What is your all time favourite CPU?

[batmang]

P4 2.4C. Loved that processor! Ran frickin' hot though!

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: 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...

Getting kinda off-topic here but I agree with the 20yr ago comment.

Think about televisions...which transition do you think delivered the largest change in the quality of the delivered entertainment: (A) introduction of color TV, (B) introduction of HDTV and flat-panel formats?

Both are technological marvels at the cost-point they were introduced, but I'd wager the bigger impact was in going from BW to color some 60 yrs ago.

 

[novasatori]

Originally posted by: Gillbot
Didn't we do this once before?

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

I agree with this man.

PIII is my all time favorite, probably the exact same one, the 933s.

 

[polarbear6]

the E8400 this chip has seen me in my highs and lows of life
its more of a friend to me then a chip
iam emotionally attached to it

 

[nOOky]

My old 1.4 T-Bird is still running in a relatives computer, 1.5-something with a Globalwin Fop32 cooler. Nothing else I've had has run that long, that hot.

 

[MustangSVT]

I think 300a was the best. at the time it was THE FASTEST you could get and it felt pretty good

 

[spdfreak]

Originally posted by: 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.

Yep, when I went from a Pentium2 350 to a Slot A 550 it was an amazing jump in performance. In fact, when my friend who was a hard core Intel guy saw how fast it was, he was converted- for a little while, at least. I can't remember how fast I OD'ed that thing with the goldfinger, but it was a huge difference in performance- performance you could actually feel and see. Now we have arguments over PhenomII vs. Intel quads and for 99% of the people out there, there is no discernible difference. It does make you wonder if there will be any huge jumps like that again or if it will all be incremental gains that don't really feel any faster. Most people would be better served by getting a better monitor, mouse, keyboard and chair than by a faster system.

 

[Gillbot]

Originally posted by: novasatori

Originally posted by: Gillbot
Didn't we do this once before?

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

I agree with this man.

PIII is my all time favorite, probably the exact same one, the 933s.

I'd love to find another 933 and P3V4X to torcher again for fun.

 

[nOOky]

I have a P3V4X sitting in my closet, with a 866 in it. I remember you need the right VIA 4 in drivers for it, that's about all I remember. Oh, and you gotta put your Soundblaster in the right pci slot also

 

[Gillbot]

I shoulda never sold mine. That PIII was a monster. Took 166fsb without breaking a sweat. I was using a MONSTER alpha cooler with twin 60mm screamer fans on it though. Man it was painful to the ears with that rig running.

 

[jjmIII]

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
X2 3800+. Most substantial upgrade I've ever made given how I use my computer.

X2 3800+ :thumbsup:

 

[Painman]

My Malaysian 300A that would do 517 with a bit 'o voltage (usually kept it at 504 though).

PIII-700 CuMine -- first chip I broke the 1 GHz barrier with, ran it @ 980 for everyday use.

1.8 Northwood... did 2.7 w/o any extra volts.

My current Q6600 -- looks like it'll make it into the hall of 50% overclockers, but it'll take more extra juice to do so than the above 3 CPUs did.

 

[fri2219]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

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.

Have you ever considered fist fucking yourself to death?

If not, you ought to give it a try, or have your daddy try it next time you're enjoying a cocksucking session with the rest of the inbreds in the trailer park.

That is not allowed here, no personal attacks, or that language. I think a vacation may be in your future.

Markfw900 Anandtech Moderator



How about a ban?

esquared
Anandtech Senior Moderator

 

[SonicIce]

Originally posted by: fri2219

Originally posted by: Idontcare

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.

Have you ever considered fist fucking yourself to death?

If not, you ought to give it a try, or have your daddy try it next time you're enjoying a cocksucking session with the rest of the inbreds in the trailer park.

:shocked:

 

[spire303]

Originally posted by: 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.

I probably realized it more so at the time, it's just been so damn long I can barely remember if it was a Voodoo2 or Voodoo3...

