Worst CPUs ever, now with poll!

[DAPUNISHER]

Didn't know that. It still comes with something like 8500G/8700G, right?

I don't know which AM5 CPUs have it.

Did not know that. Wow 😳

If they got hot enough they cooked. I remember reading lots of close calls where someone forgot to plug in the fan. A few that cooked it that way.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I don't know which AM5 CPUs have it.

I see the 8500G has Wraith Stealth. Is that similar to the Prism, as in tool-less?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I see the 8500G has Wraith Stealth. Is that similar to the Prism, as in tool-less?

Nope, those are the 4 screw down models. Only the Prism is lever I think. It is how all of the AMD stock coolers were BITD. I think Aigo made most of them.

 

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

Where is the Via C7?

 

[Kocicak]

I do not understand the hate towards Raptor lake CPUs. They are like perfectly fine and capable car engines, which have too high RPMs written in their spec sheets by their mad producer. Once users realise that and run them slower, everything is OK.

 

[WelshBloke]

I do not understand the hate towards Raptor lake CPUs. They are like perfectly fine and capable car engines, which have too high RPMs written in their spec sheets by their mad producer. Once users realise that and run them slower, everything is OK.

To use your car analogy. If I bought a Lamborghini Temerario, with it's advertised 10k red line, and then afterwards Lamborghini said "Actually you shouldn't run that past 7k revs or the engine will start to degrade" I'd not be very happy!

 

[yottabit]

*Raises hand* The graphite wore off, so I had to trace new lines. Sometimes even after doing it, the connection was not good enough so I have to go over them again and again until it did. I blame the pencils I had. Anyways, during one of those sessions, while booting to check if I could change the multiplier I forgot to reattach the cooler, it was only 2-3 seconds before I killed power, but that was long enough to cook it.

It’s AMD’s fault they made overclocking so easy!

That pencil trick really brought back memories.

I did love my Athlon 1.4 Ghz Thunderbird to death. That was the first higher end PC I ever built. I “only” had a Geforce3 Ti200 but it was still such a huge step up for me. I remember running those Nvidia tech demos and 3D Mark endlessly

within a year or so the system did die on me, but I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with overheating. I brought it back to the local computer shop I purchased the parts from and they were not terribly helpful at diagnosing. Looking back on it I’m almost certain the mobo failed. Even still, I’m surprised to see Socket A Athlon as a “worst CPU” contender

Although that build was a huge chunk of money for me as a young teen so I went Intel for the replacement. A Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz Northwood which was unexciting but got the job done.

 

[Markfw]

I do not understand the hate towards Raptor lake CPUs. They are like perfectly fine and capable car engines, which have too high RPMs written in their spec sheets by their mad producer. Once users realise that and run them slower, everything is OK.

You should really stop defending them, as the world-wide they are getting RMA'ed and dying, and nobody but you are defending them.

Being in the minority is not always a good thing.

 

[yottabit]

I do not understand the hate towards Raptor lake CPUs. They are like perfectly fine and capable car engines, which have too high RPMs written in their spec sheets by their mad producer. Once users realise that and run them slower, everything is OK.

Except to continue the automobile analogy it would be like buying a Toyota, a brand known for their quality and stability, and discovering it had worse reliability than a 100 thousand mile Dodge Neon that never had its transmission fluid changed

 

[DZero]

But it was still a commercial success of sorts. PS4 did well.

GPU saved their arses big time.

 

[AdamK47]

Willamette is missing from this poll IMO.
Even K5 had a lot of merit compared to Willamette.

Yes, Willamette.

Partnering with Rambus to exclusively use RDRAM is a shining example of one of the many missteps Intel has made over the years

 

[mikeymikec]

AMD Athlon The Smoky One

You're kidding, right? AMD's CPUs of that era were either neck-and-neck with Intel's or beating them. While bursting into flames when run without a heatsink is not a great look, who opted for Intel specifically for Intel's superiority in that respect? Which argument do you think would win for performance enthusiasts:

1 - "Good news everyone, you can run it at a tenth of its potential without a heatsink!"
2 - "Just follow best practices in place since god-knows-how-long and make sure the heatsink is properly installed"

 

[igor_kavinski]

You're kidding, right?

Not from a performance perspective but it was a really bad look for AMD in those days. All any Intel shill had to do to shut up an AMD owner was show that video and then cover his ears while the AMD guy went "BUT BUT BUT".

My most recent brush with this stupidity was just about two years ago where I spent a good deal of time searching for laptops for my former HR lady and I recommend this one amazing Zen 3 laptop to her and she goes, but my IT guru bro says AMD is cheap in quality. You cannot imagine how pissed I got. She felt it. And started avoiding me after that. That's how mad I got.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I do not understand the hate towards Raptor lake CPUs. They are like perfectly fine and capable car engines, which have too high RPMs written in their spec sheets by their mad producer. Once users realise that and run them slower, everything is OK.

Oxidation is not perfectly fine and capable, it's a factory defect. If they were cars, there would have been a recall. That used car salesman and snakeoil slide deck that leaked, turned out to be projection of the highest order. It left some of us half convinced the owner of loserbenchmark works for Intel's SMG. 🤣

 

[mikeymikec]

Not from a performance perspective but it was a really bad look for AMD in those days. All any Intel shill had to do to shut up an AMD owner was show that video and then cover his ears while the AMD guy went "BUT BUT BUT".

