Your favorite cpu

[ShrimpBrime]

Out of about 170 processors, I cannot pick only a single cpu...

Socket A - pretty much any of these. Pencil mods!
Socket 754 was a 3000+ Paris core.
FX-55, FX-62, FX-57, Opteron 165.
Phenom 940BE Phenom II 980BE and 965BE and 1090T.
FX-8300 was a whopper hit 7685mhz with that one. FX-9590
2500K and 2700K was fun.
Had a 4690K, also clocking fun
Ryzen 2700X
8700K was just annoying beastly thing. Loads of fun.
Current Raptor Lake 14700K (and others) on DryIce is good stuff. On ambient, not so much fun.

And more! That's just off my brain rn.

 

[kambei.7s]

Celeron 333 slot 1 - nice overclocking ability, nice codename 'mendocino' and cheap.
Tualatin - fast and cold.
Duron Morgan - fast and very cheap (pencil overclocking unlock ) (better than some P4)
Athlon XP Barton - fast and price is ok.
Core 2 Duo e4500 - nice overclocking (my running at 3.4Ghz without voltage boost)
Core i5 3570s - cold, fast, overclocking ability is great without any voltage boost
My favorite is Phenom X6 1055T - great performance for price, true six core design
One of my current Ryzen 5700x also great but it's not revolution for me after any my CPU I have before like phenom after c2d

 

[Dr. Dro]

Basically any ancient (pre-2002) Athlon/Duron CPU. No safety, no limits, no reason. Pure chaos and massacre. Truly manly processors.

lol reading this the old tom's hardware video came right back to mind

 

[DaemonForce]

The FX-8370 was my point of leaving desktop to enter VR so it's no wonder. It can still do literally anything.
Right now my favorite is a budget AM2 chip called Athlon 2650e. It was a very random SFF donation one day.
Wildly incapable as a Win7 desktop, it's a great Windows Server. It's how I do something hilarious like run an eMachines with ~20TB storage.
Oh sure the R5 3600 runs circles around them both but it just hasn't been impressive to me. I even mentioned after build it feels like a sidegrade.
There's a chance the 5700X3D or 5900X makes me fall in love with gaming again but it's gonna take a while to find the motivation.

 

[mkppo]

Phenom II X3 (i forgot the model code) that unlocked into a X4 and overclocked so insanely well I wondered why it was ever binned as an X3.

And the Athlon 64 3000+. Man that thing was a beast when tuned right, I forgot what memory dies were the best but I vaguely recall something like Winbond BH die. Either way, great CPU and memory combo.

Also have a soft spot for the 3950X. Have one running 24/7 for a few years now, it doesn't skip a beat.

 

[jelloslug]

Well, up until now I had an easy answer for you-
Intel Broadwell i7 5775-c. What a magnificent gaming king it was

Interesting. I like Broadwell for different reasons. It was great for stacking cores, (on xeon platform in a dual processor board) with the right machine. Obviously, very outdated now, and weak single core performance, but still fun to play with. That's all I use it for now. OEM chips from this family have some advantages over their retail counterparts. as I highlighted below.

 

[bobbybluz]

The Xeon E5 1680 V2. How many CPU's from 2012 are sill viable for use today? The rig I'm on at the moment has one in an Asus Sabertooth X79 and 64GB of DDR3 2100. 4.5GHz, runs amazingly cool and never skips a beat. I have a spare that benchmarks even better than this one. It's the best CPU that Intel never released to the general public (they went into the trashcan Mac Pro's). 12+ years old and still a decent performing processor today. For daily web-surfing and audio production it's great and bulletproof.

 

[cal5582]

AMS K6-3 cause it was the one i played earthworm jim on as a kid.

AMD 8320 because it was my first computer i bought on my own. i ran a lot of vms on that going through college.

 

[Slackaveli]

Do you have any reference for that? I can't imagine any way eDRAM on the CPU package was used as some kind of cache by a discrete GPU.
From what I can see, disabling the iGPU would allow all the eDRAM to be used by the CPU.

Aw, yes, it was boosting the cpu, but that in turn gets more perf. Similar to x3d in that way but as an L4. Im no engineer for sure, but to my understanding the eDRAM was effectively an L4 cache. IIrc the wording was "allows the eDRAM to be used as a last-level cache". It was bi-directional and much lower latency than going to ram. Let me try to drag up some old benchmarks to show y'all.

