The five best Intel CPUs of all time: Chipzilla's rise and fall and rise

[Admin]

We've gone through Intel's decades-long history to find its top five CPUs.

The five best Intel CPUs of all time: Chipzilla's rise and fall and rise : Read more

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Ah, the Q6600. I love that CPU. I had it on an Asus P5N-E sli. To OC it, you only had to change the FSB from 266mhz to 333mhz. This bumped the CPU clocks from 2.4ghz up to 3ghz without breaking sweat. It could go further with a lower multiplier (8x instead of 9 x). 3.2 was reachable with 400mhz ram, but it took testing to get it right. There was an fsb hole somewhere between 333mhz and about 380/390. Once you got past that 3.2 was very achievable. Stellar CPU IMO.

The CPU was in a Commodore PC. They rebranded as a PC gaming PC supplier. I had a medal of honour theme skin on it. It looked deadly! : https://commodoregaming.com/pcshop/Game+PC/Commodore+gs.aspx

The link is just for reference. The specs of the one I had don't seem to be there any more.

 

[pjmelect]

Undoubtedly the best CPU for its time and was the chip that made Intel was the 8080 yet it was not mentioned in this article.

 

[bit_user]

I know better than to click on an article like this, but I fell for it. Now, I guess I swallowed the bait, because I'm also posting.

4. Core i5-2500K: That time Intel won so hard that AMD gave up for half a decade
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Any article about this period that doesn't also talk about Intel's manufacturing advantage is bordering on journalistic malpractice. It's easy to forget, but Intel had literally a couple years lead on the manufacturing tech of anyone else in the chip game, and Sandybridge probably came right at the peak of that. Intel's lead was so bad that I was strongly of the opinion that Intel should've been forced to spin off its fabs, which looks like it could finally happen for other reasons.

No doubt AMD had other things going wrong with it, but even a comparable design from them wouldn't have been competitive due to Intel's superior node. I think AMD knew this, and it's one of the factors that motivated some bad decisions on their part, like the FPU-sharing of Bulldozer and hoping they might be able to compete with GPU-compute (i.e. the whole HSA debacle - look it up).

The only way AMD CPUs managed to regain relevance is both that Intel's 7 nm fab node hit years worth of delay, allowing TSMC to catch up & even pass them, and AMD finally waking up and adopting a properly modern architecture (many thanks to Mike Clark and Jim Keller, for that). Here's what Jim said about the latter point:

"Mike Clark was the architect of Zen, and I made this list of things we wanted to do [for Zen]. I said to Mike that if we did this it would be great, so why don’t we do it? He said that AMD could do it. My response was to ask why aren't we doing it - he said that everybody else says it would be impossible. I took care of that part. It wasn’t just me, there were lots of people involved in Zen, but it was also about getting people out of the way that were blocking it."

Source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1670...storrent-ceo-ljubisa-bajic-and-cto-jim-keller
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Even though it was executed successfully, Zen could not match Skylake's IPC. The first gen was only relevant due to having double the core count. It took further generations of refinement and a properly competitive TSMC node for AMD to briefly pass Intel on single-thread performance.

 

[v2millennium]

Intel came up with the cut-down 8088, which was 8-bit and not 16-bit.

8088 was 16-bit CPU with 8-bit data bus.

 

[gondor]

I believe 80386 and P6 (Pentium Pro) belong on top 5 bst INtel CPU list of all time - much more so than Nehalem and some random Raptor Lake mentioned.

 

[HideOut]

You honerstly gave the 13900K over the 12900K? Its the same chip! 12xxx series is the new chips, witht he 13ths gaining 100-200 mhz. the ONLY exception is the 13700 that gained 4 e cores. The list here is flawed, very very flawed. And the 2600K was much more known than the 2500K. I truely dont get many of the picks on this list.

 

[cyrusfox]

I believe 80386 and P6 (Pentium Pro) belong on top 5 bst INtel CPU list of all time - much more so than Nehalem and some random Raptor Lake mentioned.

Recency bias, what's factually true vs what majority of readers can relate to in article form.