Mkay, not really a counterargument, more of a "but I still think I'm right" response. Anyone running a performance-oriented x86 CPU without a HSF rightly deserves a slap upside the head. There's going to be some unfortunate fringe cases for sure back in that CPU gen's day, but since there are always unfortunate "I killed some hardware" fringe cases through say running a CPU without a properly-installed heatsink, I'm failing to see how remarkable this is. For example, while I've never killed a CPU or board where the pins are in the CPU board socket, plenty of people have. I don't think that's great design either, and yet both AMD and Intel are doing it these days. All we can do is try to install the CPU gently, and pray silently that we're not being too forceful when installing the HSF (if that can actually damage the CPU socket pins, no idea!).

If the point (if there's really any point at all in this) was to come up with a top 50-100 bad CPUs list then there are going to be some very unexciting entries. 5 at most IMO, then at least each one's story is worth telling (at least as far as fellow nerds are concerned).

If you want another thoroughly unexciting entry, then the next time I visit the customer in question, I'll take down the specs of their first-gen Intel i5 CPU which (if I have the model number correct from memory) does not show up on Google: the Intel desktop i5-720, which had the honour of being the only desktop i5 with only two processor cores, and I think it was a lemon that HP wanted, presumably to hoodwink their customers into thinking they were getting a better-than-average processor.

 

[crashtech]

(snip)...If you want another thoroughly unexciting entry, then the next time I visit the customer in question, I'll take down the specs of their first-gen Intel i5 CPU which (if I have the model number correct from memory) does not show up on Google: the Intel desktop i5-720, which had the honour of being the only desktop i5 with only two processor cores, and I think it was a lemon that HP wanted, presumably to hoodwink their customers into thinking they were getting a better-than-average processor.

I think it was the i5-650 through i5-680, which are more like what we think of as i3s in those generations. I guess since they had 4 threads they could count them as i5 lite, like they did with a lot of later mobile CPUs.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I added Raptor Lake to the poll. 😛 OP has not logged in in over 4yrs. Someone had to do it.

 

[Ranulf]

I remember installing heatsinks oon socket A. Not fun. Design wasnt great until later on where they put stops in to stop your screwdriver from slipping off. Never broke a CPU though.

I hated installing cpu/heatsinks until intel core2duo's. I had a buddy hold down the case while I installed a P3 in the board that was in the case already because you needed a ton of force to get that clip latched on the stock P3 cooler. I left my thermaltake hsf on a duron just because of that cracked core potential. I think I swapped out my XP1700's cooler once for the same reason.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I still say netburst.

 

[mikeymikec]

I remember installing heatsinks oon socket A. Not fun. Design wasnt great until later on where they put stops in to stop your screwdriver from slipping off. Never broke a CPU though.

Ooh, that brings back memories! I had a screwdriver slip more than one, full-force into the board. I didn't manage to kill a board though, so I had that going for me 🙂

I hated installing cpu/heatsinks until intel core2duo's. I had a buddy hold down the case while I installed a P3 in the board that was in the case already because you needed a ton of force to get that clip latched on the stock P3 cooler. I left my thermaltake hsf on a duron just because of that cracked core potential. I think I swapped out my XP1700's cooler once for the same reason.

I hated installing Intel HSFs ever since C2D 🙂 Since then, I've seen a few Intel push-pins inexplicably become unlocked, or push-pins becoming jammed in such a way that I had to carefully pry them from the board. I didn't mind them so much after I figured out that the installation instructions were wrong.

My wife hates the sound of me attaching stock AM4 heatsinks using the four screw system 🙂

 

[igor_kavinski]

I think it was a lemon that HP wanted, presumably to hoodwink their customers into thinking they were getting a better-than-average processor.

That does sound like HP 😀

 

[igor_kavinski]

I have a confession to make. Probably told this before but I had a PC Partner 440BX mobo with P2 350 MHz that dad bought me after punishing me for two whole years without a PC because I failed Physics and Chemistry and then I lied that I wanted to do Computer Science because I really, really wanted to get my PC and gaming fix!

So anyway, when the opportunity arose to replace that P2 with a Coppermine 700 MHz Celery on the same mobo with a socket adapter, I jumped on it. It did feel fast and I could overclock it to 1.05 GHz which felt awesome. Still slower than a real P3 though. So the thought of feeling the speed of a P3 never left me alone. I eventually bought a used P3 1 GHz Coppermine and the shopkeeper showed it to me booting. However, it didn't work with the socket adapter. Maybe voltage difference? I didn't know if it got pumped with higher voltage and died. Couldn't afford a proper compatible mobo for it. Wasn't worth the hassle of trying to return it. The shopkeeper didn't seem like the type who would've welcomed a return and even if he did, it would've been at half the price I paid. I was disappointed and dejected. I kept the CPU but it felt so unjust that I couldn't use it.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and something had to be done. I took out the CPU and placed it on the floor. And down came the hammer. Yes, a real hammer. The whole atmosphere around me filled with some fine dust. I could smell it for several minutes afterwards. I kept hammering it till the pieces were so small that they couldn't be hammered no more. I murdered a P3 in cold blood. Maybe it had already been dead. I will never know for sure.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I still say netburst.

ChatGPT agrees with you: https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...dnt-live-up-to-the-hype.2622328/post-41304522

 

[Paratus]

Just an FYI on the P4 Prescott. I gave my FIL my circa 2004 P4 3.2E Prescott system. It’s still functional 20 years later as a winXP box.

 

[gdansk]

Just an FYI on the P4 Prescott. I gave my FIL my circa 2004 P4 3.2E Prescott system. It’s still functional 20 years later as a winXP box.

They don't make 'em like they used to.