Interesting. I like Broadwell for different reasons. It was great for stacking cores, (on xeon platform in a dual processor board) with the right machine. Obviously, very outdated now, and weak single core performance, but still fun to play with. That's all I use it for now. OEM chips from this family have some advantages over their retail counterparts. as I highlighted below.

View attachment 374991

Oh, wow, that is cool.
The whole story of Broadwell is interesting and i'd love to know what they were saying behind the scenes about it. Bc it really does seem that they killed-it-in-the-cradle.

Absolute monster, just trucking Skylake and Kaby Lake. And it did it without almost ANY tech-tubers even mentioning it. It was left off of almost all benchmarks, too.


View attachment 5775c.webp

Absolute monster, just trucking Skylake and Kaby Lake; even at 5Ghz the 4.2Ghz 5775-c trucks it.
It was left off of almost all benchmarks, too. But the Germans tested it and have charts.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

Not sure how to pick.
From the systems I've built:

QX6700 - First quad-core and only extreme-edition I've ever bought...and OC'd. Way over-priced, but it was really good at the time.

i7 920 - Hyper-threading quad-core with triple-channel DDR3 and it OC'd very well...lasting me years. This is where I learned you could buy a lower-sku and OC-it.

5820k - This also lasted me about 6-7 years. Probably my #1. 6-core, hyperthreading, had quad-channel DDR4 and it took a long time before a GPU actually turned it into a bottleneck. I haven't seen anything in that HEDT world hit a bang/buck like this since then. Especially when you could OC the thing so well. It wasn't until GTX 1080 or 2080S that I finally started to see a bottleneck (I can't remember which GPU).

11900k - I am one of few people that liked Rocket Lake because I didn't care about power draw and I liquid cooled it (while OC-ing it of course). When overclocked, it was the fastest gaming CPU on the planet. It was also the first CPU I had that you could do per-core OC, which made it even faster in games while not cooking the whole time.

12900k - I had a terrible time with this CPU. I only bought it because I had to use up my EVGA bucks while I could and a motherboard/RAM combo was the only seemingly good option I had as I already had a 3080ti. I could never get the pressure right on it and it was not reliable. I upgraded from it the second I could.

13900k - Current build. So far, it's been fantastic. The per-core OC with V/F curve option has meant that it never hit high voltages even before they put out a new microcode. The microcode dropped it even more and my temps are even lower than they were before. It's been good and I currently have no reason to upgrade any time soon. I know other folks weren't so lucky and it's one of those things I'll always wonder about now.

So I guess to rank them:
1. 5820k
2. 920
3. 13900k
4. 11900k
5. QX6700
6. 12900k
------my caveat there is that #1&2 are really nostalgia based. They worked great for me for a long time and I'm basing favorite on "which one did I want to hold onto for the longest?" The last three CPUs I've had didn't have tri-channel or quad-channel memory and they still blow everything earlier out of the water. I'll also say that there's a very decent chance that whatever I do eventually upgrade to is an AMD. I have nothing against AMD, but most of the years I was buying it was true that intel, especially while overclocked, was the best CPU for my use-case.

 

[damric]

Phenom II x2 550 rev C

Unlocked to 4 cores and overclocked over 4GHz running some DDR2-1066CL5 on some shit Gigabyte 780G board. I can still hear the VRM coils scream as I benched it!

 

[Amdguy]

1st AMD Athlon X2 4400+ Socket 939 (Toledo Core), first dual core and 64 bit CPU, I owned. It was neat to have a process eat up one core because it was stuck but not bring the system to a halt, sometimes did not notice when something frozen in the background, I was running Win XP 64 bit edition which caused a lot of headaches.

2nd. AMD 7800X3D, this CPU was a wow moment and made me fall in love with the hobby again.

3rd. E6300 and Q6600. E6300 ran at 3.2 GHz for years, eventually something degraded (memory?) and had to downclock to 3 GHz. Q6600 probably ran at close to twice the speed was passed down and ran for over a decade.

4th 5600x / 3600x, first personal taste of Ryzen

5th. Tie Slot 1 Pentium 3 at 500 MHz / AMD 8320 / Athlon 2400+

Honorable mentions:

1. Mid 2012 MacBook pro 15 inch with Core i7 processor (3615QM - This machine is still in use has no issues with basic usage and web browsing.

2. Steamdeck APU

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Athlon II X2 240. Keep me between 2009-2020.

 

[Toothless]

4790k for favorite. Rebuilt mine with a 680 Lightning to match the board.