 

[RussianSensation]

Q6600 hands down. Still running at 3.4ghz, 1.5 years since I have purchased it only at $300 CDN. I normally replace the CPU every 2 years, but with this one, I am probably going to wait until 8 full cores.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: fri2219

Originally posted by: Idontcare

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.

Have you ever considered fist fucking yourself to death?

If not, you ought to give it a try, or have your daddy try it next time you're enjoying a cocksucking session with the rest of the inbreds in the trailer park.

I'm awestruck by your clear demonstration of verbal and grammatical superiority.

You have done yourself, your colleagues and the legacy of the entire MASPAR project a real service here with your quick and witty comeback. It is a testament to much of your career profile I suspect.

No wonder John cancelled project MASPAR. He was usually the above-board kind of gentlemen but he never spared a kind word for that line-item in the meetings and seemed atypically amused when it was removed.

 

[Dadofamunky]

AMD 286-20MHz which I used for several years and first ran Windows 3.0 on it. That machine basically kept me from starving during the recession in the very early 90's.

At the same time, an Amiga 1000 upgraded to 14.2 MHz Motorola 68000 CPU.

 

[humanure]

I'd say my x2 4400, can't believe I paid almost $500 for it in 2005, with what you can get now. It was a great upgrade though, first new system since my p3 500MHz bought in 1999, was finally able to play some current games again. Sold it for almost $200 last year, regret it now.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: fri2219

Originally posted by: Idontcare

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.

Have you ever considered fist fucking yourself to death?

If not, you ought to give it a try, or have your daddy try it next time you're enjoying a cocksucking session with the rest of the inbreds in the trailer park.

I'm awestruck by your clear demonstration of verbal and grammatical superiority.

You have done yourself, your colleagues and the legacy of the entire MASPAR project a real service here with your quick and witty comeback. It is a testament to much of your career profile I suspect.

No wonder John cancelled project MASPAR. He was usually the above-board kind of gentlemen but he never spared a kind word for that line-item in the meetings and seemed atypically amused when it was removed.

FYI to all, this guy (fri2219) has been banned. We don't tolerate this kind of behaviour at Anandtech.

Markfw900 Anandtech Moderator

 

[Donuts]

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

Oh ya, I had a K7 600 I remember cutting a notch in the plastic case and attaching the
gold finger and bam 700 mz. I was new to building computers and nothing has ever matched that. I still have the setup in a box. Just never could part with it.

 

[deanx0r]

I built my first system around an AMD K7 500MHz, and then upgraded it later to a 900MHz. I have to say it was the biggest performance leap I could feel. It was that only upgrade where Windows (2000) felt quite snappier and games ran much more smoothly (Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 at the time).

Since then, I bought several P4s, Athlon XP, 64, X2, and now Core 2 Duo and none of them gave me that feel of an upgrade to a much faster processor unless I run some benchmarks.

 

[dangtong]

Celery 300A. Cheap. Easy to OC. Fastest (at the time). Easy to OC to 450mhz. A 150% gain from stock speed. Not many CPU can be easily achieve this percentage gain.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I know everyone loves the Celly 300A slot1 chips, they did overclock well... but I prefer the PII-300 SL2W8. In terms of multitasking, the PII (with 512KB L2, instead of 128KB) won, hands-down. The SL2W8 were the inital 450Mhz chips, that Intel later released as 300Mhz chips, becuase they changed the design of the heatsink for the "real" PII-450 chips.

They were a guaranteed overclock.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: dangtong
Celery 300A. Cheap. Easy to OC. Fastest (at the time). Easy to OC to 450mhz. A 150% gain from stock speed. Not many CPU can be easily achieve this percentage gain.

That's actually a 50% gain.

I agree w/VirtualLarry - the extra cache back then really helped out, especially with multitasking. I had a AMD K6-III and also K6-II+, they were good matches for the equivalent P2/P3, and both OC'd well.