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Worst CPUs ever, now with poll!

Page 14 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

What's the worst CPU ever? Please explain your choice.

  • Intel iAPX 432

  • Intel Itanium (Merced)

  • Intel 80286

  • IBM PowerPC 970

  • IBM/Motorola PowerPC 60x

  • AMD K5

  • AMD family 15h

  • AMD family 10h

  • Intel Raptor Lake

Results are only viewable after voting.
Gerilgfx said:
c3-s was not so bad. however, c7 was much better.
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It would depend largely on which c3 (samuel/sam2/ezra/Nehemiah) we're talking about, but in general none of them would compete with intel or amd offerings at the same clock. They were cheap to make and ran cool but were complete dogs in performance. Nehemiah cores addressed some problems....but when your based off an aging socket 370, single data rate 133mhz FSB and have a 64KB L2 cache you're not looking at a screamer by any means.
 
Cogman said:
I mean, you have to understand that in 1999 the top speed was around 233mhz, In 2005 you could get dual cores with a top speed around 2ghz. In roughly 10 years we easily had a 10x the performance increase.
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The PII 233 was out in 1997 and by 1998 we had the 333

BigDaveX said:
The real problem came with the next version, the 6x86MX/M-II, which used all sorts of weird, non-standard voltages and bus speeds, which sent system stability down the toilet. And when AMD came out with the hugely successful K6-2 and Intel created the much more competent second Celeron revision, it was game over.
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The MII did have a much higher death rate but any of the 75MHz including the 6x86 pr-200 were susceptible.
 
ctk1981 said:
It would depend largely on which c3 (samuel/sam2/ezra/Nehemiah) we're talking about, but in general none of them would compete with intel or amd offerings at the same clock.
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when we comparing the performance per mhz rate, that was bad, okay, but that does not means anything. the power consumption, the performance, and the price is the deciding factors.

600 mhz via c3 dissipated typical 7w under load, with 13w maximum peak, and 1w in idle.
600 mhz amd k7 continously 50w (they decrased it a bit in the second version, however, to some 40w, no power throttling)
600 mhz intel pentium 3 - 42w (later models decrased the power consumption seriously, however, still no power throttling for idle)

Via C3 offered the same performance/watt rate with the earlyer amd and intel competition (+/-5%) - while under typical tasks, it had 10x-20x smaller power demand, offering superior solution for notebooks, laptops, or even some desktop computers, where power demand and/or silent/fanless operation was needed. with c3, via owned these market segments, amd and intel was unable to competite with via in these segments, this resulted a slow market share incrase for via, and also, under the same watt rate, it performed the same maximum performance.

via c3 was an awesome solution in every mentionable ways, and it was much cheaper than the competitors later-released low-power k7 and p3 chips. i didnt seen anybody to complain about them until yet. of course, competitors also had the newer low-power chips on the market when the c3 is released, but a 20w p3 was like... 600-1000 usd without even power throttling...

so in short, while c3 ate few watts, it was cheap, and was relatively fast for its power consumption. (the situation can be compared to the intel atom chips of the 2010's)

(however C7 was a more brutal successor, sometimes reaching pentium4 on the same clock, while eating 5x-50x few watts, catalizing the market share of via)
 
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bgt said:
Yes, this was something else, what a piece of sh.t😱 all the company offices had this energy wasting CPU.
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Its nothing compared to the FX line tho. I never thought Intel would get rid of their Prescott nightmare, until AMD released Bulldozer that is.
 
Idontcare said:
Intel owes its success to key people who were involved in managing its business - Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, Andy Grove.

_INTELFD.GIF
Click to expand...

Wow, Moore's Law has brought us a long way, those chips used to be enormous 😵
 
ctk1981 said:
It would depend largely on which c3 (samuel/sam2/ezra/Nehemiah) we're talking about, but in general none of them would compete with intel or amd offerings at the same clock. They were cheap to make and ran cool but were complete dogs in performance. Nehemiah cores addressed some problems....but when your based off an aging socket 370, single data rate 133mhz FSB and have a 64KB L2 cache you're not looking at a screamer by any means.
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I bought one of those chips. It filled a niche for me. I built a low power torrent box using a motherboard and RAM I had lying around already and would have otherwise done nothing with. It was slow though, no doubt about it. I think it was a 1ghz but most benchmarks had it trading blows with a PII-400 or something like that.
 
For the price, the K5 and 6x86 were okay. The one I hated was the 486SLC chips. Slightly better than a 386SX that wanted to pretend it was a 486 SX but wasn't a true 32-bit processor.
 
JustMe21 said:
For the price, the K5 and 6x86 were okay. The one I hated was the 486SLC chips. Slightly better than a 386SX that wanted to pretend it was a 486 SX but wasn't a true 32-bit processor.
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That was only during the transition time, Later there was 386 with full 32bit and PCI, There was also some 486 that had 32bit IS but only 16bit registry.
Also both suffering at times with off board FPU.
 
Celeron's were probably the worst line of CPU's I've ever dealt with. AMD-E is pretty bad too. Worse than ARM has ever been I think.
 
man, recent dogs would be anything labeled "atom", as well as bay trail celerons and pentiums.
 
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