List your favorite CPU of all time

[Fast_N_Curious]

For me, thats the AMD OEM 970 BE processor, which was released as a quad core Phenom II. Zosma core chips actually have 6 cores, and sometimes you can get lucky and unlock the two hidden cores, making this chip faster than AMDs flagship, 1100T in base clock.

[dizmo]

2700k. Was good for far, far longer than it had any right to be.

[RONOTHAN##]

The favorite CPU I personally owned was the i7 920. It was in the first custom built system I ever owned, and I still regret flipping it to buy a R7 1700. I don't regret the upgrade, I just really wish I had kept that CPU, half for sentimental reasons, half because it was the most stable motherboard/CPU I've owned to this day. 

[Alireza]

god bless my previous king i5 4570 which is still works like a champion

I paired it with a cheap mobo and 25 TB of hard drives and a 10 Gb network card and now its a home server

[Mister Woof]

In recent years, i7-8700k. It has been and will remain relevant for a long time.

 

In the old days, 486DX2-66

[8tg]

Pentium E6500k

Take a really high binned core2duo, drop it to Pentium status but leave it capable of overclocking to 5ghz+

 

First intel CPU to use “k” as designation it’s meant for overclocking.

[SorryBella]

59 minutes ago, Storm-Chaser said:

For me, thats the AMD OEM 970 BE processor, which was released as a quad core Phenom II. Zosma core chips actually have 6 cores, and sometimes you can get lucky and unlock the two hidden cores, making this chip faster than AMDs flagship, 1100T in base clock.

i7-1165G7. As much as i love Zen's improvement, its more amusing to see Intel Xe's little baby steps.

[vetali]

Q6600 or 2600/2500k. Both were very good CPUs that lasted a long time before becoming obsolete.

[Lord Megadrive]

My old AMD K6-2 500mhz was rather good for its time

 

[Gohardgrandpa]

18 hours ago, dizmo said:

2700k. Was good for far, far longer than it had any right to be.

100% agree with you. Probably the best PC purchase I've ever made. 

[freeagent]

It’s hard to choose just one. Really hard.

 

I will cop out and say my 5900X even though it’s mildly disappointing. Only because it can’t hit the same fclk as my 5600.. It’s such a beast and it can’t be ignored. My X5690 ES treated me well for a decade. My 4GHz Q6600 was godly, my E8600 ES was an FSB beast, like my Conroe E6300 (first run) was. I liked my 4400+, but my 3700+ was way more fun, first time hitting 3GHz was with that chip. Before that my 2500M was a beast at 2700MHz.  My P3 450 gave me my first taste of overclocking, but my p3 800 gave me my first taste of 1GHz, just before I hosed the board. 

Ive had a lot more chips than that, these are the ones I had fun with

 

[Beerzerker]

That's a hard question because I've had and still have a few that qualify for different reasons.

The best overall is my FX-8320 that's "Gimped" (Dead memory channel), clocks like a mad banshee and IS the world record holder in MHz for a bench ran to produce a result instead of just a CPU-Z  validation (8304MHz).

My old Opteron 165 is another that was a freak in it's own way, holds several records for that chip model.
I no longer have that one, passed it along to someone else to enjoy.

The chip that was partially responsible for my current WR for Socket 754 in ref clock (495MHz), namely a 3700+ Newark mobile.
It's showing the effects these days but still works at least.

And the original chip I ever benched with years ago that's still kicking, namely an XPM-2800 Barton core that took all the abuse from my lack of knowledge about such at the very beginning and took it in stride.

As for daily use, the one I'm running now isn't bad at all (Ryzen 3 1200) and had it running at 3700MHz on a daily basis without issue. Clocked it down not long ago to make it last longer but it was running there with under 1.32v's applied to it, stable.
 

[KohanaCoyote]

I have to say, I adore my Xeon X5670s. They lasted for years doing crunching for VM hosting and FTP.

