Worst CPUs ever, now with poll!

[ALIVE]

Pole? Pull? Maybe but I was expecting a poll...

Though had collated everything from your other thread and we could note all vote :-(

where is the pole
did i miss something!?!?!?
pIII 1.13??
p4?!?!?!
pentium 60??
why are those cpus missing??

 

[Magic Carpet]

About time, we have a poll now :thumbsup:

 

[KompuKare]

Ah, K5? Sure it wasn't a 468DX3 or DX4? K5 was not 486 sockets.

Wait found it in wiki, I think you mean an AM5x86
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am5x86

That was an 486 design too.

 

[Magic Carpet]

When Pentium 4 came out, it was not faster than Pentium !!!, especially not any of the Tualatin-based processors. As for x86 performance crown, that would have gone to either to AMD's x86-64 processors or Pentium M at the time.

This.

In fact, I had been, exclusively, buying AMD processors at the time (nb: for the first time since 486 DX5-133) because Pentium 4 was slower, ran hotter and ate more power if compared to AMD processors of that time.

 

[KompuKare]

Never mind the P60 and P4 being missing, what about x86 in the first place. 64KB segmented memory, lack of registers, 640KB, DOS memory managers etc.

All of which can be squarely blamed on IBM choosing the useless Intel 8086 back in 1981. I want to vote 8086/8088.

 

[Idontcare]

Thread merging probably in process.

Done :thumbsup:

Same old thread, but now with more pole poll than evar!

Administrator Idontcare

 

[ALIVE]

Never mind the P60 and P4 being missing, what about x86 in the first place. 64KB segmented memory, lack of registers, 640KB, DOS memory managers etc.

All of which can be squarely blamed on IBM choosing the useless Intel 8086 back in 1981. I want to vote 8086/8088.

well if we can vote for the x86 architecture then yes that is the worse ever
or else i want to vote for pentium4

 

[Homeles]

You're essentially comparing Zambezi to Willamette which is fine. But, the Bulldozer architecture hasn't seen its best yet. A bit prematurely, to write it off. Only time will tell.

The Pentium G850 is a Sandy Bridge family member.

 

[Idontcare]

Never mind the P60 and P4 being missing, what about x86 in the first place. 64KB segmented memory, lack of registers, 640KB, DOS memory managers etc.

All of which can be squarely blamed on IBM choosing the useless Intel 8086 back in 1981. I want to vote 8086/8088.

Well now you are wanting a "worst ISA ever" thread, totally different animal, but probably closer to the truth of what this thread essentially is.

This thread was supposed to be more of the "worst microarchitecture ever" thread. Be it VLIW, x86, 68k, etc.

Merced was no doubt the worst microarchitecture to support the Itanium VLIW ISA. As was the Sparc IIIi for the US ISA, and perhaps the P4 for the x86 ISA w/SSE2.1 and so on.

But yeah, OP is gonna get flamed for having a poll that lacks mention of the P4 as an option, nature of the beast.

 

[ALIVE]

Well now you are wanting a "worst ISA ever" thread, totally different animal, but probably closer to the truth of what this thread essentially is.

This thread was supposed to be more of the "worst microarchitecture ever" thread. Be it VLIW, x86, 68k, etc.

Merced was no doubt the worst microarchitecture to support the Itanium VLIW ISA. As was the Sparc IIIi for the US ISA, and perhaps the P4 for the x86 ISA w/SSE2.1 and so on.

But yeah, OP is gonna get flamed for having a poll that lacks mention of the P4 as an option, nature of the beast.

never flamed it is against the regulations of the forum ()
I vote P4

 

[pantsaregood]

When Pentium 4 came out, it was not faster than Pentium !!!, especially not any of the Tualatin-based processors. As for x86 performance crown, that would have gone to either to AMD's x86-64 processors or Pentium M at the time.

Tualatin was certainly faster than Willamette. I never denied that - Netburst was able to scale further, though. Tualatin was running into a wall at around 1.6 GHz and it was already on a 130nm process. AMD was being very aggressive at this time, and Intel had to match them somehow.

As for Athlon 64 or Pentium M? No, they were not the top performers. Athlon 64 wasn't released until 2003, and Pentium M was either not out yet or still relatively low clocking Banias units.

As for BD not being mature - the performance may improve, but the improvements will only be marginal. The underlying architecture would have to be completely reworked to compete with Sandy Bridge - reworked to the point it wouldn't be recognizable.

 

[KompuKare]

Ok, I did actually want a worst ISA thread...

See the problem with 'worst micro-architecture' is that only chip designer can really comment on a lot of them: for others it's merely subjective. For instance, was K5 a bad chip or were AMD simply not able to make it. Or, would they P4 have been a far worse chip if Intel and AMD had been using the same fab - or even more pronounced: what if the P4 had been made in AMD's fab while the Athlon64 was made in Intel's? The P4 would have looked silly then.

Point being, for non chip-designers (normal computer enthusiast) it's hard to divorce micro-architecture from a chip on a certain process implementing that architecture.

But anyway, of those choices I'm going to vote 80286 since it didn't really fix the x86 enough and made it worse in many ways. Now it becomes 'if only the IBM AT had used a 80386' rather than 'if only the IBM PC had used a MC68000 or...'

