CPU hall of fame (sister-thread to the GPU one of same name in VC&G)

[greenhawk]

1. 2500K
2. 2500K
3. 2500K
4. Q9550
5. I7 920

another "someone has not been around long" topic?

1) celeron a
(99.5% could over clock 50% without voltage and still use the stock cooler)
(second point, worked in dual cpu setups with suitable motherboards )
2) Q6600
(came in at $300 locally when all other quad (two dual cores was $700+ or needed to spend $1000+ for a server board/server cpus)
3) Pentium 166MMX
(one of the first that allowed solid FSB overclocking. speed boost from 66Mhz to 75Mhz (100% sucuss as I can recall) was impressive
4) AMD Athlon 3800 x2
of the the first and cheapest dual core cpus that did not behave like a room heater (p4's) and actually performed well
5) e6400
(or there abouts anyway. Supper increase in performance over the previous cpus, though I skipped that generation personall)


soon)2500K
too new for a proper hall of fame, but popular enough to carry through in a few years time I suspect



note, with the Q6600 being before the Q9550, it definitly takes the Q9550 off the top 5
i7-920 left out as while it was a good step forwards, it was more intel marketing arrangement holding back the s1156 cpus more IIRC which made it such a stand out cpu.

 

[greenhawk]

My AMD 3500+ raped on Intel Pentium 4.

everything raped P4's.

Heck, until they got the P4's over 1.8Ghz or so, P3-1Ghz was a better chip.

 

[greenhawk]

Barton 2500+

would have been for me if I could have afforded that lovely chip with it's 333Mhz FSB that would go to 400Mhz without issue. It was after Uni when I was dirt poor.

Down side I was still stuck on my dual Celeron 400a's so single threaded performance from about that time sucked in responciveness.

 

[greenhawk]

Intel i486DX2 - 66MHz - reigned for years until the introduction of the Pentium processor.

Had a lot of things going for it. One of the ealier cpus that started using a clock speed that was faster than the FSB, brought the maths co-processor onto the chip, and was affordable* (vs the 486 DX4-100 which was it's bigger brother with 3x33Mhz).

Good chip, I still remember having a case that adjusted the clock speed at a press of a button (for those that do not remember, code was written to wait by counting to a large number, when done in a fast cpu/cache setup, a few seconds turns into factions of a second)

*high school, saved pocket money for that 486 dx2/66 with 8(?)MB ram and a 420MB HDD, cost $3000 locally (&*%$ 20%+ "computer" tax of the time). early 90's or about then.

 

[greenhawk]

Was faster than the fastest Pentium Pro in nearly all Windows 95 programs and cost a third the price!

The Pentium Pro was a bit of a ugly duckling in my view.

It had the specs to be good, it had the performance to be excellent in 32bit code, but most code of the time was 16bit, and it was soooo crap at it in comparison that for a home user, it was not worth looking at (if they could afford it). Though I friend who did have one (work perk) took his 166Mhz to 233Mhz and beyond )

 

[Sephire]

1. Celeron 300A - My first overclock. Lasted me 2 years.

2. Q6600 - the 1st chip I have that reached 3 Ghz without watercooling. Just set it in the BIOS and your done.

 

[Idontcare]

everything raped P4's.

Heck, until they got the P4's over 1.8Ghz or so, P3-1Ghz was a better chip.

LOL, heck for that matter even P4's raped on P4's (Northwood raped on Prescott and Willamette) I guess that would make it incest too, maybe?

 

[tynopik]

more love for the 486DX2-66

 

[exar333]

LOL, heck for that matter even P4's raped on P4's (Northwood raped on Prescott and Willamette) I guess that would make it incest too, maybe?

LOL

Those Tualatins could go from 1.1 or 1.2 to 1.5-1.7 without a lot of trouble. They spanked a P4 until really the 2.8C was available.

 

[2is]

Celeron 300a
Athlon Thunderbird 1GHz (for beating Intel to the 1GHz mark)
s939 Athlon X2 4400+ (for besting P4/P4D in general usage AND content creation)
Q6600

 

[greenhawk]

They spanked a P4 until really the 2.8C was available.

Nearly wants a "worst CPU" list of all time given these "best off".

though in that list, the original cacheless celeron would be #1. P4 #2 and probably the 1.4Ghz AMD Athlon (ran so hot only the P4's were hotter I would think, but the P4's did not crash from the heat).