Personally I was an AMD user starting with an Athlon in 1999 to Phenom II X2 variants till 2012 when it was clear AMD was inefficient and not improving. I sidestepped Bulldozer and switched to Intel on Ivy bridge(i5-3570k which I did not upgrade until 8th gen, and have since bought every i7/i9 of each subsequent generation). I personally don't remember any CPU's used prior to 1999 as I didn't build those machines and was too young(we were a Mac house). I think our first PC was a Free compaq PC received with early DSL bundle from 1996, I loved it as it gave me access to games that usually were delayed if ever they came to macs (Warcraft 2/Diable/Starcraft, Doom, Quake, etc...)

You honerstly gave the 13900K over the 12900K? Its the same chip! 12xxx series is the new chips, witht he 13ths gaining 100-200 mhz. the ONLY exception is the 13700 that gained 4 e cores. The list here is flawed, very very flawed. And the 2600K was much more known than the 2500K. I truely dont get many of the picks on this list.

the 13900 added 8e cores over the 12900 as well as much more cache, its a substantially better chip for productivity task and has an edge on the 12900 due to the increased cache.

 

[stonecarver]

It might be an snuffed at aged CPU today but it's still hanging in there is the Xeon 5680 and the 5690. Launched in 2010-11

It was there on the first Gen i3/ i5/i7's to now Intel's 14 gen. It quietly rolled through all the punches and the advancements of both Intel and AMD.

There 14 year old CPU's now that's a long run. I would give this chip the Energizer bunny award for it keeps going and going.

And it runs Windows 11 beautifully.

 

[baflgv20]

The 8700K (10600K), 9900K (10700K), 10900K are all honorable mentions. The Q6600 is definitely a great selection. I still have my Q6600 GO and eVGA 680 SLi rev.2 board with the 1200MHz SLi OCZ DDR2 which is the fastest DDR2 if i'm not mistaken. But, the 8700K to the 10900K's are still great CPU's. I got an 8700K with a z370 AORUS Gaming 7 and RX 6900XT TOXIC "AIR" on a 65' 4K120Hz LG OLED and it works wonders. I also have a 77in OLED wall with a AORUS 4090 and 13700K but, i find myself always going back to the z370 setup. Maybe it's the Corsair 500D RGB SE with 6 LL120's and the z370 Aorus Gaming 7. It looks like a Christmas tree in the winter. I put it in the window for all the children to see....lol. I ran a P4 631 OC'd to 4GHz on an Abit AG8 with the uGuru OC chip (who remembers that). I then went to the Q6600 GO and eVGA 680i to a 3770K. Which i let my pops use. So i basically use the Q6600 OC to 3.6GHz all the way up till the i7 8700K caught my attention. I found a returned 8700K for $280 in Jan 2018. So i jumped on it. I also got the z370 Aorus Gaming 7 board for $150 since the IO shield was missing. I ended up getting the shield for $12 later. I'm the guy that buys out all the open box and returns from Micro Center...lol. I recently picked up $720 3090ti's FE's. ASUS TUF versions for the same. Also, $700 7900XT's to $500 6950XT's. Who wouldn't. The best deal i ever got was a $1200 4090 Aorus WaterForce with a $1200 4K120 LG OLED because the box was damaged and the hoses were disconnected. Got to love Micro Center's open box and returns or refurbished products.

 

[UnforcedERROR]

Ah, the Q6600. I love that CPU. I had it on an Asus P5N-E sli. To OC it, you only had to change the FSB from 266mhz to 333mhz. This bumped the CPU clocks from 2.4ghz up to 3ghz without breaking sweat. It could go further with a lower multiplier (8x instead of 9 x). 3.2 was reachable with 400mhz ram, but it took testing to get it right. There was an fsb hole somewhere between 333mhz and about 380/390. Once you got past that 3.2 was very achievable. Stellar CPU IMO.

My Q6600 was at 3.6 stable for years until the RAM went bad. My board also didn't properly support more than 4 gigs at the time, which is mostly what aged it out. I had it so long the next processor I bought was, oddly, a 6600K. Wasn't intentional, just the timing.

