Your favorite CPUs?

[Pneumothorax]

E6600-blew away everything when it came out. As Anand put it "The Empire Strikes Back". It wasn't until the 2600k that I experienced a big jump. My first overclock also comes to mind: a 386sx-16 that I overclocked to a whopping 25 MHz. Had to swap out the 32 MHz crystal for a 50mhz one. You youngins got it TOO easy these days lol.

 

[Sable]

No mention of the i5 2500k?

The best value/performance processor possibly ever?

Poss poss my favourite CPU yet. overclocked easily to 4.7ghz @ 1.37v.

Next favourite is the Pentium 83mhz overdrive for total rarity value. Let me play Magic Carpet and Terminal Velocity with the Pentium only options turned on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_OverDrive

 

[Smoblikat]

Intel PDC E5200 wolfdale. I had a golden chip, that bad boy did 3.9 @ 1.325v on a slim cooler.

The 2500K is clearly the best price/performance/everything processor ever, but nothing beats my first CPU.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

My little history started with the P4 423 socket, then moved to a few 478 socket P4s and I tapped it out with the 3.06 HT North-wood, that used Rambus RAM. I then jumped on the 939 system machines. I had a few Opterons and an FX-60 I think that chip was around 600$ Sold it a few yrs later for 300+ dollars off eBay. Then it was off to 2 Q9650s and a Q9550. I sold the one Q9650 feeling that it wasn't a good over-clocker and bought a Q9550. My mistake was that I didn't buy a Gigabyte UD3R first. The Gigabyte UD3R & UD3P boards made those chips come to life at an amazing price! I bought another Q9650 and left it at stock my entire use with it then I handed it off to my older brother. That machine is still a Beast. So far I'm still working these i7 920's and the game rig still has alot of life left in it

 

[Rvenger]

Barton 2500+... was fast and overclocked like crazy until the heatsink snapped off. Called AMD and told them the heatsink fell off the CPU and they sent me a good will replacement of a 2800+

 

[Magic Carpet]

Let me play Magic Carpet and Terminal Velocity with the Pentium only options turned on.

Pentium 1 only exclusive options? Those were great games, by the way.

 

[borisvodofsky]

Intel PDC E5200 wolfdale. I had a golden chip, that bad boy did 3.9 @ 1.325v on a slim cooler.

The 2500K is clearly the best price/performance/everything processor ever, but nothing beats my first CPU.

At your current overclock, you are really really missing out on that "best performance" ever m0re volts

 

[borisvodofsky]

E6600-blew away everything when it came out. As Anand put it "The Empire Strikes Back". It wasn't until the 2600k that I experienced a big jump. My first overclock also comes to mind: a 386sx-16 that I overclocked to a whopping 25 MHz. Had to swap out the 32 MHz crystal for a 50mhz one. You youngins got it TOO easy these days lol.

I overclocked my Dreamcast the same way. second best console ever made.

First is Neo-geo.

 

[moonbogg]

AMD Athlon 64 FX-57. That bad boy played Far Cry at 80fps with two Geforce 7800GTX cards.

Core i7 2600K. This was the most massive jump in performance I have ever taken. I came from an E8400 with 2x GTX260's and couldnt run BFBC2 worth a damn. Got the 2600K with 2X GTX 570's and I remember the first instant playing the game with the new rig and it blasted it at 130FPS at that moment.

 

[Stoneburner]

Opteron 165 "Denmark" 1.8Ghz @ 2.7Ghz = save money and laugh at noob FX users!

That was my best upgrade evar. I only got 2.6 though...

 

[Shamrock]

Amd k6-3 450

 

[MrTeal]

Celery 300A, my first real O/Cing chip.
P4C 2.4GHz was a great overlocker.
Barton 2500+, lasted me years through school when I couldn't afford to replace it.
E2140, easy 5 minute 100% OC on air from a $75 chip.
2500k, the price for this almost top end chip is insane.

 

[InverseOfNeo]

P3S 1.26GHz (Tualatin)... had a dual CPU setup... ran windows for 6 months (before every GD update required a reboot). I also had a p4 2.56GHz machine at the same time but still preferred the Tualatin setup.

Now, I'm loving my i7 920.

 

[jumpncrash]

I'm gonna go for my barton 2500+

Runners up would probably be my k6-2 500, just because, and my dual P2 400 system that I'm still using as a pfsense box

 

[cppguru]

I had a Pentium III 800 Mhz. And eventually came the time when I really wanted an Athlon 64 FX baddly but couldn't afford it. If you asked me a few years ago I would have picked the Athlon 64 but now I would say the Core 2 Conroe is my absolute favourite. It's my favourite because of it's efficient design and was the first to implement shared L2 cache.:thumbsup:

 

[borisvodofsky]

Agh.. posting in this thread has made me realize that I'm getting really old. and that I haven't really grown up.:'( <--- I'm still using these damn emoticons for god sake.

When I got my fx55 clawhammer back in the day, I was all like
When Conroe came out I was all like, :'(

Then recently when I got my 4.8ghz 2500k I was all like :sneaky:

Bought new ram 2 days ago, put it in, felt no difference in speed, I was all like :\

Rue the day when I'll be able to talk about my emotions with words. LOLOLOL

 

[Magic Carpet]

Machines should work; people should think. Thought and emotion don't mix well, Boris

 

[alkemyst]

http://www.30moons.com/pc_chiapet.php

scroll down to Upgrade History for some nostalgia.

prior to this I ran (in order):

http://www.30moons.com/pc_xibm80.php

http://www.30moons.com/pc_xibm95.php

http://www.30moons.com/pc_P133.php

 

[Phishy714]

2500k

Its about 2-3 years old and AMD has absolutely nothing that comes ANYWHERE near close to its performance.

 

[Sable]

Pentium 1 only exclusive options? Those were great games, by the way.

http://www.3drealms.com/tv/

CD-ROM ENHANCEMENTS
70+ Megs of 3D rendered, full-motion, eye-candy cinematics.
Special Pentium mode to improve textured graphics.
BONUS PLANET! Discover the secret planet!
FREE! Several cool shareware games included.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Carpet_(video_game)
It was also the first game to be advertised as being optimized for the new Intel Pentium; the "Intel Inside" Pentium logo was shown if the game detected such a processor.

MASSIVE upgrade from the 486SX 33. Socket 3 ftw.

 

[2is]

2500k

Its about 2-3 years old and AMD has absolutely nothing that comes ANYWHERE near close to its performance.

If by 2-3 years you mean 1.5 years :\

 

[Magic Carpet]

http://www.3drealms.com/tv/

CD-ROM ENHANCEMENTS
70+ Megs of 3D rendered, full-motion, eye-candy cinematics.
Special Pentium mode to improve textured graphics.
BONUS PLANET! Discover the secret planet!
FREE! Several cool shareware games included.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Carpet_(video_game)
It was also the first game to be advertised as being optimized for the new Intel Pentium; the "Intel Inside" Pentium logo was shown if the game detected such a processor.

MASSIVE upgrade from the 486SX 33. Socket 3 ftw.

Well yeah... I enjoyed those games, even though, can't say the were exactly flying on my Pentium 133 Mhz back then.

 

[Matt1970]

I had a 2.8ghz northwood that did 4.2ghz on the same xp120 I used later for the opteron 185.

It destroyed all the hot prescotts that were coming out at the time.

Eww you had a good one. I had the 2.4c and it would do 3.3 just fine but was unstable above that.

 

[Smoblikat]

pentium dual core E5200

 

[sefsefsefsef]

Socket 754 AMD Athlon64 3700+ (2.4GHz, 1MB L2 cache).