What is your all time favourite CPU?

[SlowSpyder]

My Opty 165 amazed me. It was my first dual core and I overclocked it to 2.7GHz (50% oc). That chip lasted me a looooong time.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

X2 3800+. Most substantial upgrade I've ever made given how I use my computer.

 

[rudder]

Doom was so freaking fast and smooth after I upgraded to a Pentium 60 from a 486.

But I still enjoyed the motorola 68030 back in the day. I paid like a billion dollars for an Amiga 3000 but I was able to run a multinode BBS in the background while playing games.

 

[fri2219]

Wow, you can really date the readership here based on their responses.

For me, I'd have to say the MC68000 (FatMac), followed by the TMS9900 (TI-99/4A). The chips in the Apple I (MC6502) and Rockwell 6502 (Rockwell AIM-65) were easy to poke around, but had a lot of ugly kludges.

Sometime around the start of the battle between RISC and CISC, the resulting complexity made it nearly impossible to actually understand the whole chip, and I'd moved on to working on MASPAR architectures at the NCSA at that point.

It's fun to see the history of MASPAR being played out all over again in GPU's- AMD and Nvidia could have saved themselves a lot of grief if they would have bought a couple of Alliants/DataFlows on Ebay.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: fri2219
Wow, you can really date the readership here based on their responses.

For me, I'd have to say the MC68000 (FatMac), followed by the TMS9900 (TI-99/4A). The chips in the Apple I (MC6502) and Rockwell 6502 (Rockwell AIM-65) were easy to poke around, but had a lot of ugly kludges.

Sometime around the start of the battle between RISC and CISC, the resulting complexity made it nearly impossible to actually understand the whole chip, and I'd moved on to working on MASPAR architectures at the NCSA at that point.

It's fun to see the history of MASPAR being played out all over again in GPU's- AMD and Nvidia could have saved themselves a lot of grief if they would have bought a couple of Alliants/DataFlows on Ebay.

Yes if only they had hired the venerable and austere MASPAR design team and placed you at the helm, they'd have saved the world from global warming by now and, after having developed Skynet II (based on MASPAR of course) they would have averted the entire 2008 global recession situation.

Now the best we can hope for is second-rate equipment for the rest of our lives, unless we get lucky and someone buys themselves a heavily modified DeLorean DMC-12 and manages to go 88mph carrying their message of hope and prosperity back to the idiots and dolts who have operated GPU companies and engineered GPU IC's for the past decade. Those f'ing GPU engineer tards, couldn't find ebay with Commadore64 and 300baud modem even if you plugged it in for them.

 

[StinkyPinky]

My cpus

Pentium 133
Pentium 233mmx
Pentium 2-350
Pentium 3-650
Athlon XP 2800
Athlon 64 3800x2
Core2 Quad Q6600

3800x2 is my pick. Awesome value and performance at the time, and overclocked pretty well as well.

 

[ochadd]

AMD x2 3800. Going from single core to dual core was a massive leap in performance.

I still have the processor in a drawer and I want to have it buried with me when I go.

Progression from memory:

Intel PII @ 233
AMD Tbird @ 900
AMD XP 2000
AMD XP 2700
AMD XP 3200
AMD 3800x2 @ 2.4
Intel e6750 @ 3.4

 

[dwcal]

I had some good ones over the years, but E6300 at 3.1GHz is the best yet. Rock solid at less than stock voltage.

 

[Lazlo Panaflex]

Motorola 68k (Amiga 500)

 

[classy]

Celery 366@550. Was top notch for almost 2 years.

 

[Maximilian]

Pentium PRO 256kb or 512kb. Seriously those things could knock people out.... big cpu!

 

[demiurge3141]

I still remember going from my 386SX20 to a PII-266, that was pretty massive.
Unbelievably the 386 still works, I was playing Angband on it a few years back just
for kicks.

Originally posted by: ochadd
AMD x2 3800. Going from single core to dual core was a massive leap in performance.

 

[imported_harlanpepper]

Athlon 2500+ mobile barton because it's what got me into overclockin'.

 

[Gillbot]

Didn't we do this once before?

PIII 933@1164, topped out the FSB on my P3V4X and still had more in her!

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Drivenbyvoltage
Always my current one. I mean, every time is a new experience.

Hey, I was just going to say almost the same thing!

My favorite CPU is my current one.

 

[taltamir]

the fastest CPU i can currently afford (and has thus purchased).

