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What is your favorite CPU of all time...

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Last response: in CPUs
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What (in your opinion) of these 10 CPUs from various periods is your all time favorite/ you think is the best for what it did in it's time period...

Total: 50 votes (10 blank votes)

  • Intel 8086
  • 7 %
  • Any Acorn ARM or derived CPU
  • 0 %
  • PowerPC 601
  • 3 %
  • Intel 486DX2
  • 7 %
  • Intel Pentium Pro
  • 12 %
  • AMD Athlon 64
  • 27 %
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
  • 20 %
  • AMD Phenom II X4 805 - 980BE
  • 18 %
  • AMD A10
  • 3 %
  • Motorolla 6800
  • 7 %
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CPUs Expert

i had to vote amd athlon 64. back in the days when amd was showing intel just how its done. when intel thought pentium 4s were the way to go (oh god what a nightmare.)

athlons brought about the concept of higher ipcs being dominate over mhz and were very overclockable.

i yearn for days to be like the time of the reign of the athlon

of course my first real pc was a 80386 DX. which i didnt find out until a decade later was actually made by amd. ;) 
CPUs Master

I picked the Pentium Pro as it introduced a bunch of features not seen on previous x86 CPUs.

- First x86 CPU to have on-CPU L2 cache
- First x86 CPU to use out of order execution
- First x86 CPU to have more than two instruction pipelines
- First multi-chip module x86 CPU, and the only x86 CPU to have more than two chips in an MCM (1 MB L2 PPro)
- Introduced the i686 ISA which was the last major revision to the 32-bit x86 ISA
- First x86 CPU to be able to be run in more than a two-processor configuration
- Introduced the P6 microarchitecture which was used in every subsequent Intel CPU, excepting the Itanium, NetBurst products, and the Atom
- Only PGA x86 CPU that doesn't use a square socket and the only CPU I know of that has two different pin grid pitches in the same socket.
CPUs Authority

It is hard to state which is due to the changes through evolution.

Intel's PIII with MMX instruction set was a pretty good CPU, AMD K6 and K7 arches with the Athlon64 and X86-64 instruction set was revolutionary for its time. First Intel Core2 extremes and birth of extreme processors. i7 990X for a good two years dominated all x86 parts and then you have Sandy and Ivy. While it is to early to say how FX and A-Series will turn out notably APU's are fantastic works of micro engineering while we have to wait until Excavator to know the extent and successes of AMD's HSA approach which will potentially have the most drastic influence on computing yet.
CPUs Master

MU_Engineer said:
I picked the Pentium Pro as it introduced a bunch of features not seen on previous x86 CPUs.

- First x86 CPU to have on-CPU L2 cache
- First x86 CPU to use out of order execution
- First x86 CPU to have more than two instruction pipelines
- First multi-chip module x86 CPU, and the only x86 CPU to have more than two chips in an MCM (1 MB L2 PPro)
- Introduced the i686 ISA which was the last major revision to the 32-bit x86 ISA
- First x86 CPU to be able to be run in more than a two-processor configuration
- Introduced the P6 microarchitecture which was used in every subsequent Intel CPU, excepting the Itanium, NetBurst products, and the Atom
- Only PGA x86 CPU that doesn't use a square socket and the only CPU I know of that has two different pin grid pitches in the same socket.



And it helps that it was a powerful cpu for its time, taking on p2's that were clocked twice as high. I think the first P2 that ran faster than my PPro rig was a 450. I just remembered I was overclocked to a whopping 225. Wow! LOL
CPUs Master

Cazalan said:
Athlon 64 - When metallic pens and xacto blades could overclock and make cpus work on dual CPU boards.


That was the Athlon XP series, not the Athlon 64. The Athlon XPs used the same socket as the dual-CPU Athlon MPs and could be modified to be both SMP-capable and overclockable by filling in laser-cut traces on the CPU package. AMD locked multipliers in firmware for A64s and put desktop and server in different sockets.

If you are talking about great AMD CPU hacks, I think the "golden fingers" overclocking on Slot A CPUs and core/cache unlocking on Phenom IIs have to rank up there as well. I wonder if Bulldozer will have any similar things out there or if it will be like A64 and have none.

popatim said:
And it helps that it was a powerful cpu for its time, taking on p2's that were clocked twice as high. I think the first P2 that ran faster than my PPro rig was a 450. I just remembered I was overclocked to a whopping 225. Wow! LOL


The PPro was very fast due to that full-speed L2 cache. They were also ridiculously expensive too, although I seem to remember the 300 MHz Pentium II Klamath was some ridiculous sum like $2000 when it was introduced as well. Just curious, what kind of PPro machine did you have?
CPUs Authority

None of these really seemed like stand outs to me. Sure, they were all awesome for their time and beat the previous generation by a good bit. THat's what is supposed to happen. It would be easier to point out the failures, like P4 D and Bulldozer. The rest all just performed as expected.






