on an ancient, power guzzling 130nm process node). They offered a mobile version (at about that time period), which was something like 70% of the speed, and only used about 25W (I think, depending on exactly which chip, we are talking about).

 

[Maximilian]

Never used a C50 but it sounds really really terrible

Anyone know how it compares to core 2 duo? Ive used a 1.2ghz SU2100 which was C2D and that was kinda sluggish but tolerable most of the time.