And the 2600K was much more known than the 2500K. I truely dont get many of the picks on this list.

The 2500K is one of the best value-oriented chips Intel produced. For over a decade people joked about not needing anything more than their overclocked 2500K. It was kind of the successor to the Q6600 in that sense.

 

[hotaru251]

No mention of the 4790k?
That cpu OC'd so well & if you bought one back when ti was new...you could still have a decent CPU for gaming even today (showing its age limitations now yes, but its usable)

also the 13th gen vs am5 is toss up....each is going to win/lose specific cases as different programs (both gaming and productivity ones) will favor one or other. There is no overall winner. (unless its gaming and then tis the 7800x3D in most cases)

 

[bit_user]

You honerstly gave the 13900K over the 12900K?

Agreed. Alder Lake was a massive leap over Rocket Lake and even Tiger Lake. The generational IPC jump by its P-cores was only surpassed by Core 2, in modern Intel history.

Its reputation is still tarnished by the disabling of AVX-512 and the mixed reception of the e-cores. I think both will fade with time, and history will show the Gen 12 CPUs to be one of Intel's great advancements.

Another hit on Alder Lake's reputation is probably that it was leapfrogged by the 5800X3D (in gaming) and then Zen 4, even though those didn't happen until the following year.

Recency bias, what's factually true vs what majority of readers can relate to in article form.

I think this applies to Raptor Lake, also.

the 13900 added 8e cores over the 12900 as well as much more cache, its a substantially better chip for productivity task and has an edge on the 12900 due to the increased cache.

They also tweaked the ring bus and process node, which resulted is substantial multithreaded gains.

Raptor Lake's many tweaks helped it retake the overall client CPU crown (aside from 7800X3D still winning on many gaming benchmarks). Even so, its improvements weren't as big an overall jump over Alder Lake as Alder Lake was over Gen 11.

So, definitely some recency bias. The author probably chose Raptor Lake due to its current popularity, more than anything else. That's not what these sorts of retrospectives should ideally do, IMO.

 

[Albert.Thomas]

How the heck do you not have the most significant to consumers Intel CPU released in the last 15 years, the i7-5820k?!

$399 for a strong hexa-core CPU in 2013, nearly 4 years before Ryzen was released - and the CPU is still relevant today, especially if its overclocked.

 

[thestryker]

As much as I love Nehalem and what it led to the 920 probably should have been swapped out for the Coppermine Pentium III (on die cache and return to socketed CPUs) or maybe the Celeron 300A which defined a generation.

I know better than to click on an article like this, but I fell for it. Now, I guess I swallowed the bait, because I'm also posting.

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4. Core i5-2500K: That time Intel won so hard that AMD gave up for half a decade​

​

Any article about this period that doesn't also talk about Intel's manufacturing advantage is bordering on journalistic malpractice. It's easy to forget, but Intel had literally a couple years lead on the manufacturing tech of anyone else in the chip game, and Sandybridge probably came right at the peak of that. Intel's lead was so bad that I was strongly of the opinion that Intel should've been forced to spin off its fabs, which looks like it could finally happen for other reasons.

To be fair Bulldozer was using GlobalFoundries 32nm SOI which wasn't really worse than Intel's 32nm though it had yield problems. I think that was the only major volume complex product on that node and most waited on the half node 28nm. That launched pretty much half way between SNB/IVB due to delays with 22nm which is when Intel was back in the driver's seat until TSMC N7.

 

[bit_user]

How the heck do you not have the most significant to consumers Intel CPU released in the last 15 years, the i7-5820k?!

$399 for a strong hexa-core CPU in 2013, nearly 4 years before Ryzen was released - and the CPU is still relevant today, especially if its overclocked.

I recall a lot more praise being heaped upon the i7-3960X, which was a 6-core CPU launched in Q4 2011.

