Name your favorite desktop x86 cpus

[Justinbaileyman]

My favorite was the Athlon 2500+ on socket 754 cause I modded it to run as a 3200+ and overclocked it even more.I thought that was the greatest thing since sliced bread. But going from a dual core 3800+ 939 later on to a core2quad Q6600 was just awesome.Then I found the Q9650 and thought that was very cool as you could run them at 4.5Ghz which was so huge back in the day.So I think Q9650 at 4.5GHz is my all time favorite right now as I dont really see a huge difference from this cpu to todays cpu's for just everyday tasks even though I no longer have it.I bounce around from PC to PC and upgrade like most people change there socks.I dont know what the hell is wrong with me or if this is normal but it makes me happy LOL..

 

[Fred B]

The Pentium 3 is a very good cpu and the E8400 looks like a p3 with high clocks and dual core . thats my favorites .

 

[Gikaseixas]

Pentium Pro
Pentium III 450Mhz
XP 2500+
Athlon A64 3200
E6600
Phenom II 940
Q9550
i7 2600K
FX 8350
i7 4770K

 

[Burpo]

No doubt the 8086.. my first home computer the Magnavox Headstart Explorer, and then the Headstart II (which came without HDD by mistake). They sent me an MFM/RLL controller card & 30mb Miniscribe hard drive to install myself, and I was off & running. Once I found out it was all modular, it didn't take me long to figure out I could get an EGA video card & play games w/16 colors! Then I built my 1st PC, a 286 @12mhz, then 386, 486, etc. It's been a long journey, but it started with an 8086 Intel

 

[ArisVer]

AMD 386DX40
AMD Duron 700

 

[pm]

AMD 5x86-133 - I overclocked this 200MHz and felt like king of the world... briefly... and then I got a job with Intel working on the Pentium microprocessor and never told anyone at work that my main computer had an overclocked AMD CPU in it.

Celeron 300A @450MHz - this was such a beautiful overclock... I had it for years and it never gave me any trouble.

My current Haswell Core i7-4770K (@4.5GHz) that I delidded.

 

[Jovec]

Already mentioned, but the Celeron 300A, which was faster than Intel's consumer flagship at that time when OC'ed due to the full speed cache compared to the half-speed L2 (though 2x larger) on the Pro lines.

Some 500MHz celeron (based on the P3 IIRC) that Asus had a modded motherboard for to allow the CPU to be used in dual-sockets. This was the first "1GHz" CPU setup available for consumers and the first dual-core exposure for many.

The 1090t was a beast. Still close enough in IPC to be relevant, but 6 real cores!

 

[evident]

Bay Trail

kill it with fire.

 

[zir_blazer]

Looks like this is a good place for this.

 

[ElFenix]

OP's post is full of fail for not having the pentium pro

Already mentioned, but the Celeron 300A, which was faster than Intel's consumer flagship at that time when OC'ed due to the full speed cache compared to the half-speed L2 (though 2x larger) on the Pro lines.

Some 500MHz celeron (based on the P3 IIRC) that Asus had a modded motherboard for to allow the CPU to be used in dual-sockets. This was the first "1GHz" CPU setup available for consumers and the first dual-core exposure for many.

The 1090t was a beast. Still close enough in IPC to be relevant, but 6 real cores!

abit BP6 bro

 

[SPBHM]

the Athlon XP era was probably the most exciting for me, I had some good fun with the 1700+ (same core as the 2800+), it's like the 300A but a few years later, 50%+ OC easy to achieve, and performance comparable to high end chips, for a very low price...

 

[repoman0]

1. Opteron 165: The enthusiasts socket 939 choice in the Pre-Conroe era. ( 1.8 Ghz base clock, but it was known to overclock close to 3 Ghz IIRC).

I liked these a lot too. Dual core socket 939 had just come out when I was 15 or so just getting into computers .. I must have gone through about 30 of them. I made extra money this way at the time. Once the newer ones started coming out that were basically guaranteed at least 2.8GHz with stock volts, I'd buy them from some website that I forget for $270, pop them into my computer and test out their OC capability. Usually they were really good so I'd stick a screenshot of whatever clock speed it hit along with 8 hrs of Prime95 and start the auction at $1 and it'd typically get to around $340 once people saw it was a good chip. Not a bad return on time for ~16 yrs old

 

[cbn]

Bay Trail

I considered putting that one on the list, but for desktop I thought it was in some ways a regression compared to the 1037U with NM70 chipset. (re: Bay Trail-D only has 4 EU Gen 7 iGPU and two SATA 3 Gbps ports, while the commonly found 1037U/NM70 had a 6 EU Gen 7 iGPU with 1 SATA 6 Gbps and 3 SATA 3 Gbps). With that mentioned, it is true a J1900 will beat a 1037U in multi-thread according to passmark while being passively cooled at the same time....but then 1037U has much better single thread cpu performance.

