What is your favorite CPU of all time...

[gamerk316]

Not on the list: Zilog Z80, followed by the Motorola 68000.

 

[The Q6660 Inside]

I picked the Pentium Pro as it introduced a bunch of features not seen on previous x86 CPUs.

- First x86 CPU to have on-CPU L2 cache
- First x86 CPU to use out of order execution
- First x86 CPU to have more than two instruction pipelines
- First multi-chip module x86 CPU, and the only x86 CPU to have more than two chips in an MCM (1 MB L2 PPro)
- Introduced the i686 ISA which was the last major revision to the 32-bit x86 ISA
- First x86 CPU to be able to be run in more than a two-processor configuration
- Introduced the P6 microarchitecture which was used in every subsequent Intel CPU, excepting the Itanium, NetBurst products, and the Atom
- Only PGA x86 CPU that doesn't use a square socket and the only CPU I know of that has two different pin grid pitches in the same socket.

Well, Nehalem came along and destroyed all that was left of P6 as it "was completely new".
RIP: P6 1995-2011

 

[MU_Engineer]

Well, Nehalem came along and destroyed all that was left of P6 as it "was completely new".
RIP: P6 1995-2011

Nehalem's microarchitecture wasn't all that different from the Core 2. The floorplan and platform is really what changed. P6+ (Pentium M/original Core) -> Core (Core 2) was a much, much larger step than Core -> Nehalem.

Have a look at the block diagram for Core 2:

And then Nehalem:

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

For me it was the Intel® Core™ i5-2500K. This processor had/has a great price and a performance that is hard to be beat. With the easy of overclocking it more people than ever have started to overclocking.

 

[simon12]

I vote the original Durons they could verclock nearly 100% and at stock could nearly outperform Pentium 3s over twice the price after that my current Phenom x 2 550BE unlocked and at 3.7GHz around £60 3 years ago and still going strong.

 

[MU_Engineer]

If we are creeping off topic and saying what our favorite CPU was rather than debating the CPU most important to computing, my current favorite is the pair of Xeon Sossamans in my HTPC. I like servers and I like unusual and somewhat oddball parts. Building an HTPC using two uncommon stopgap laptop chips in a dual-socket essentially mobile-on-server motherboard was too good to resist. The chips although slow, are plenty fast enough for what they need to do and run nearly silently. The machine also has an uptime of over a year and still counting, it's solid as a rock. I know that I could easily outperform it in pretty well any metric you could think of with a cheap Core i3 or AMD A4, but that wouldn't be nearly as cool now, would it? 😀

 

[iceclock]

id say my favourite cpu of all time was probably dx486, gotta love doom and doom2 😀

 

[sarinaide]

In terms of a revolutionary standpoint the A-Series parts are the integral step to massive changes in the computing landscape over the next couple years. I am refering less to the iGPU as a gaming part, but more so as a compute intensive juggernaugt with AMD's HSA dedication and more developers hoping onboard.

Already in pure HSA environments the A10 is roughly 4.5x faster than the 3770 in paralel computing. Anandtech ran a 3970X and 3770k vs HD7970 and HD6970 in pure compute performance, the 7970 is around 11x faster than Intel's fastest x86 efforts and GPU compute is getting stronger per generation so that differential will increase. HSA will have the most significant impact over driving x86 through the ground into rock bottom.

 

[amuffin]

E6600, cause overclocking.

 

[The Q6660 Inside]

Nehalem's microarchitecture wasn't all that different from the Core 2. The floorplan and platform is really what changed. P6+ (Pentium M/original Core) -> Core (Core 2) was a much, much larger step than Core -> Nehalem.

Have a look at the block diagram for Core 2:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Intel_Core2_arch.svg

And then Nehalem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Intel_Nehalem_arch.svg

To be very honest I can see similarities but Core and Nehalem have some noticeable differences, mostly combining areas and doing away with the FSB.

Core (the architecture used in the Core 2s) is a update on P6.
If Nehalem as you say is practically a slightly tweaked Core 2 that also means SB, Ivy and Haswell (all build ups of Nehalem) are still deep down inside a very tweaked P6...

 

[payturr]

I'm a big fan of the modern Pentium Dual Core line.

 

[iceclock]

im still sticking to dx486. gotta love when games like doom and wolfenstein 3d came out 😀

 

[MU_Engineer]

To be very honest I can see similarities but Core and Nehalem have some noticeable differences, mostly combining areas and doing away with the FSB.

Core (the architecture used in the Core 2s) is a update on P6.
If Nehalem as you say is practically a slightly tweaked Core 2 that also means SB, Ivy and Haswell (all build ups of Nehalem) are still deep down inside a very tweaked P6...

And that's exactly what they are- very tweaked P6es. It isn't unusual to tweak an arch over a number of years if it works well. AMD kept tweaking the original K7 design all the way through Llano. K8 is to K7 as Nehalem is to Core, and Stars (K10) is to K8 as Sandy Bridge is to Nehalem. The only new CPU architectures from Intel and AMD since 2000 are NetBurst, Itanium, Bonnell (Atom), Bobcat, and Bulldozer. NetBurst was a bust. Itanium was a bust. Atom is pretty close to a bust. Bobcat is a decent low-power microarchitecture but it's not a high-performance design by any means. Bulldozer had a bunch of teething pains it appears to somewhat be getting over with Piledriver and likely will do well with Steamroller, but it wasn't clearly better than Stars at first.

 

[jeretman123]

I'm happy with my Phenom II so I'm gonna go with that

Hold up you're like a gamer is as good as his hardware and u have a 550 ti and a phenom. Try a 8350 and 7870 on for size. 😉

 

[The Q6660 Inside]

And that's exactly what they are- very tweaked P6es. It isn't unusual to tweak an arch over a number of years if it works well. AMD kept tweaking the original K7 design all the way through Llano. K8 is to K7 as Nehalem is to Core, and Stars (K10) is to K8 as Sandy Bridge is to Nehalem. The only new CPU architectures from Intel and AMD since 2000 are NetBurst, Itanium, Bonnell (Atom), Bobcat, and Bulldozer. NetBurst was a bust. Itanium was a bust. Atom is pretty close to a bust. Bobcat is a decent low-power microarchitecture but it's not a high-performance design by any means. Bulldozer had a bunch of teething pains it appears to somewhat be getting over with Piledriver and likely will do well with Steamroller, but it wasn't clearly better than Stars at first.

Therefore P6 has truly stood the test of time. Today, with L3 Caches, HT, Quick Mem controllers and 14 Stage pipelines, it still soldiers on in almost all our PCs.

 

[twelve25]

im still sticking to dx486. gotta love when games like doom and wolfenstein 3d came out 😀

I played those on my Dad's overclocked 386 DX 40! Sweet Hercules graphics and 8MB of RAM, 16" Flat CRT, 14400 baud modem. He probably had $2500 into that "beast"

It was a lot of fun, I remember how amazing Myst looked, too, even if it was more of a navigated slideshow than a 3d game.

 

[sanilmahambre]

I still have my first and a veteran gaming machine with E4300 that i had overclocked to 3.8Ghz! Oh my god how smoooooothly it ran after that

 

[Guest]

Am5x86

not only was the first great overclocker but would slap around most pentiums intel was putting out for 1/3 the price. been nothing like it since . . .