your least favorite cpu of all time?

[zlejedi]

X6 1055T
- I still wonder what the fuck i was thinking when i was spending 200 euro on this crap

Barely faster than my Q6600 and strugled to oc above 3,75 Ghz.

 

[Gikaseixas]

The whole idea with Barton was that you would buy the 2500+ and OC it to a 3200+. If you did that, you got a nice chip for under a hundred dollars. I don't think the higher speed chips had much extra OCing headroom comapred to the 2500.

My 2800 wouldn't go past 3200+ speeds using just FSB OCing.

yep, i had a 2500+ and a 3000+ that i loved

 

[tulx]

Probably the AMD 9850...ran hot and didn't OC much...not very fun.

Hehe, I'm running a 9850 to this day (OC to 3,1 GHz) and play pretty much everything on max. I find that CPU quite remarkabe, infact, since it endured my first attempts at overclocking and still works.

 

[JustMe21]

For modern processors, the Intel Atom. For older processors, the Cyrix 486SLC processors since it was a 386/486 SX hybrid instead of a true 32-bit processor.

 

[lamedude]

The 3.58MHZ Ricoh 5A22 used in the SNES. Could of saved $ on some games if they didn't need to include co processors because it was so slow.
My favorite bad CPU is the "16 BIT S/W ONLY" 386. A 32bit CPU that can't run 32bit software and made Win95 suffer because of it.

 

[Gunbuster]

I had a K6-2 that was really frustrating. Got it from an AMD deal for people working in retail. Came with a shitty mainboard (I forget the brand, MSI maybe?) and the two were never stable.

 

[exar333]

Hehe, I'm running a 9850 to this day (OC to 3,1 GHz) and play pretty much everything on max. I find that CPU quite remarkabe, infact, since it endured my first attempts at overclocking and still works.

Welcome to 2006 performance?

 

[Cerb]

I had a K6-2 that was really frustrating. Got it from an AMD deal for people working in retail. Came with a shitty mainboard (I forget the brand, MSI maybe?) and the two were never stable.

Motherboards were a crapshoot, back then. VIA chipsets were actually pretty good, AMD if you could find them, and use of Intel chipsets was one reason some people stuck with plain Socket 7 for awhile longer. ALi and SiS chipsets plain sucked. Even with a good chipset, there were plenty of low-quality boards to be had, and you often had to tinker with BIOS settings and drivers, even with a decent 7 or Super7 board.

Ah, those were the days...

Interesting note: "Super7" passes spell-check.

 

[kazryv]

I wasn't a huge fan of my centrino 2 ghz chip. Paid way too much for a laptop with one about 5 years ago and the laptop didn't last all that long.

 

[happy medium]

Pent 1 667 with Rambus in a Dell.

 

[Munky]

So I must be the only one who never purchased a crappy cpu? Only bad cpu I used was the p4 1.6 with SDR RAM in a Dell that my parents bought and used for almost a decade, but that was mostly due to bad timing of purchase and Intel's anti-competitive tactics at the time.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

FX-8150, Phenom 9950, Atom (single-core), Core i7-990X... too many to list.

I haven't owned these (obviously, if I didn't like them I wouldn't have bought them in the first place), but these are probably some of the worst in my list and for different reasons.

 

[Edrick]

Core i7-990X...

LOL! I really hope your kidding. The only reason why someone would not like that CPU (top performing CPU for a year), is because they can't afford it. I am not saying anything about you personally, but if "Person-X" can not afford "CPU-Y", it is not the CPUs fault.

 

[dguy6789]

I can't really think of any processors I have owned that I really didn't like. I even had a Pentium D at one point(everyone seems to hate those) and while it was hot and power hungry(Had a big PSU and bought a gigantic CPU cooler for it), it was cheap, it could OC from 2.66Ghz to 3.6+ back when that was enough to make it a really fast CPU. It was also dual core back when dual core just came out and the difference between it and a single was night and day.

Processors I haven't used that really disappointed me are the Phenom I and the Bulldozer FX processors.

 

[Assimilator87]

My least favorite, that I've actually owned, are the B2 stepping original Phenoms. Worst overclockers ever made. Luckily the platform is excellent and allowed me to drop in an X6.

 

[Ratman6161]

Cyrix 166+

I was SO GLAD when the HDD bit the dust and BB allowed me to replace the whole machine. Got a MMX 200mhz + Monster3D and was SO much happier.

Second that. I also had a Cyrix chip for a while that sucked big time. My second most hated CPU is actually a family of CPU's i.e. Pentium IV in all its variants.