 

[el etro]

Core i5 2500 and 3570(they are the same to me, with better power consumption);

Athlon XP and Sempron 3000+

Athlon 64 X2 4800+


Athlon 64 X2 5600+

Phenom II X4 955

Core i5 750

Core 2 Quad Q6600

Core 2 Duo E6600

 

[ElFenix]

Wrong. Plenty of Intel x86 CPUs before with IMC. The latest before was 386SL and 486SL.

i'm not seeing any reference to the SLs having integrated memory controllers. seems the big difference was power management features, which were later incorporated into every 486 and all x86 processors since.

 

[videogames101]

2500k, clearly

also the athlon X2's

 

[ShintaiDK]

i'm not seeing any reference to the SLs having integrated memory controllers. seems the big difference was power management features, which were later incorporated into every 486 and all x86 processors since.

http://www.cpu-collection.de/?l0=co&l1=Intel&l2=i386+SL

https://books.google.dk/books?id=Fe...U#v=onepage&q=386sl memory controller&f=false

 

[tynopik]

<3 486dx2 66

was the minimum requirement for many things for a long long time

the celeron 300a is of course a legend

tualatin was a great little chip

athlon 64 for giving intel a much needed kick in the butt

q6600 G0 - no comment necessary

i5-2500k - as relevant as ever

honorable mention to the 440BX chipset

 

[Bradtech519]

3700+ Clawhammer - Loved this CPU was a beast for years and let me avoid s939 until I jumped to Intel,
Core 2 Duo E8400 - Was night & day coming from the Clawhammer which started to show it's age after years but served me well for a long time,

Before that I saw big gains at every CPU upgrade.

486 DX4 100 MHz,
Pentium 1 166 with MMX,
AMD K6 2 450 3dnow,
AMD Athlon 64 Thunderbird 1.4 GHz
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton,

 

[pm]

i'm not seeing any reference to the SLs having integrated memory controllers. seems the big difference was power management features, which were later incorporated into every 486 and all x86 processors since.

There was a 386SL with an integrated memory controller. My first group at Intel had worked on that project and I distinctly remember the IMC on them both and people talking about it.

If you google "386SL memory controller" there's several links about it. Like this link See the highlighted text at the top - or the second paragraph if nothing is highlighted for you.

 

[ElFenix]

oh crud somehow i was yahooing it instead of googling it :hmm:

 

[john3850]

My favorites were
Petium overdrive 200 mmx
P3 500FC 166x5 at 830GHz
Athlon 939 3200 Venice

 

[jhu]

There was a 386SL with an integrated memory controller. My first group at Intel had worked on that project and I distinctly remember the IMC on them both and people talking about it.

If you google "386SL memory controller" there's several links about it. Like this link See the highlighted text at the top - or the second paragraph if nothing is highlighted for you.

How much faster was it vs. a regular 386?

 

[deanx0r]

AMD Athlon K7 950MHz.

I dropped that puppy to replace the original 500MHz variant I had. It almost doubled the speed. That thing was a beast.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

This by far the best CPU I've had. It overclocked to 3.6GHz and I had it in my main gaming rig until this last summer.

In the most disappointing category:

AMD Athlon S939 64 X2 4400+

I know this chip got glowing reviews, but all the hype around the AMD dual cores just set me up for disappointment as I never really perceived the speed enhancement in daily use. It didn't overclock at all, and the parts were really expensive at the time.

Intel Pentium G3258

I got this chip to hang on until Skylake. It overclocks like a beast (4.4GHz), but even at those high speeds, it is no faster than a stock i3 in most cases. I was also getting all kind of stuttering issues in games that only took advantage of 2 cores (issues that werent there in quad gaming rigs).

 

[skipsneeky2]

Nothing truly has excited me since the Q6600 G0,E6750 was just as awesome considering i spent less for that cpu and a bundled motherboard then i planned to spend on a E6600 i was saving up for.:thumbsup: G0 chips ruled.

E6750=G0 stepped,affordable and just awesome for the time.
Q6600=G0 stepped,affordable and 4 cores just kicked ass.
i7 940=not a bargain but surely i was to chicken to overclock what looked like a really complicated cpu,picked it over the 920 for this reason.

Other chips since then honestly just have been so meh,if i didn't sell my i7 940+gtx295 rig in 2010 i wouldn't be using this i7 3770 that is for sure.Perhaps Skylake would have been the interesting upgrade.