• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Worst CPUs ever, now with poll!

Page 16 - 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.
lol I ran a dual Pentium Pro with 6x SCSI array for 12+ years, that thing was a heater for my apartment at one point.
 
TeknoBug said:
Isn't 10h like Sempron, Athlon, Phenom 1 & 2 and Turion? Some of Semperon and most of the Phenom 2 and Turions has been good processors.
Click to expand...
Yeah Phenom 2 was a rock solid CPU. Phenom 1 shipped on rather low clocks on a crappy process node, overal uarchitecture was a solid jump over K8. So no idea why any chip from 10h gen. would be regarded as "worst CPU ever" by anyone ...
 
MrTeal said:
You ran a 3.2GHz Prescott until 2010? You sir are a true trooper.
Click to expand...

The actual worst part of the computer was the AGP slot. Everything went PCI express so fast. I ended up using a 9600XT until 2007 when ATI finally dropped an AGP version of the X1950Pro. NV never released anything faster than the 16pipe 7800GS, (except the impossible to find 20 pipe Gainward Golden Sample version). So I was really limited in GPU upgrades.

My current machine still doesn't feel like I need a CPU upgrade, even 5 years later.
 
inf64 said:
Yeah Phenom 2 was a rock solid CPU. Phenom 1 shipped on rather low clocks on a crappy process node, overal uarchitecture was a solid jump over K8. So no idea why any chip from 10h gen. would be regarded as "worst CPU ever" by anyone ...
Click to expand...

I think it was more overhyped than outright bad. In 2006-early 2007, people were fully expecting K10 (or "K8L" as it was initially known) to restore AMD's performance advantage, and even extend it to further levels than previously. There was much crowing about how K10/K8L was going to be an advanced native quad-core server processor, while the Core 2 Quad was just two laptop chips slapped together on a 25 year-old bus protocol. The fact that the latter in fact proved to be the better solution for most users (even if the K10 Opterons did in fact beat the snot out of the C2Q-based Xeons) probably bred a lot of resentment.

Even Phenom II suffered it to some extent, as people somehow got it into their heads that a larger L3 cache was all the Phenom needed to go from being barely equal to Kentsfield to beating up on Nehalem.

So yeah, Phenom and especially Phenom II were decent products, but it doesn't help that they marked the point where AMD lost the performance advantage they'd mostly held from 1999-2006.
 
Ugh, I am going to get hella flamed for this but here goes:

From a PC Gaming perspective, the i7 920 was a bust of a purchase for me. In hindsight, I was probably better off getting a Q9400, OC'ing it, and waiting for Sandy Bridge.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2658/19

But, for what ever reason, I did not look at the Intel road-map's back in the day (and was totally seduced by the shiny new Intel Enthusiast platform, techno-lust hit hard, and I finally had the $$$ to get a fancy computer...)

I have always felt that the X58 platform was not very power efficient, but the below has proved my biases wrong, which I am happy to admit.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2663

I still have an i7 920 C0 chugging along as the wife's gaming computer, and will probably just add a bigger SSD and shiny R9 380-something to it and keep it going...
 
Paratus said:
The actual worst part of the computer was the AGP slot. Everything went PCI express so fast. I ended up using a 9600XT until 2007 when ATI finally dropped an AGP version of the X1950Pro. NV never released anything faster than the 16pipe 7800GS, (except the impossible to find 20 pipe Gainward Golden Sample version). So I was really limited in GPU upgrades.

My current machine still doesn't feel like I need a CPU upgrade, even 5 years later.
Click to expand...