 

[darckhart]

what about the original pentiums. FPU error!

 

[yottabit]

My only beef with the P4 and Bulldozer alike is that they failed to really outshine their previous CPUs

The worst thing about the P4 IMO is that the first Willamettes failed to beat the PIII in many scenarios while costing way more, and also everyone who adopted the socket 423 got screwed in multiple ways (1. intel abandoned it 2. intel released Tulatin which made the PIIIs even faster) all while being WAY more expensive

Bulldozer IMO has had a better launch than P4 in spite of the fact that it doesn't outperform its previous gen in flying colors. At least it's a cheaper platform and has some potential, and works with the existing ram/mobo (some of them at least)

It's more the launch of these CPUs that I think was a fail, P4 developed into a great workhorse with Northwood and some of the Pentium dual cores were awesome despite the heat, and I'm sure bulldozer could develop into an OK cpu too, time will tell

 

[Magic Carpet]

well said :thumbsup:

EDIT: where's the P4 option?

 

[ALIVE]

My only beef with the P4 and Bulldozer alike is that they failed to really outshine their previous CPUs

The worst thing about the P4 IMO is that the first Willamettes failed to beat the PIII in many scenarios while costing way more, and also everyone who adopted the socket 423 got screwed in multiple ways (1. intel abandoned it 2. intel released Tulatin which made the PIIIs even faster) all while being WAY more expensive

Bulldozer IMO has had a better launch than P4 in spite of the fact that it doesn't outperform its previous gen in flying colors. At least it's a cheaper platform and has some potential, and works with the existing ram/mobo (some of them at least)

It's more the launch of these CPUs that I think was a fail, P4 developed into a great workhorse with Northwood and some of the Pentium dual cores were awesome despite the heat, and I'm sure bulldozer could develop into an OK cpu too, time will tell

buldozer is a failure because it could not outperfom the previous generation but that is only in single thread perfomance
but since it has 8 thread it could perfom better at heavy multi threaded options. the cost of bulldozer was not that more expensive than the phenom2
mobo+cpu when p4 mobo+cpu +rambus which made a very expensive upgrade
the real failure in bulldozer was that it took for ever to release and amd was promising something spectacullar
if bulldozer was launced earlier then we could say it was not that bad
not worse in all scenrios
p4 was so failure

 

[SlowSpyder]

Ah, K5? Sure it wasn't a 468DX3 or DX4? K5 was not 486 sockets.

Wait found it in wiki, I think you mean an AM5x86
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am5x86

That was an 486 design too.

This is the one I had:

http://www.amazon.com/TrinityWorks-P.../dp/B004IJDVKK

 

[KompuKare]

@SlowSpyder

Ah, I do have a rather vague memory of seeing something like that in some magazine years ago. Even might have read a review of them being a waste of money though.

Hm, if only there was a way to clean up my brain I think I'd dump those vague memories to make room for something more useful though...

 

[KentState]

I don't get all of the hate for the entire P4 family. I distinctly remember the Northwood 2.4c or whatever it was being a very popular CPU on this board. So much so that I actually built a computer in 2003 based on one. It used DDR memory, had decent MB options and OC'ed well.

 

[Ken g6]

I'd vote P4 too if it was there. Here's why.

 

[lamedude]

Gotta love the selective memory. P4 came out half a year before Tualatin P3's and a year before Tualatin Celerons that were actually affordable. I never heard a complaint about how hot Willamette was while the Thunderbird is famous for it.
Pentium60 would be at worst about the same speed as the 486DX2 66MHZ that came out a year earlier. It would take a few years before compilers could take advantage of it so was more of future proof CPU.
486SX? I don't think I used a FPU until Quake which you wouldn't want to run on a 486 anyway.

 

[Edrick]

Wow, my top 3 are not even listed in the poll.

P4 (Netburst)
Bulldozer
P60 (the original)

 

[Homeles]

Wow, my top 3 are not even listed in the poll.
Bulldozer

This one is...

 

[yottabit]

Gotta love the selective memory. P4 came out half a year before Tualatin P3's and a year before Tualatin Celerons that were actually affordable. I never heard a complaint about how hot Willamette was while the Thunderbird is famous for it.
Pentium60 would be at worst about the same speed as the 486DX2 66MHZ that came out a year earlier. It would take a few years before compilers could take advantage of it so was more of future proof CPU.
486SX? I don't think I used a FPU until Quake which you wouldn't want to run on a 486 anyway.

I know Tulatin came out after P4, and I mentioned that in my post, but my point was that releasing Tulatin after the P4 essentially punished the early adopters who ditched their S370 systems for S423, which was a doomed socket, when essentially S370 had just as much longevity. Is there anything a 1.7 Ghz Willamette can do that a 1.4 Ghz Tulatin can't?

 

[Daedalus685]

What about the Pentium Overdrive?

I voted Itanium for obvious reasons but the 486 drop in upgrade to Pentium performance was the worst thing I ever tried to use myself.

In the 20 hours I tried to use the thing it crashed after booting within 20 seconds and the manual was nothing more than a list of reasons it wont work with your system in particular. (It was a long time ago and my memory is fuzy.. plus I was relatively young at the time.)