The five best AMD CPUs of all time: From old-school Athlon to brand-new Ryzen

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Very informative piece that goes back down memory lane. I remember for quite some time when INTEL was THE CPU brand name. The trusted, "you can't go wrong..." choice. But AMD delivered the 64bit era to desktop PCs, and made multi-cores both affordable and common. Versus Intel trying to milk 6+ cores with their rather expensive "HEDT" components. Thanks to AMD, the Steam charts speak for themselves and developers are responding to 6-12 core CPUs on the average desktop.
We have much to be grateful for today as PC consumers thanks to AMD.
 
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There is quite a few years in between my current AMD CPU and the last one I used. Since I built my first PC in 1995, I've used both AMD and Intel CPUs.

Here's the AMD CPUs I still have. I also owned a K6-2 333, but I don't know where that is at the moment. (I'm old)

  • AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz - release date 2020
  • AMD K8 Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0 GHz - release date 2005
  • AMD K8 Athlon 64 2800+ 1.8 GHz - release date 2003
  • AMD Sempron 2200+ 1.5 GHz - release date 2004
  • AMD K7 Athlon XP 2400+ 2.0 GHz - release date 2002
  • AMD K7 Athlon 850 MHz - release date 2000
 
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Very desktop centric. IMO the most important (and therefore, the best) CPU from AMD is the original Opteron, some 20-ish years ago . It introduced the 64-bit extentions and heralded the death ot Itanium. And it introduced Integrate Memory Cotroller - something we take for granted these days.
 
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Nikolay Mihaylov said:
Very desktop centric. IMO the most important (and therefore, the best) CPU from AMD is the original Opteron, some 20-ish years ago . It introduced the 64-bit extentions and heralded the death ot Itanium. And it introduced Integrate Memory Cotroller - something we take for granted these days.
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That absolutely should be in the conversation. I was addressing the desktop market because that's what the original article seemed to be addressing.
 
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Bigbluemonkey33 said:
Why in the world would the Amd athlon thoroughbred not be on this list?

If there was no thoroughbred, none of the rest of these would have happened. The K6 was awful and the athlon absolutely dismantles the P3 and was still competitive with p4 depending on the benchmarks.
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'If I have seen further, it is because I'm standing on the shoulder of Giants!' - Isaac Newton

Yes, you could argue that chip was a pre-cursor. Agree with you there.
 
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Dr3ams said:
There is quite a few years in between my current AMD CPU and the last one I used. Since I built my first PC in 1995, I've used both AMD and Intel CPUs.

Here's the AMD CPUs I still have. I also owned a K6-2 333, but I don't know where that is at the moment. (I'm old)

  • AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz - release date 2020
  • AMD K8 Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0 GHz - release date 2005
  • AMD K8 Athlon 64 2800+ 1.8 GHz - release date 2003
  • AMD Sempron 2200+ 1.5 GHz - release date 2004
  • AMD K7 Athlon XP 2400+ 2.0 GHz - release date 2002
  • AMD K7 Athlon 850 MHz - release date 2000
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Had the K8 2800+ and paired it with a 9700 Pro. I couldn't believe the bump in performance. Really let my 9700 Pro shine.
 
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Vanderlindemedia said:
Slot A (Any model) with a GFD.

Socket A, any model with esp "AXIA" stamped onto it's core.

Athlon XP with simple pencil mod.

FX from 3.2Ghz stock to 5GHz for free.

Oh man. AMD offered so much value for the money back then.
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XP used an organic package as opposed to the ceramic on earlier Socket A Athlons and Durons, requiring a mask and conductive paint to join the traces. The older ceramic packaged Socket A CPUs could indeed be done with an HB pencil. I pushed my Duron 800 to 1Ghz right out of the box. Miss those days, but I also don't.
 
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CelicaGT said:
XP used an organic package as opposed to the ceramic on earlier Socket A Athlons and Durons, requiring a mask and conductive paint to join the traces. The older ceramic packaged Socket A CPUs could indeed be done with an HB pencil. I pushed my Duron 800 to 1Ghz right out of the box. Miss those days, but I also don't.
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The Slot A was often populair - because buying the 500Mhz model was usually a 750Mhz chip internally. It was cheaper for AMD to produce 750Mhz models and rebrand those into 500, 550, 600Mhz models.

I think i had a Slot A 600Mhz - with a simple FSB mod pushed over 714Mhz (119Mhz FSB). The whole Slot 1 vs Slot A was i think because of the the large caches that needed to be stored.