 

I was a Mac person for many years, so I did not have highly built PCs outside of server use. In a pinch, I made the dual X5670s into a gaming PC, which it did well for what it was, does not hold a candle to the capabiliies of my new R9 5950X

[xg32]

opteron 165 was my first duo core, even went on ebay to buy a good stepping, then 2600k obviously. I'm now wondering how long the 9900k  will do its thing and 5950x actually feels like the jump i had to duo core, in the sense that every little thing is snappier, even compared to the 9900k. I suspect next gen gpus will bury the 9900k, but i'm hoping the 5950x will last like the 165 and 2600k

 

Sandy Bridge and Pascal were both mistakes by intel and nvidia in a similar way, though some of the late 3770k oc'd like crazy, i didn't even bother (probably should have for pcie3 and 5.1ghz binned.)

 

phenom+ phenom 2, 6700k 7700k and 8600k were all POSs, the phenom 1 bsod at stock and was stable with a 100mhz downclock (working as intended amd), and was so jank it felt and probably was slower than the 165. 6700k fried cause a gtx 670 fried, got a bad 7700k bin and the 8600k was just non-stop bottleneck for modern games+videos. Silicon Lottery had a big sale on 8600k right at launch cause i'm guessing everyone went for the 8700k, going for that was a mistake. Overall the "bad" cpus didn't even feel good brand new.

 

I never got a chance to use zen 1 and after seeing this thread i do wonder how bad the single core was to use (on paper vs actual performance), but without it we'd be stuck on quad cores forever.

[Guest]

Hello @Storm-Chaser! 

 

I don't have a single CPU that is my favorite. I have many actually.

Most of them I don't even have any more! lol.

Maybe by, per the platform (If I could remember which ones I liked best) ok?

 

AMD

S462 - I think my Sempron 2500+ was fun. No cold bug (unless too cold) and reached 2.5ghz multi of 7 x 359mhz bus. 79% OC!

S754 - Was this 3100+ Paris core that was not cold bugged. With negative temps, 3.2ghz. That was a fun chip! 78% OC!

S939 - Probably FX-55 which was my first "Gaming Rig" Cpu I had purchased after killing my socket A Gateway. 

S940 (NOT AM2 940) - Dual socket K8N-DRE pin mod 1.55v with 2x Opteron 875 chips. (quad core!) These clocked to 2.85ghz 30% OC!

SAM2 - Definitely 3 special chips. 2x 6400+ Windsor cores both hitting 4ghz+. And a 6000+ that had a really decent memory controller, DDR2 1200mhz. (600 effective)

SAM2+ - Phenom 9850BE - Although not a great overclocker, a whopping 3ghz chip, It was my first soldered de-lidded chip. 09'.

SAM3 - What a tough choice. Phenom II 565BE which clocked 5.2ghz ambient liquid AND unlocked. 

SAM4 - Well, so far the 2700X. It's lidless and relidded no LM and still runs daily on the stock cooler.

 

INTEL 

S478 - Celeron 2.7ghz clocked to 3.5ghz 27 x 130mhz bus was a fun chip to rock out with. Never did hit the 4ghz club on 478 yet.

S775 - Pentium D 820 which I managed to squeeze 4ghz out of. 

S1366 - i7 980 Gulftown. What a power hog!! Nearly 1.7v for 5.2ghz. But I got it up there!! Nearly a 60% OC!

S1155 - 2500K clocked to 5ghz, Was my daily Driver too. Also had a 3770K that hit a max of 5.2ghz nearly a 50% OC!

S1150 - 4690K which I ran as a daily for a time at only 4.2ghz. This chip I did not go balls out with. But was rock solid performance in it's time!

S1151 - 8700K. Still in use as a daily after some short LN2 runs. Reaching a max of 6.1ghz which is about 65% OC! 

 

If this is not cool, I'm sorry. I don't favor a single chip from all platforms unfortunately. 