Contrary to your claim, it seems the i7-5820K launched in Q3, 2014.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...ations.html?countrylabel=Chile&wapkw=i7-5820K
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Also, Intel cut back its PCIe lanes to 28, which definitely annoyed some people, at the time. That said, the i7-3960X supported only PCIe 2.0 (which I find weird, because I have the E5 Xeon version that supported PCIe 3.0).

Anandtech benchmarked these two. The venerable i7-3960X held up pretty well against its 2-generations newer successor. That's not too surprising, since we're basically talking about Sandybridge vs. Haswell.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/8426...view-core-i7-5960x-i7-5930k-i7-5820k-tested/5
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[ThomasKinsley]

I never had the Q6600 but for my first build I opted for the E6600. I'm not sure what the author means by calling it the slowest. By no means was it the slowest of the Core 2 Duo series. The E6300 and E6400 (and their 6x20 refreshes) were slower, but they were all reasonably priced. That era was one of the best for computing. The Pentiums before that generally lasted ~3 years before they were crippled by software updates, but the E6600 kept going and was only replaced when the legacy RAM died and it wasn't worth buying more. Intel needs another Core 2 revolution, and if not from Intel then someone else needs to make it happen.

 

[bit_user]

Intel needs another Core 2 revolution,

I think they had it, and it was called Alder Lake. I don't foresee any single-generation improvement being that big, going forward.

if not from Intel then someone else needs to make it happen.

I'm convinced it would take either some fundamental change in chip fabrication technology

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...-can-be-used-with-standard-chipmaking-methods
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...or a fundamental renegotiation in the hardware/software interface.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

How the heck do you not have the most significant to consumers Intel CPU released in the last 15 years, the i7-5820k?!

$399 for a strong hexa-core CPU in 2013, nearly 4 years before Ryzen was released - and the CPU is still relevant today, especially if its overclocked.

I'd go with the 4700K over the 5820K, since TH showed it was still a 2560x1440 ultra 120fps performer with the "How much CPU does a 3080 need" test in 2021. Released in 2013 it took AMD half a decade to catch up to with Zen.

 

[Sluggotg]

My builds went from the 486s to Pentium series. I jumped ship to the Athlons. Then to the excellent Athlon 64s. When the Core 2 came out I jumped back to Intel. Core 2 was very significant. I mostly build Intel machines now but AMD makes great CPUs and GPUs too. It is nice, (for us), to have competition.

 

[Nyara]

Agreed. Alder Lake was a massive leap over Rocket Lake and even Tiger Lake. The generational IPC jump by its P-cores was only surpassed by Core 2, in modern Intel history.

Alder Lake's IPC jump is so solid that even a 12100 can keep up with a RTX 4090 in native 4K for the large part, even if such pairing is rare today, a couple years down the road and the fact Intel will keep fabbing 10nm for another 5 years will allow for cheaper GPUs to be on the performance tier, making the comparison a lot more relevant.

 

[Amdlova]

I7 920 q6600 i5 2500k overclocks like a dream...
Today if you touch over your house burn down

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

How the heck do you not have the most significant to consumers Intel CPU released in the last 15 years, the i7-5820k?!

$399 for a strong hexa-core CPU in 2013, nearly 4 years before Ryzen was released - and the CPU is still relevant today, especially if its overclocked.

The 5820k was released at the end of 2014. I know because I built my last computer in 2013 and the only 6 core Intel chip was the 3960x, which I would say is a much more worthy entry than the 5820k as it came with all of Sandy-Bridges advantages.

 

[NinoPino]

I disagree on all but Core 2 because a lot of architectures led to very high improvements comparing to those mentioned.
386 : 32bit, IPC, full protected mode, etc...
486 : integrated FPU, IPC, record of transistors number (a beast of a CPU for the time)
Pentium : A biiig jump in performance from 486's
Pentium Pro : OOO and the start of servers escalade
Pentium II : the fusion of goods from Pentium and Pentium Pro
Pentium III : a very clear improvement over PII in any aspect
Pentium M : power efficiency, father of Core 2 and the salvation of Intel

 

[evdjj3j]

I'd like to see a Pentium 4 made using modern manufacturing methods.