Your favorite cpu

[Ruru]

All those 4 core Athlon IIs that could be unlocked to full 6 core Thubans and could hit over 3.8GHz with no more than 1.32V.

Phenom II X2s were also dope. I had a 555BE which unlocked to quad and OC'd to 4.1

 

[Crazybc]

Intel Core i7-920 .Has to be that one. I overclocked mine with very little extra voltage to 3.6 Ghz and I basically left it at that for 8 years.They were inexpensive and overclocked like crazy.​

 

[Ruru]

Intel Core i7-920 .Has to be that one. I overclocked mine with very little extra voltage to 3.6 Ghz and I basically left it at that for 8 years.They were inexpensive and overclocked like crazy.​

So low OC? I ran mine at 4.2 back in the day

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

Why was the phenom II the worst? I almost picked one of those up

Not enough bang for the buck.

 

[inserf1]

Fond memories of:

Athlon 64 X2 3800 +
C2Q Q6600
I7 920 - Couldnt get 4.2 stable, had to settle for 4.11
Xeon X5650 - This one was at 4.2 (kinda nuts to think I got 9 years out of X58/1366) prob my absolute fav chip, bought in 2014, Sandy/Ivy Bridge-E wasnt enough to justify the cost / plus it was getting on, and Haswell-E wasnt out yet, for a fraction of the cost of either, X5650 just slide in.

Honorable mentions

Ryzen 7 1700
I5 12600k

The other 6 I remember, werent bad, just did their job, some of the motherboards were awful.

 

[kapone32]

All time fave would probably be 1090T. The most fun to work with were probably those 3 cores that you could unlock one more with a MB feature. Today my 7900X3D is the fastest CPU I have ever used.

 

[JackOO7]

I still have these 2 cpus lying around. Could not part of them.

 

[Zazigalka]

1. 2500k. First cpu that I've seen overclock really change games from choppy and sluggish to smooth (that was far cry 3 on r9 290 and 5050mhz core). Shame it only had pcie 2.0, I would have kept it for longer. Swapped it for a 3570k or 3770k, can't remember.
2. 1800+ Thoroughbread-B, really great gaming cpu, cost next to nothing.
3. e6300 - great overclocker. sadly, I only had a 8600gt at that time, so I gained very little. If that was 8800gts, things would have been different.
4. 10700F I have now, bought it new 3 years ago, does surprisingly well in games for what is cost (230eur)

 

[jelloslug]

can't speak for him but with most Phemom II x6, you could not OC them as well as the Phenom II x4 and their base frequency was often lower as well compared to the Phenom II x4

I liked the zosma core (which is really just a thuban with two disabled cores). Hunting down gains by unlocking cores was a thrill, even if you couldn't go much higher then 4.0GHz.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Ah, the E8500, the often overlooked E8x00 series sibling.

When the lineup launched, everyone ignored the then-top end E8500 and went for the E8400 because it was "the same thing, but cheaper" (the E8200/8300 were also forgotten as they were pretty much only seen in OEMs). Half a year later, the E8600 released and took the place the E8500 had and suddenly I was willing to buy that price point. The lineup ended like that, but there was the rumored E8700, the 3.5 GHz one. Rumors has it that it was canceled since Intel saw no need for a faster dual core (and they were moving to focus on "Core i" instead). I was hoping it would launch, but it's probably good it didn't because upgrading from a E8400 to an E8600 was already silly enough (though it did grant me 4 GHz instead of 3.6 GHz at the same milder FSB settings).

That's a great illustration of how I landed on the E8500. I'd built my 775 platform with an E7300, then the existence of the E8600 made the E8500 a really good deal by the time I was ready to upgrade. That thing carried me all the way until frickin' Skylake. Well, almost. I ran a modded E5450 for 12-18 months before making that leap.

 

[34710ST]

i7 6700K

 

[gffermari]

Celeron 300Mhz
Pentium III 1Ghz
QX6700
i7 4770K
5800X3D

I had many CPUs from both brands, nearly every gen and starting with (my father's) 486 at 33mhz. I had the best experience with the written above though.

 

[Crazybc]

So low OC? I ran mine at 4.2 back in the day

Yes but i ran mine for over 8 years like that. No degradation Nothing it just worked perfectly I didn't want to do a max overclock and then shorten its life.

 

[phanbuey]

qx6700! man I only dreamed of this cpu back in the day.

 

[Bomby569]

486 DX2 66

the 800nm beast, one of the most popular cpu's of all time, everyone had or wanted one back in the day, and it stayed relevant for a long time.