 

[The Boston Dangler]

maybe my last chip, an opteron 165. man that thing could take incredible punishment!

then again, my current Q9300 is easily the "best" chip i've ever had. the concept and execution are very good, and it's the first chip that has more power than i need, even at stock speed.

 

[Cookie Monster]

My 3.0GHz P4 Northwood, 30 capper version. Those were quite rare I believe, and overclocked like there's no tomorrow. Its stock now, since the motherboard cant take the punishment no more, and i suspect the chip itself is degraded but it has served me very well.

 

[spire303]

Originally posted by: RedShirt
Duron 600 (One of the first socket A processors) OC'd to 900 using the L1 pencil bridge trick to unlock the multi.

I had a Duron 800 and hated it. If I remember correctly, I bought a Voodoo3 3500 (maybe Voodoo2, not sure), and when I installed it and fired up a game, and the frame-rates were horrible. The Duron had some kind of floating-point problem that bottle-necked the hell out of my system. I ended up buying an Athlon to get the bottleneck fixed. Worst processor ever.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: spire303

Originally posted by: RedShirt
Duron 600 (One of the first socket A processors) OC'd to 900 using the L1 pencil bridge trick to unlock the multi.

I had a Duron 800 and hated it. If I remember correctly, I bought a Voodoo3 3500 (maybe Voodoo2, not sure), and when I installed it and fired up a game, and the frame-rates were horrible. The Duron had some kind of floating-point problem that bottle-necked the hell out of my system. I ended up buying an Athlon to get the bottleneck fixed. Worst processor ever.

ummm you do realise that a Duron was nothing more than an Athlon with only 64kb L2 cache instead of 256Kb right?

more likely it was the 3DFX card that was the problem...they were great, for 1998.

 

[mwarner1]

Well, I have owned a lot of CPUs in my day, but my favourites are really the ones I bought in the early part of the decade. I think the difference you felt between a normal CPU and one that you substantially overcloked in those days was a lot more than you feel these days.

My all time favourites are:

Intel Celeron 300A @ 450Mhz on an Abit BH6
- A classic combination. This was a fairly cheap build and was pretty much as fast as the fastest CPU on the market (PIII 450Mhz) at the time.

Intel Celeron 366 @ 550Mhz x 2 on an Abit BP6
- Server performance for a fraction of the cost. This was many people's first introduction to SMP.

I have overclocked every processor I have ever owned, but these provided the most bang for the buck at the time, in my opinion.

Mike

 

[zenguy]

My favorite Computer process was my TMS9900 3.0Mhz
It totally rocked, but I would admit it would have a tough time with Vista now :>

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
By far my favorite was the original Athlon K7 slot A with goldfinger OC'ed to 1GHz.

My computing experience took a step-function order of magnitude type of increase when I migrated to that from my prior rig (K6-2 333MHz).

From my perspective, everything I have used (CPU-wise) since then has been evolutionary improvements to my computing experience. LCD screens, GPU's, and now SSD's all provided much more noticeable impact on my quality of computing life than even my quadcore cpu's have provided.

Yup, I feel the same way. I had an Athlon 600 oc'd to 750 via a $35 goldfinger. Everything since then has felt incremental.

I would also vote for the Motorola 68000 (Amiga 500) and the MOS 6502c (Atari 800XL). Most fun & excitement I've ever had with computers.

Things were exhilarating back then; PC technology feels somewhat flat these days.

 

[ochadd]

Originally posted by: Flipped Gazelle

Things were exhilarating back then; PC technology feels somewhat flat these days.

Technology is going apesh*t. We are finally seeing real upgrades to storage technology performance via SSDs. Memory is cheap enough that a moderate enthusiast can afford more than can possibly be used in a desktop motherboard. CPU technology is at a point where gaming results in 50%-75% CPU load.

I think it feels flat because we are getting hardware faster than the software that needs it.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: ochadd

Originally posted by: Flipped Gazelle

Things were exhilarating back then; PC technology feels somewhat flat these days.

Technology is going apesh*t. We are finally seeing real upgrades to storage technology performance via SSDs. Memory is cheap enough that a moderate enthusiast can afford more than can possibly be used in a desktop motherboard. CPU technology is at a point where gaming results in 50%-75% CPU load.

I think it feels flat because we are getting hardware faster than the software that needs it.

That's part of it, for sure.

10+ years ago, things were much more of a struggle. There were many more choices, hardware was so expensive that upgrades needed to be chosen wisely. There was much less information available - things just had a more "seat-of-the-pants" feeling.

As far as technology "going apesh*t" - no more today than 20 years ago.

I'm probably just suffering from old fogey syndrome...