 

[DominionSeraph]

1. 2500K
2. 2500K
3. 2500K

LOL no. The i5 2500k is just the CPU you pick up going from a $700 gaming PC to a $1000+ one. For professional use you want an i7, and an i3/G850 are great on the low to mid end. The 2500k is very niche -- just a dump of $100 over an i3 to slightly better justify a >$300 GPU.

The 300A, OTOH, displaced EVERYTHING on the desktop space. There was no, "If you're on a budget get a Pentium 200," or, "If you have $300 more to spend, get the PII 400;" and the overclock to 450MHz actually mattered. The i5's? Congratulations, you can get 1000FPS rather than 650FPS at 640x360. I'm sure your TN panel will get right on displaying that.

 

[hans007]

i'd also like to nominate the amd 386 DX -40.

it was for a time the fastest thing you could get since intel didn't make a 40mhz 386. and it was also very competitive price and performance wise with lower end 486 chips like the 486SX-20

 

[Smoblikat]

LOL no. The i5 2500k is just the CPU you pick up going from a $700 gaming PC to a $1000+ one. For professional use you want an i7, and an i3/G850 are great on the low to mid end. The 2500k is very niche -- just a dump of $100 over an i3 to slightly better justify a >$300 GPU.

The 300A, OTOH, displaced EVERYTHING on the desktop space. There was no, "If you're on a budget get a Pentium 200," or, "If you have $300 more to spend, get the PII 400;" and the overclock to 450MHz actually mattered. The i5's? Congratulations, you can get 1000FPS rather than 650FPS at 640x360. I'm sure your TN panel will get right on displaying that.

I disagree, i believe the 2500K should be on at least the top 3 list, a 200$ beats out the previous gen 1100$ chip and brings an entirely new level or performance for a wicked low price.

 

[Piano Man]

486DX2
AMD Athlon Classic mostly because they took the perf crown with this.
AMD T-Bred
Intel Celeron 300A
Intel C2D
Intel Nehalem
Intel SB (maybe too soon to call)

 

[DominionSeraph]

I disagree, i believe the 2500K should be on at least the top 3 list, a 200$ beats out the previous gen 1100$ chip and brings an entirely new level or performance for a wicked low price.

The thing is that we might as well throw in the 955, 960T, various X6's, the i5 750/760, the 2600k, i5 3570k, and i7 3770k at that.
The i5 2500k just hits a niche in which there's no point in a gamer going over because games don't take advantage of 6 cores or hyperthreading. Being that most self-builds are by enthusiast gamers the 2500k is going to be well represented there. But it's not really a huge stand out in the overall field. There certainly is no, "Sacrifice EVERYTHING to get a 2500k." A budget build is going to drop down to an i3 with no problem and a professional is going to go i7 without overspending. The i5 2500k is just one segment of the spectrum. That the 980X was extremely expensive and its 12 threads were not fully utilized by games does not make the 2500k the supreme CPU, it just meant the 980X was a poor choice for budget gaming.

There's nothing earth-shattering about the 2500k compared to an overclocked Bloomfield or Lynnfield and it slots in with the 2600k. If the 2500k is a hall of fame CPU then every CPU that is ungimped at its price point belongs in the HoF.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

i7 920

 

[Plimogz]

Are you honestly doing this again? If your 3500+ could do even a 50% overclock (2.2 -> 3.3), I'll eat my shoes and underwear. And that's only one 3500, let alone the thousands of others. Most 939s had trouble getting to 3GHz stable, and if you did get there it was probably with an Opty.

Face it, most of us on this forum buy a chip with the intention of overclocking it. The 300A excelled in that department... hence its nomination for the CPU HoF.

not saying that it was on par with a 300A, but my Venice core 3000+ netted me a healthy 50% OC (1800MHz-->2.7GHz). Those 939 chips really were very sweet, your appetite for underwear not withstanding...

 

[chubbyfatazn]

not saying that it was on par with a 300A, but my Venice core 3000+ netted me a healthy 50% OC (1800MHz-->2.7GHz). Those 939 chips really were very sweet, your appetite for underwear not withstanding...

I love the taste of underwear. You jelly? :awe:

Yeah, I went from 1.8 to 2.8 with my Opty 165. Good times. Ignoring the 130nm parts, I don't remember too many of the Venices being great overclockers. Generally if you wanted to overclock high you stuck with the E6 San Diegos (= single-core Opty) or the Denmarks/Toledos.