CPUs Master

Athlon XP - Showed Intel that GHz wasn't every. IPC was the way to go. Cheaper than the Pentium 4 and generally performed better in games. The P4s were still better in some things though like video encoding and 3D rendering.

C2D E6600 - Beats AMD at their own game.
CPUs Expert

The 386, the 486 was just a 386 with a maths co processor built in...

remember when autocad machines had to have the maths co processor added...

Now that was a game changer - it was the first desktop 32bit processor from intel..

How long has 32 bit software lingered and they stopped making these for phones in 2006
CPUs Expert

the 486 was not just a 386 with a math co processor built into it.

the 386 dx was just a 386 with a math co processor built into it. the 486 was an entirely different beast.

edit:
Differences between the 386 and 486

* An 8 KB on-chip SRAM cache stores the most commonly used instructions and data (16 KB and/or write-back on some later models). The 386 had no such internal cache but supported a slower off-chip cache.
* Tightly coupled pipelining allows the 486 to complete a simple instruction like ALU reg,reg or ALU reg,im every clock cycle. The 386 needed two clock cycles for this.
* Integrated FPU (disabled or absent in SX models) with a dedicated local bus gives faster floating point calculations compared to the i386+i387 combination.
* Improved MMU performance.

The 486 has a 32-bit data bus and a 32-bit address bus. This required either four matched 30-pin (8-bit) SIMMs or one 72-pin (32-bit) SIMM on a typical PC motherboard. The 32-bit address bus means that 4 GB of memory can be directly addressed.

MU_Engineer said:
I picked the Pentium Pro as it introduced a bunch of features not seen on previous x86 CPUs.

- First x86 CPU to have on-CPU L2 cache
- First x86 CPU to use out of order execution
- First x86 CPU to have more than two instruction pipelines
- First multi-chip module x86 CPU, and the only x86 CPU to have more than two chips in an MCM (1 MB L2 PPro)
- Introduced the i686 ISA which was the last major revision to the 32-bit x86 ISA
- First x86 CPU to be able to be run in more than a two-processor configuration
- Introduced the P6 microarchitecture which was used in every subsequent Intel CPU, excepting the Itanium, NetBurst products, and the Atom
- Only PGA x86 CPU that doesn't use a square socket and the only CPU I know of that has two different pin grid pitches in the same socket.


Well, Nehalem came along and destroyed all that was left of P6 as it "was completely new".
RIP: P6 1995-2011
CPUs Master

The Q6660 Inside said:
Well, Nehalem came along and destroyed all that was left of P6 as it "was completely new".
RIP: P6 1995-2011


Nehalem's microarchitecture wasn't all that different from the Core 2. The floorplan and platform is really what changed. P6+ (Pentium M/original Core) -> Core (Core 2) was a much, much larger step than Core -> Nehalem.

Have a look at the block diagram for Core 2:



And then Nehalem:

CPUs Expert

pentium m 1.3ghz I had in r40 with 32mb ati 7500, very fast could play teagames lol, upgraded from t22 900mhz p3 which would run slideshow with 8mb integrated gpu on teagames, new shockwave games but pentium m would run it fast with shorter pipeline cpu then p4 and more cache then most p4's and by miles was the best performance per watt cpu back in those days. So there you have it and yes it had like 8-10 hour battery life and was thin, I had the 15" sxga 1400x1050 res one and got it for ridiculously cheap £250 with 2gb ram and 80gb hdd amazingly cheap back then, great bargain, was worth more £500+.

