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Worst CPU ever.

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Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
20
81
Socket 7 Cyrix. Any of them. They were all slow. I had one of them though that overclocked pretty well. It was rated for a 66MHz bus; I ran it on a 100MHz bus. I know I got something like a 50% overclock out of the thing, but it ran incredibly hot, and it was still slow. So that was ultimately pointless. :)

My perosonal worst would be my old 1.4 T-Bird. Its still running in my parents machine but idles at 60C... I've got a Thermalright SK 6+ and a 50CFM 80mm fan sitting on it too. Its not a bad chip really its just the worst I've had.
1.4GHz Tbird was one of AMD's hottest running chips; I think its dissipation was 70-something watts. I had a 1GHz Tbird doing 1.4GHz - an Alpha 8045 with a 40CFM fan couldn't get it below 50C.
 

fbrdphreak

Lifer
Apr 17, 2004
17,555
1
0
What was so bad about P4 Williamette for a mainstream system? GF's family has an old Gateway P4 1.5 w/256MB PC-800 RDRAM and its chuggin' along just fine in WinXP. Some extra RAM and that thing would scream IMO
 

MiranoPoncho

Golden Member
Oct 7, 2004
1,441
0
0
I would have to say, without a doubt, the 300mhz k6(not one or two just regular) pos my aunt had and tried to give to me. First off, It was a compaq, second, running windows me took fooooor ever to load even the wallpaper.. no ocing. notta. best would be my trusty celly. ahh the good ol tully
 

mamisano

Platinum Member
Mar 12, 2000
2,045
0
76
How about the original P60 and P66? Many problems with those, the 1st ever Pentium chips.
 

AWhackWhiteBoy

Golden Member
Mar 3, 2004
1,807
0
0
Originally posted by: MiranoPoncho
I would have to say, without a doubt, the 300mhz k6(not one or two just regular) pos my aunt had and tried to give to me. First off, It was a compaq, second, running windows me took fooooor ever to load even the wallpaper.. no ocing. notta. best would be my trusty celly. ahh the good ol tully

that was probably more a product of compaq cutting corners, it probably used EDO ram or something crappy.

 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,946
13,032
136
Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
again, why the hatred for the Williamette?

Because the initial run of Williamette P4s failed to outperform the P3 convincingly. Never mind that the 1.4 ghz Thunderbirds trounced them . . . anyway, the P4 failed to make a splash until the 1.8 ghz came out, and software optimizations for the Netburst architecture became more prevelant.

Of all the P4s, Williamette had the worst run.

 

fbrdphreak

Lifer
Apr 17, 2004
17,555
1
0
So the expected performance was lower than expected, but for basic internet/etc usage & gaming with only The Sims; it ain't horrible? ;)
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,946
13,032
136
Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
So the expected performance was lower than expected, but for basic internet/etc usage & gaming with only The Sims; it ain't horrible? ;)

Williamettes were expensive and slow back when the fastest one was 1.6 ghz. It was a major disappointment for Intel. That's pretty terrible coming from the biggest PC CPU manufacturer.

People who wound up running a Williamette P4 on a slow single-channel SDR setup had it even worse.

That being said, I stll think that the suicidal and/or non-functional Cyrix CPUs were worse still. They failed to meet expected performance AND had glaring flaws. Yay Cyrix!

 

Shenkoa

Golden Member
Jul 27, 2004
1,707
0
0
What was the question exactly?

Slowest CPU as in how many instructions are executed per clock cycle
Slowest CPU alltogether

??????

Slowest CPU ever was the Intel 4004!
 

Babbles

Diamond Member
Jan 4, 2001
8,253
14
81
A friend of my had a Cyrix, can't remember the model, but man that was a pure hunk of crap. Was slow compared to Intel and AMD and simply did not seem to perform well when it came to driver compatibility and system stability.
 

konakona

Diamond Member
May 6, 2004
6,285
1
0
ow about the original P60 and P66? Many problems with those, the 1st ever Pentium chips.
hot as fireballs and shocked you with their lack of ability to address UMB :eek:
 

Tiamat

Lifer
Nov 25, 2003
14,068
5
71
My palomino 1700+... Let's Overclock this Biatch!!! Oh snap... doesnt post at 140fsb...
 

CraigRT

Lifer
Jun 16, 2000
31,440
5
0
Originally posted by: thegimp03
I hated my 1.3 ghz willamette. Die socket 423!

my GF has one of these.. so it's definitely not just me that thinks they are slow junk! LOL

that system is ass... feels like it's a 500-600 MHz CPU under the hood ;)
 

jterrell

Senior member
Nov 18, 2004
559
0
76
I worked at Cyrix in test for a while before they moved the stuff to Singapore.
The chips only marginally sucked before the move. LOL.
 

Slaimus

Senior member
Sep 24, 2000
985
0
76
I have owned a Cyrix 486DX/40 and a 6x86MX/PR200 and both were very solid.
The 486DX was as good as the Intel, and cheaper than the Intel DX/33. It was like getting the FPU/math co-processor for free. Most people were turned off because of the 486DLC which was a 386chip with added 486 instructions but was still pin compatible. Cyrix's real 486 chips actually had better FPU performance than Intel's chips.
The 6x86MX ran very hot, but never crashed the system because of that. The thing that was disturbing was that it ran at a 75Mhz bus, which was overclocking the PCI cards by default. The chip can run at 150Mhz at 75x2 or 166mhz at 66x2.5 for the same PR200 rating, so I just switched it to the latter option.
IBM even licensed the designed and manufacturered their own 6x86 chips. Too bad they got absorbed by VIA of all companies.
The worst chip has to be the Texas Instruments 486SXL chips. They decided to stop licensing Cyrix's 486SLC/486DLC design(which was already a slow 386 hybrid) and make their own. The slowest clock for clock chip with a "486" in it by far.
 

Grimner

Member
Nov 12, 1999
176
1
76
AMD Thunderbird 1.4 Ghz.

OK it was fast and perfecly nice, but it was always borderline on temperature. It ate three heatsinks before the Barton arrived :)

And it didn't want to play with my Shuttle (or the other way around). Expensive little thing soon to be mounted over the fireplace :)