Second place is the 5950x.

 

[Ruru]

Athlon Thunderbird AXIA 1GHz because of the overclockability. Legend says that the AXIA stepping was meant for a 1.5GHz model which was never released, that's why they overclock so well.

 

[Launcestonian]

Lot of old stuff on here being spruced up... my current CPU I'm using for gaming - 9900X with custom PBO is my fav atm. Does everything I need for the same price a 9700X was couple months back without fancy water cooling either!

 

[sam_86314]

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ for nostalgia,

Core 2 Quad Q6600 for being my first quad-core,

i7-2600K for how big of an upgrade it was for me,

E3-1270 v3 for being a solid performer for dirt-cheap,

R7-5800X for being fast enough that I still don't feel the need to upgrade.

For my number one favorite, I'd probably pick the i7-2600K.

 

[eidairaman1]

AMD Athlon 3500+. First CPU i had. Been team AMD ever since. Just so snappy and so well priced.

linky

Athlon XP 3200/2500 and heck even the FX8350.

IPC ruled then, however as of late the 8350 saw an emergence due to software having finally caught up due to the release of Ryzen.

 

[x4it3n]

Imo the first AMD64 CPUs were revolutionary and then the Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme + Intel Core i7-2700K were all amazing CPUs for their time, and did last a long time too!

 

[Slackaveli]

Imo the first AMD64 CPUs were revolutionary and then the Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme + Intel Core i7-2700K were all amazing CPUs for their time, and did last a long time too!

2700k had a hell of a long run of usefulness.

 

[Pasi123]

Xeon X5670. I was on X58 for 10 years, 7 of which were with the 6c/12t Xeon. I used to run it at 4.4GHz but I've now dropped it to 4.2GHz since it's not my main PC anymore. The only reasons why I upgraded from it were the lack of newer instruction sets and I wanted something faster for video editing. All the games I play ran fine on the Xeon, even ones that were released after I had upgraded.

The biggest upgrade I've ever had was going from a C2D E6300 to a Xeon W3520 (i7-920) in 2013. That also included going from WinXP to Win7 and from an iGPU to a dGPU.

 

[Scattergrunt]

Ryzen 5 5600x despite being fairly recent I think is gonna be a chip people will talk about for years after even when it becomes long ill-relevant. Insanely good value, I haven't had to upgrade from it since I got it, only recently have I even considered upgrading from it to AM5. I think theres alot of AM4 chips that can be mentioned to be perfectly honest, AM4 (atleast in my opinion) was pretty nuts especially around the 3000 and 5000 series launches.

I hold a softspot for the i5-8400 aswell, because its my first CPU (If I was being completely factual the Intel Pentium Silver J5040 woudl be my first, but modern pentiums are yuck)

Has it really been 7, almost 8 years now since the i5-8400 dropped? Jeez.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Core 2 Quad Q6600. It was one of the best I'd gotten with a mix of good performance and thermal management, DDR2 ECC support on X38 platform Asus P5E-WS. Was my workhorse CPU for many years when a Xeon was a bit too expensive for me at the time starting out as my main PC for gaming before switching to console, then later general server duty, finally as file server before Windows 10 blew out my RAID driver with a forced update after about 10 years of solid service before reaching retirement. Prior to jumping to Ryzen it was the best and most stable CPU and system I had ever assembled and I had no idea Asus was auto-OC'ing my RAM all those years!

In recent times my favorite hands down is the 5950x due to the fine balance of performance, power usage, easy to manage cooling, and again ECC RAM support. From my formerly liquid cooled 011D X570 Taichi to my 7L mini monster ML-09B 4060LP ITX gaming/backup PC, it did everything big and small that I needed it to do without having to shell out 4 times the amount for a modern Threadripper. It even managed to survive an epic meltdown when it was in my X470 Master SLI/ac as it decided to commit hari kari from the shame of having such a poor VRM undeserving of such a powerful CPU. It's still an awesome CPU despite falling now two generations behind. Much like it's predecessor 3950x which I am soon to gift away for Christmas with bitter joy, it will likely be a viable CPU still for many years to come. It serves as the backbone as my work server, home server, and gaming/backup/emergency PC (yes I managed to collect 3 of them over the years diligently waiting for the right sales and ebay specials).