 

[Ratman6161]

Pentium 166 MMX

I bought it for a ton of money only to have stuff move so fast it was completely obsolete so fast.

Today, for general use, a PC has a much longer life.

Funny contrast. In the favorite CPU's thread I listed the Pentium 166 MMX as my favorite CPU. This was not for the CPU itself but because it was my introduction to overclocking. I was thrilled to find an article on Tom's Hardware Guide that described how to make a 166 run at 200Mhz by moving a jumper. Every home system (not work - employer owned systems) I have had since then has been overclocked. So the 166MMX went down as my favorite because it was the beginning for me.

 

[exar333]

LOL! I really hope your kidding. The only reason why someone would not like that CPU (top performing CPU for a year), is because they can't afford it. I am not saying anything about you personally, but if "Person-X" can not afford "CPU-Y", it is not the CPUs fault.

Agreed. The 980 and 990 were crazy-fast when they were released, and still are top-dog in many applications. If purchased them at $1000 to play L4D2 and were disappointed, then you can only be disappointed in yourself for making the decision.

 

[exar333]

Funny contrast. In the favorite CPU's thread I listed the Pentium 166 MMX as my favorite CPU. This was not for the CPU itself but because it was my introduction to overclocking. I was thrilled to find an article on Tom's Hardware Guide that described how to make a 166 run at 200Mhz by moving a jumper. Every home system (not work - employer owned systems) I have had since then has been overclocked. So the 166MMX went down as my favorite because it was the beginning for me.

My 200mhz MMX was excellent. It was cheap (compared to the PII at the time) performed great for a couple years until I got a PIII.

 

[nickb64]

The 3.06GHz P4 HT I spent three months stuck with this summer.

So slow...

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

LOL! I really hope your kidding. The only reason why someone would not like that CPU (top performing CPU for a year), is because they can't afford it. I am not saying anything about you personally, but if "Person-X" can not afford "CPU-Y", it is not the CPUs fault.

If you're an enthusiast it's the same thing as an i7-980 for 70% more. Even if I had the money I wouldn't waste it on an "Extreme Edition" sticker, which is all it amounts to. Whether you get a better OC out of a 980 or 990X will come down to luck. Same thing applies to the new 3930K and 3960X. If the 3930K supported PCIe 3.0 I'd consider it. You can't gain two cores/four threads through OCing.

It's crap because of Intel's horrible pricing, but the CPU itself isn't bad.

 

[Holler]

Cyrix 5x86 by far. had a market life of only 6 months, back then when cpu lifetime was longer, that was way short.

It had decent integer performance but horrible floating point performance and wasn't much faster then my 486dx-100 but tried to claim pentium pro speeds believe it or not.

It was also a flawed chip, it had features disabled due to bugs that were promised in advertisements.

hated it, but was all that I as a student could afford at the time with my current hardware.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrix_Cx5x86

Also the Evergreen CPU upgrade chips, which were amd based but didn't really work that well, are up there with worst ever as well.

 

[exar333]

If you're an enthusiast it's the same thing as an i7-980 for 70% more. Even if I had the money I wouldn't waste it on an "Extreme Edition" sticker, which is all it amounts to. Whether you get a better OC out of a 980 or 990X will come down to luck. Same thing applies to the new 3930K and 3960X. If the 3930K supported PCIe 3.0 I'd consider it. You can't gain two cores/four threads through OCing.
It's crap because of Intel's horrible pricing, but the CPU itself isn't bad.

The 3930K will support pcie 3.0 no problem, as long as the board is 3.0 ready. Where is this coming from?

 

[SlowSpyder]

I bought an Athlon XP 2500+ mobile for overclocking. For a while they were the 'in' overclocking chip as they were binned for low wattage, had an unlocked multiplier for speed changes for mobile computer/power saving, and the were not overly expensive.

I bought a pricey DFI motherboard (what happened to that company?) but could not get that chip to budge one bit beyond it's rated speed. Looking back, now wiser and more experienced, I think it may have been the power supply. I could bump the multiplier by .5x or all the way up to 2.6GHz, it would run, but never run stable.

I got what I paid for, but I was counting on overclocking for the performance I wanted. Oh well, no guarantee with overclocking, right?

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

The 3930K will support pcie 3.0 no problem, as long as the board is 3.0 ready. Where is this coming from?

The motherboards can support PCIe 3.0, but Sandy Bridge-E CPUs themselves don't have support for it. Same situation we have now with Sandy Bridge, unfortunately. CPU PCIe 3.0 support will come with Ivy Bridge and Ivy Bridge-E.