I had my last single core CPU in 2007, it was k8 at 2.6GHz or something, and it was quite bad, a 3.2GHz p4 is even worse... even for web browsing a p4 was inadequate in 2010, I think the lack of PCIE (and keep in mind a lot of P4 boards had PCIE) is kind of irrelevant for this CPU, also they made some AGP 3850s and 4670s in 2008/2009 (which were terribly bottlenecked by any P4)
 
Paratus said:
The actual worst part of the computer was the AGP slot. Everything went PCI express so fast. I ended up using a 9600XT until 2007 when ATI finally dropped an AGP version of the X1950Pro. NV never released anything faster than the 16pipe 7800GS, (except the impossible to find 20 pipe Gainward Golden Sample version). So I was really limited in GPU upgrades.

My current machine still doesn't feel like I need a CPU upgrade, even 5 years later.
Click to expand...
AGP had about a seven year run, more than can be said for VL-Bus.
 
They must be programmers. 😛

The 286 certainly did deliver on the performance front, but by all accounts it was an absolute pig to develop on if you wanted to use anything more than the 8086/88-compatible modes.
 
I was given a PC that had a first generation IDT Winchip @ 240MHz. . . it was supposed to be a drop-in upgrade for the Pentium 75 that had been in there, but I'm not sure it was any faster, just less compatible.
 
B-Riz said:
Ugh, I am going to get hella flamed for this but here goes:

From a PC Gaming perspective, the i7 920 was a bust of a purchase for me. In hindsight, I was probably better off getting a Q9400, OC'ing it, and waiting for Sandy Bridge.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2658/19

But, for what ever reason, I did not look at the Intel road-map's back in the day (and was totally seduced by the shiny new Intel Enthusiast platform, techno-lust hit hard, and I finally had the $$$ to get a fancy computer...)

I have always felt that the X58 platform was not very power efficient, but the below has proved my biases wrong, which I am happy to admit.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2663

I still have an i7 920 C0 chugging along as the wife's gaming computer, and will probably just add a bigger SSD and shiny R9 380-something to it and keep it going...
Click to expand...
The 32nm westmeres are pretty power efficient, basically you have 6 cores for the same power consumption of 4, that's 50% improvement straight off the bat.
 
DrMrLordX said:
Ahahah, Winchips were pretty awesome at not being awesome. Sorry you got stuck with one of those.
Click to expand...

As weaksauce as it was, at least the Winchip provided the basis for what would eventually become the C3. The C3's original design, purchased from the remnants of Cyrix, ended up being so bad that Via couldn't even release it.
 
Yeah, funny that. When the Winchip first came out, it was vastly inferior even to Cyrix's own products. By the time VIA snapped up Cyrix and Centaur, it looks like Centaur's own designs had caught up to/exceeded those of Cyrix.

Are you thinking of the Cayenne/Joshua chip?
 
Hmm, the worst CPU ever? I'd probably have to say the Pentium 4 family, as competing processors released during that era were often preferable over Pentium 4 CPUs, especially when AMD released the Athlon 64 processors.

Paratus said:
The actual worst part of the computer was the AGP slot. Everything went PCI express so fast. I ended up using a 9600XT until 2007 when ATI finally dropped an AGP version of the X1950Pro. NV never released anything faster than the 16pipe 7800GS, (except the impossible to find 20 pipe Gainward Golden Sample version). So I was really limited in GPU upgrades.

My current machine still doesn't feel like I need a CPU upgrade, even 5 years later.
Click to expand...

I can sympathize. From 2004 - 2006, my main rig was running an overclocked Mobile Athlon XP 2600+ @ 2750 GHz on a Socket A DFI LANPARTY NFII Ultra B motherboard with an AGP8X slot. I was stuck with an AGP Radeon X850 XT and later a GeForce 7800 GS, until I was able to snag the Gainward Bliss GeForce 7800 GS+ (a 7900 GT in disguise). 🙂 Ran great for those years until I jumped to Core 2 in 2007.
 
I think the FX-4130 AM3+ should be in here a little. Bulldozer + 125W + 4MB L3 cache = Failure. It receives only 1259 single-thread score for such a high power consumption device.
 
I still think its strange that PPC is up there. There wasn't anything about them that would make them the worst ever.

I am surprised Cyrix is not on the list.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top