While a 7950x I managed to snag on an amazing once in a blue moon Amazon special (still unmatched today) now serves my primary workstation duties, the 5950x on AM4 platform lives in an odd space. It's now in both the dawn of new era of nostalgia, and yet still functionally useful platform, as it quietly falls in the shadow of it's soon to be (rumored) dual X3D grandchildren somewhat undercut by an oddly gimped and overly expensive AM5 platform.

The only thing left to hope for this CPU is a special Lisa Su dual X3D Limited Edition run as a last hurrah to a platform that saved AMD from the ashes of ruin and reigned before they tripped over their own shoelaces of success.

 

[racecar56]

Well, up until now I had an easy answer for you-
Intel Broadwell i7 5775-c. What a magnificent gaming king it was! So good in fact that Intel rushed Skylake out just a couple months later, and then Kaby Lake quickly as well. Why you ask? Well...

Broadwell was late to market. I think some issues with 14nm (foreshadowing 10nm in fact). It's main feature was a much better iGPU that was fed with a massive Crystalwell 128mb L4 cache.
[note: all from memory, correct me if i botched a detail]
The cache was whatever for the iGPU, I never tried it and I dont think more than maybe some hundreds did. But, boy howdy was that cache ever great when you disabled the iGPU as it then worked with dGPU as a last level L4 and boosted certain games WELL past even Kaby Lake performance (one example was Assetto Corsa) provided the games assets fit in cache (or more technically the eDRAM die).

Intel buried Broadwell for a couple reasons; and by buried i mean almost zero promotion, very few chips fabbed, and iirc it was literally like 2-3 months later when Skylake dropped- with a ton of marketing hype. Turns out they didnt even intend for the L4 cache to boost games in that way and didnt want competition for Skylake from much-pricier-to-fab Broadwell (mostly bc of the Crystalwell cache). It wasnt until Coffee Lake that I moved on, and in those special titles that loved cache i had to tune my 8700k to 5Ghz+ and it's ram to 4000c15 just to match it, and it actually was a few % short even. But in other titles the 6 cores screamed ahead of the lowly 4-core Broadwell @ a mere 4.2Ghz tuned/oc'd and I was happy, while maintaining a great love for that strange but amazing little chip the 5775-c. Even the naming was weird.

Since then I had a super bin 10900k that I'll give honorable mention to- I was able to tune that same ddr4 kit to 4400c17 and 5.3Ghz on all 10 cores. Noice. My son still rocks it to this day, on a 4080super & is still mostly not cpu-bound.
13700k came next, nothing special but a beast when tuned. Only left the 10900k bc my son wanted it and bc i wanted to play with ddr5 ram (ram tuning is fun to me). Still would call Broadwell my favorite nostalgically.

But, FINALLY, I have returned to my roots and picked up a 9800x3d from Microcenter on Black Friday. I guess I have a new favorite finally.

Appreciate the post and chance to reminisce on a by-gone era that just popped back up with 3d cache. And if you think about Intel's currently horrible situation with 3 straight gens of the same spinning-of-tires in the mud, and now a performance regression with Arrow Lake one has to wonder if instead of killing off their Gaming Cache discovery they had at least kept that in their back pocket for future use how things might have turned out a bit better for them, at least in the gaming space. I find it incredibly ironic that AMD is now using gaming cache (a better solution, too, and faster with L3 vs L4, yet still a massive pool for cache) to beat the brakes off of Intel in gaming.

I still have that little devil, my daughter uses it in her gaming PC. Turns out The Sims and Fortnight both fit in cache and she gets pretty damn good performance out of it (and my old 1080ti).

I do remember when those came out! Somehow, considering how unknown they are. I was very taken aback by the weird model scheme myself. I myself had the 4790K.

I'd say the 4790K was one of my favorites! I didn't get much an OC on it, but MAN was that thing FAST. That was my first actual good processor! And I mean GOOD! With that and a GTX 960 back in the day, it really felt like I could run anything.

And before that one, I think the Core 2 Quad Q6600 was pretty sweet. I have a system I've had new since 2008 which still works with that processor. I'm sure many of us here remember its legacy!

EDIT: What! I just noticed the guy above me also has a 5950X and mentioned the Q6600 too - awesome!

 

[x4it3n]

In recent times my favorite hands down is the 5950x due to the fine balance of performance, power usage, easy to manage cooling...

I just replaced my 5900X by a 9800X3D for Gaming purposes, but imo those ZEN 3 CPUs are still amazing! I love my 5900X and feel a bit guilty and sad to let it go lol