Edited September 14, 2021 by ShrimpBrime
Added a platform and Fav chip

[Fast_N_Curious]

No feel free to add more than one chip! For example, since I love the phenom II so much I decided to pick up the 6180 SE, AMDs 12 core Opteron variant and AMDs last processor build on the Phenom II / 45nm core. This processor is 140w IIRC but supports a total of 4 processors, so my dream has been to find a workstation to put them in. That's 48 cores! But they have proven to be elusive (a workstation to put them in). Can't seem to find anything other than really loud servers to handle these chips, so far at least. Only downside to the processor is that it runs at 2.5GHz and only supports a maximum of 1333MHz memory. My typical performance cut off is 1600MHz, but I do make an exception for this CPU since that's my preferred Phenom II silicon under the hood. 

 

[Fast_N_Curious]

On 9/13/2021 at 9:03 PM, xg32 said:

phenom+ phenom 2, 6700k 7700k and 8600k were all POSs, the phenom 1 bsod at stock and was stable with a 100mhz downclock (working as intended amd), and was so jank it felt and probably was slower than the 165. 6700k fried cause a gtx 670 fried, got a bad 7700k bin and the 8600k was just non-stop bottleneck for modern games+videos. Silicon Lottery had a big sale on 8600k right at launch cause i'm guessing everyone went for the 8700k, going for that was a mistake. Overall the "bad" cpus didn't even feel good brand new.

I assume you are talking from personal experience here? As in your own preferences? (re: Phenom II)?

 

I would have to disagree with your sentiment on the Phenom II chip. They were and still are a pretty decent powerhouse (just look on ebay, they hold their value very well), they run cool and they are very reliable if your OC is set up correctly. Even in stock form, they are a force to be reckoned with. Especially find the DDR3 platform very well flushed out at this point, the platform is actually very snappy with CL7 memory. Matter of fact I hit 33.9ns in latency using aida64 with the computer out the window on a cold night.

 

Silicon Lottery is basically a scam/rip off for the past few generations of Intel chips, at least and perhaps   going back further. Only useful for things like delidding, etc.... This is due to the fact that Intel gave us 5GHz stable on nearly all of their later gen unlocked processors, providing you have a decent cooling system in place. In other words, it's very easy to get most of Intel's more recent chips to 5.0GHz, and do it reliably. They will pocket a little coin for "binning" your already "binned" 10900K, for example, and unsuspecting buyers will think they are getting the cream of the crop, when in reality it's purchased from some distributor and measures out identically to other chips. the will be identical to what silconlottery.com is telling you. Basically, they are middle men. I don't like middle men, plus, Id prefer not to have anyone tampering with my CPU before it gets in my hands.

 

 

[xg32]

46 minutes ago, Storm-Chaser said:

.

i think i got suckered into phenom 1 cause how good the opteron was, i only got phenom 2 cause i was stuck with a motherbaord, and iirc they were slower than the intel options. Think it was a e8500. (i didn't keep the phenom cpus for long).

 

I can't quite remember whether it was conroe or sandy bridge when intel completely took over (just googled, it was conroe), So I went 165->phenom i->phenom ii->e8500->2600k, but i know the phenom i was the worst cpu i've ever used.

 

As far as silicon lottery goes, i don't mind paying a premium for a delidded bin, the price i got it the 8600k for was way below msrp cause most people wanted the 8700k, i got greedy and that was my mistake, can't really pin that on SL.

 

[Blue4130]

My Celeron 300a. My friends laughed at me when I first got it. I showed them. 

[Pasi123]

Intel Celeron 333MHz - This was what my first PC had. It was already old and slow when I got it in 2006 but it is what I had.

 

Intel Xeon E5420 - My first (and second) server had two of these, thanks to these CPUs I have a lot of great memories of my Minecraft server. They were also the first Xeons I've ever had or even used, two months later I decided to buy a Xeon W3520 system to replace my main PC which at the time was running a Core2 Duo E6300.

 

Intel Xeon W3520 (i7-920) - My first powerful enough CPU, it was able to run everything I did without any problems. I bought it over 8 years ago and honestly I could still use it as my main CPU

 

Intel Xeon X5670 - The best bang for the buck CPU I've ever had, when overclocked it was able to match way more expensive CPUs (in 2016 when I bought it). It's still more than powerful enough for everything I do, especially because I have a really slow graphics card (GTX 960)