 

[phanbuey]

486 DX2 66

the 800nm beast, one of the most popular cpu's of all time, everyone had or wanted one back in the day, and it stayed relevant for a long time.

We we were still using these these in our school libary in '95 running windows 3.1 -- I think they installed NT or 95 on them and kept them around. they were around for so long the shade of plastic on those IBMs looked like something out of a STALKER game. They also had those springy IBM keyboards which I always thought was an odd choice for a library environment.

 

[AlienIsGOD]

my favs are Intel Q9450 (first decent CPU) Ryzen 2700 non X (first "higher end" cpu) and my current Ryzen 5600 non X. Now in general the 5900/50 were my fav dream CPUs to own but I went with stuff I've personally owned over the last 25 years

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Phenom II X2s were also dope. I had a 555BE which unlocked to quad and OC'd to 4.1

Had a 565BE I sent to Scott on a trade that was 4.4ghz daily stable.
Unlocked to a quad until I broke it during OC then it would only unlock to a tripler core. Still clocked like mad though.

Those chips loved the cold
That 800mt/s CL4-4-4-10 DDR2 performance. Mmmm Dohnuts....
HWBot challenge 2011 (unlock forbidden for comp)

 

[jelloslug]

4.4ghz daily stable

That's a golden chip! Very jealous.

 

[kapone32]

1090T was my fave but now my new CPU 7900X3D is playing 4K Games with no problem.

 

[thestryker6]

My favorites have been due to unique experience more than anything else. Just going to list my primary systems and then talk singular favorite.

Coppermine PIII 700MHz switched FSB to 133 for the budget PIII 933MHz performance

Dual Tualatin PIII-S 1.4GHz with DDR memory

Athlon XP-M 2500 (found a two decade old email receipt because I couldn't remember which SKU )

Athlon 64 x2 4400

i7-920 @ 3.8GHz with 4GHz boost

i7-6800K @ 4.2GHz all core/4.3GHz two core

i7-6900K @ 4.2GHz all core/4.3GHz two core (this was later on when a company was selling brand new tray CPUs for very cheap and it ended up being better than anything new at equivalent price)

Ultra 7 265K stock clocks with D2D/NGU at 32x until Intel updates arrive

My favorite from the ones I've had would be my dual Tualatin PIII system with DDR. The MSI motherboard I have didn't have voltage controls so I had to connect pins (used copper leads from christmas light bulbs) on the CPU to increase voltage for overclocking. This system was extremely fast for it's time and if it could have clocked higher (could only get ~1.55GHz) probably would have lasted longer even with games not being able to use multiple threads. It was fun at LAN parties though to have people pulling stuff off my system and never notice because one CPU was handling the game and the other everything else.

It became my first server box and ran until it was replaced by a SNB Xeon based system in ~2011. It hasn't been powered on in probably a decade but is still in storage.

I doubt the 265K will end up passing the Tualatin system, but part of the reason I got it is all the new levers with which to tweak the system. I really like the optimization aspect of putting together my own systems so all the new things to mess around with really appeals.

 

[Slackaveli]

1090T was my fave but now my new CPU 7900X3D is playing 4K Games with no problem.

Yeah, Man. I have my old sentimental favorites and all, but, i am certain I'll look back at this 9800x3d quite fondly. It's been a good while since a chip has performed this well compared to it's peers. Really all the v-cache chips can say that over these last couple years. But Holy Hell this 9800x3d is insane.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

That's a golden chip! Very jealous.

That was decent clocks, but a lot of people with them Phenom II duallies seem to clock that high. A 980BE from the box was so hot, 4ghz was pretty average. I managed to squeeze 6.3ghz on LN2.

AM2 through AM3+ is a spectacular platform. I recommend it for OC hobbiests. In fact the transition from s939 to AM2 was made very interesting by AsRock with AM2 Dual Sata II which you could get an AM2 Riser card and upgrade the Cpu and memory on the same s939 NB chipset. Which is probably one of the rare (est/er) pieces of hardware to find to date. I have long waited to see the board and riser card for sale, I feel I'll be dead long before I ever get a chance to experience that first hand. I did have the board, but blew up a FX-55 and the board with a failed volt mod. At the time, an expensive mistake.

 

[Vayra86]

i5 3570K but only because I didnt get a Sandy Bridge, and it was newer. A huge advancement in gaming perf. OC on it was poor though.

7800X3D tops my chart, for doing similar but at even lower power 65w vs 77).

 

[Calenhad]

Whatever cpu I currently have in my computer