I think pentium m changed laptop computing forever for the better.
CPUs Master

I vote the original Durons they could verclock nearly 100% and at stock could nearly outperform Pentium 3s over twice the price after that my current Phenom x 2 550BE unlocked and at 3.7GHz around £60 3 years ago and still going strong.
CPUs Master

If we are creeping off topic and saying what our favorite CPU was rather than debating the CPU most important to computing, my current favorite is the pair of Xeon Sossamans in my HTPC. I like servers and I like unusual and somewhat oddball parts. Building an HTPC using two uncommon stopgap laptop chips in a dual-socket essentially mobile-on-server motherboard was too good to resist. The chips although slow, are plenty fast enough for what they need to do and run nearly silently. The machine also has an uptime of over a year and still counting, it's solid as a rock. I know that I could easily outperform it in pretty well any metric you could think of with a cheap Core i3 or AMD A4, but that wouldn't be nearly as cool now, would it? :D 
CPUs Authority

In terms of a revolutionary standpoint the A-Series parts are the integral step to massive changes in the computing landscape over the next couple years. I am refering less to the iGPU as a gaming part, but more so as a compute intensive juggernaugt with AMD's HSA dedication and more developers hoping onboard.

Already in pure HSA environments the A10 is roughly 4.5x faster than the 3770 in paralel computing. Anandtech ran a 3970X and 3770k vs HD7970 and HD6970 in pure compute performance, the 7970 is around 11x faster than Intel's fastest x86 efforts and GPU compute is getting stronger per generation so that differential will increase. HSA will have the most significant impact over driving x86 through the ground into rock bottom.

MU_Engineer said:
Nehalem's microarchitecture wasn't all that different from the Core 2. The floorplan and platform is really what changed. P6+ (Pentium M/original Core) -> Core (Core 2) was a much, much larger step than Core -> Nehalem.

Have a look at the block diagram for Core 2:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Intel_Core2_arch.svg

And then Nehalem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Intel_Nehalem_arch.svg


To be very honest I can see similarities but Core and Nehalem have some noticeable differences, mostly combining areas and doing away with the FSB.

Core (the architecture used in the Core 2s) is a update on P6.
If Nehalem as you say is practically a slightly tweaked Core 2 that also means SB, Ivy and Haswell (all build ups of Nehalem) are still deep down inside a very tweaked P6...
CPUs Master

The Q6660 Inside said:
To be very honest I can see similarities but Core and Nehalem have some noticeable differences, mostly combining areas and doing away with the FSB.

Core (the architecture used in the Core 2s) is a update on P6.
If Nehalem as you say is practically a slightly tweaked Core 2 that also means SB, Ivy and Haswell (all build ups of Nehalem) are still deep down inside a very tweaked P6...


And that's exactly what they are- very tweaked P6es. It isn't unusual to tweak an arch over a number of years if it works well. AMD kept tweaking the original K7 design all the way through Llano. K8 is to K7 as Nehalem is to Core, and Stars (K10) is to K8 as Sandy Bridge is to Nehalem. The only new CPU architectures from Intel and AMD since 2000 are NetBurst, Itanium, Bonnell (Atom), Bobcat, and Bulldozer. NetBurst was a bust. Itanium was a bust. Atom is pretty close to a bust. Bobcat is a decent low-power microarchitecture but it's not a high-performance design by any means. Bulldozer had a bunch of teething pains it appears to somewhat be getting over with Piledriver and likely will do well with Steamroller, but it wasn't clearly better than Stars at first.

MU_Engineer said:
And that's exactly what they are- very tweaked P6es. It isn't unusual to tweak an arch over a number of years if it works well. AMD kept tweaking the original K7 design all the way through Llano. K8 is to K7 as Nehalem is to Core, and Stars (K10) is to K8 as Sandy Bridge is to Nehalem. The only new CPU architectures from Intel and AMD since 2000 are NetBurst, Itanium, Bonnell (Atom), Bobcat, and Bulldozer. NetBurst was a bust. Itanium was a bust. Atom is pretty close to a bust. Bobcat is a decent low-power microarchitecture but it's not a high-performance design by any means. Bulldozer had a bunch of teething pains it appears to somewhat be getting over with Piledriver and likely will do well with Steamroller, but it wasn't clearly better than Stars at first.


Therefore P6 has truly stood the test of time. Today, with L3 Caches, HT, Quick Mem controllers and 14 Stage pipelines, it still soldiers on in almost all our PCs.
CPUs Authority

iceclock said:
im still sticking to dx486. gotta love when games like doom and wolfenstein 3d came out :D 


I played those on my Dad's overclocked 386 DX 40! Sweet Hercules graphics and 8MB of RAM, 16" Flat CRT, 14400 baud modem. He probably had $2500 into that "beast"

It was a lot of fun, I remember how amazing Myst looked, too, even if it was more of a navigated slideshow than a 3d game.

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