I miss the good old AMD days

 

[pantsaregood]

K8, as a whole, belongs in this thread.

K8 has existed relatively unchanged from 2003 until present. The upgrade from K8 to K10 did little more than add SSE4A, L3 cache, and independent memory controller frequency. Everyone recalls how Conroe supposedly destroyed AMD, but it tends to be exaggerated - Athlon 64 X2 was a far better competitor for Core 2 Duo than Pentium D was for Athlon 64 X2. This same architecture eventually went on to produce Phenom II, which is close to dead-even with Penryn.

K8 is actually highly derivative of K7, which was introduced in 1999. K8 featured an onboard memory controller and the AMD64 instruction set.

K8 is notable for being the top performer from 2003-2006. K7 deserves hall of fame status because the basic design of the CPU has been in use since 1999.

and then bulldozer happened

 

[2is]

K8 is like Brett Favre... A legend in its time but stuck around too long for its own good.

 

[Plimogz]

I love the taste of underwear. You jelly? :awe:

Yeah, I went from 1.8 to 2.8 with my Opty 165. Good times. Ignoring the 130nm parts, I don't remember too many of the Venices being great overclockers. Generally if you wanted to overclock high you stuck with the E6 San Diegos (= single-core Opty) or the Denmarks/Toledos.

I miss the good old AMD days

i would think that munching on the soiled variety takes rather a special kind...

But more seriously, I vaguely remember the San Diegos being a tad expensive at the time... it would be interesting to look at a cost/performance comparison nowadays, with 200$ 2500K making all of these look ludicrously aged and obsolete. I actually spent 500$ on a 170 Denmark back then, and although it was a great chip (first x2 core; both on-die) it wouldn't get me past 2.8 -- until I decapitated a couple of resistors removing the IHS. After that it couldn't go above 2.6...

In any case, AMD looks to be getting their act together with Piledriver and Kaveri -- that shared memory bandwidth deal especially sounds promising. Now if only ATi could work out how to share memory between GPUs on-board...

 

[chubbyfatazn]

i would think that munching on the soiled variety takes rather a special kind...

But more seriously, I vaguely remember the San Diegos being a tad expensive at the time... it would be interesting to look at a cost/performance comparison nowadays, with 200$ 2500K making all of these look ludicrously aged and obsolete. I actually spent 500$ on a 170 Denmark back then, and although it was a great chip (first x2 core; both on-die) it wouldn't get me past 2.8 -- until I decapitated a couple of resistors removing the IHS. After that it couldn't go above 2.6...

In any case, AMD looks to be getting their act together with Piledriver and Kaveri -- that shared memory bandwidth deal especially sounds promising. Now if only ATi could work out how to share memory between GPUs on-board...

Like a fine wine, the taste of underwear improves the longer it's allowed to ferment.

They had more L2 cache. 1MB versus 512KB, basically a halved Opty. I remember my 3700+ being $230 plus a free ECS mobo. That was when they were about $260 on NE. A year and a half later (and a switch to a DFI mobo) I picked up a 165 at Fry's for $205. About $20 more than NE, but I got to handpick the stepping. I had heat issues so I couldn't take it past 2.8, 1.44v, but I feel I could've had a shot at 3.0.

I'd love for AMD to get their crap sorted out. I won't say anything until PD actually comes out, though (BD? lol). Anyway, I put in a nomination for the Opty 165.

 

[borisvodofsky]

Like a fine wine, the taste of underwear improves the longer it's allowed to ferment.

They had more L2 cache. 1MB versus 512KB, basically a halved Opty. I remember my 3700+ being $230 plus a free ECS mobo. That was when they were about $260 on NE. A year and a half later (and a switch to a DFI mobo) I picked up a 165 at Fry's for $205. About $20 more than NE, but I got to handpick the stepping. I had heat issues so I couldn't take it past 2.8, 1.44v, but I feel I could've had a shot at 3.0.

I'd love for AMD to get their crap sorted out. I won't say anything until PD actually comes out, though (BD? lol). Anyway, I put in a nomination for the Opty 165.

You can't just say get their crap sorted out. How easy do you think it is to design a processor? This is up there among the highest levels of human engineering.

It's almost silly that you'd throw your words around like that. :\

 

[Coydog]

Got to say the Celeron 300a as well.

These things were just OCing beasts, and the price was just cheap.