And yes; the first dual core (X2) or the specialised FX-55 chips.
 
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Vanderlindemedia said:
The Slot A was often populair - because buying the 500Mhz model was usually a 750Mhz chip internally. It was cheaper for AMD to produce 750Mhz models and rebrand those into 500, 550, 600Mhz models.

I think i had a Slot A 600Mhz - with a simple FSB mod pushed over 714Mhz (119Mhz FSB). The whole Slot 1 vs Slot A was i think because of the the large caches that needed to be stored.

And yes; the first dual core (X2) or the specialised FX-55 chips.
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I also have a Slot A Athlon 600! It's on my CPU Shelf-of-Awesomeness. And yes, the large CPU daughter card type packages were indeed due to external cache. I'm sure you remember but interestingly the Slot 1 Celeron A had on die cache and was faster than its P2 counterparts due to the cache being able to run at the same speed as the CPU, not a fraction like the external cache. From what I recall it was a quantity vs. cost thing. Celeron had a small fast on die cache which turned out to be better than a large, slow, off die cache. It was also an overclocking monster, the 300A is still whispered about on certain, older parts of the internet. As for Slot 1/A, they are in fact very much the same, mechanically anyways. One is just the inverse of the other, even the fingers are mirrored if you look carefully.
 
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Since my first 386 days of building PCs, I have only used an AMD CPU chip once, an Athlon (first Ryzens were tempting). I worry more about the graphics cards than I do the CPU. This last update for the family was using i7 CPUs so I could continue modest overclock but still use air coolers. Three RTX 4090 cards tho so an expensive set of three builds.
 
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Johnpombrio said:
Since my first 386 days of building PCs, I have only used an AMD CPU chip once, an Athlon (first Ryzens were tempting). I worry more about the graphics cards than I do the CPU. This last update for the family was using i7 CPUs so I could continue modest overclock but still use air coolers. Three RTX 4090 cards tho so an expensive set of three builds.
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I've flip flopped over the years. The first PC's were of the family variety when I was a child, all Intel starting with a 286 powered Tandy 1000TX. From there we progressed through to 386, 486DX2. Once on my own I flirted with some Socket 7 Pentium stuff which then progressed to my first AMD chip, a K6 (233?) I found in the parts bin of the local PC shop on some Asus Socket 7 board, which then got replaced by a K6-2 500. That thing ran so hot that AMD fused the heatsink to the IHS with thermal epoxy! From there I went to socket A Duron/Athlon stuff which was good fun. Had to take a break from the hobby as life took a turn, when I re-entered it was to a lovely little Core 2 Duo Dell Vostro box which I still use as a small data server in the basement. Too many other systems to list but I have to say my favourite processor(s) I ever had were my i5 and i7 Devils Canyon K's. Both were OC champs and the i7 is still in service with a relative, running MSFS2020, probably right now! My current 5800X3D is cool, capable and does everything I need but it doesn't scratch that tinkering bug like having a nice big overclock on an otherwise mundane chip does. Both companies have had some fabulous chips over the years and I will continue to have no honor, flipping between brands as each takes turn suiting my needs best. Right now it's juicy 3D V-cache, kicking MSFS2020's fat ass around.
 
AMD sold millions upon millions of Bobcat chips, easily making it the company's most-sold processor in the Bulldozer era. By 2013, it had apparently sold 50 million units. That was, of course, thanks to Bobcat's super-low price, but nevertheless, it was a wildly successful product, finding use in mini-PCs and laptops alike.
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It would be nice to see AMD represented in the under-$200 mini PCs, which are currently a dumping ground for Intel's N100 chips. Mendocino would fit the bill, but I doubt they want to devote many wafers to it unless TSMC N6 capacity is freed up.
 
Bigbluemonkey33 said:
The K7 was revolutionary (thoroughbred). It beat p3. The one thing comparable is when Intel hit the wall around the 1000k and 1100k series and amd poured on with Ryzen series. Specifically the 3000k 5000k series.
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Thorougbred came after Barton (Athlon XP). You are thinking of Pluto or Orion. Or maybe Thunderbird.

Either way this list is crap.
 
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I had an XP 1800+. It was actually a frustration build because I somehow managed to build a 1Ghz Thunderbird system that wasn't stable enough to keep an OS uncorrupted for a week. Every part worked independently, CPU, motherboard, ram, GPU. Put them all together and it just refused to work properly. Windows 98 lasted all of a few hours, the brand new Windows XP lasted about a day. Windows 2000 made it a few days before failure.
 
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