Mine is the Intel Pentium III. It ran cooler and quieter than the AMD Athlons, and it's performance is just slightly less compared to a same clocked Athlon. Some models, (especially Tualatins) were fast enough to make great Windows XP computers and the fastest PIII at 1.4GHz could outperform any Pentium 4 chip up to 2GHz!

I think many processors has it's charmes, some of my favorites are the Cyrix MII (the 2.2v parts), the original K6-3 and the Coppermine, but if I had to pick a single one, then I think it would be the Coppermine 😁

The Pentium Pro - it and its descendants (P6 family) destroyed all the others.
Alphas, because they were so fast.

Tetrium wrote:

I think many processors has it's charmes

I think about the same way here.. I dont have any privilege about anyone..
Every processor had its own story...

Which one had the best story??

I really liked the AMD Athlon Thunderbird SLOT A processors, it was faster then the pentium III processors in its time. I also liked it because AMD made there own SLOT A..( I know it was a reversed Slot 1, but still it was different) And wherent dependent anymore on SLOT 1.
The other with a good story was the Athlon 64.. It was the first consumer 64 bit processor that was also the fastest incompared with the Intel camp.. And i owned both back in the days!
Then i had a AMD Athlon thunderbird (i guess it was 700Mhz) on Slot A and when i got that Athlon 64 that was on the Socket 939 platform, processor AMD Athlon64 3200+

it depends on what you mean by favorite, if I let nostalgia into the decision , it would have to be the 386, Pentium , and Athlon XP , as those are the ones which I used over the years (I also used a 486 , albeit less often) .

if I went by which I think has the best merits I have to say its the PIII Coppermine or Tualatin , great performance and really was quite usable for quite a few years, you could get away with 700-900Mhz PIII until about 2003-4 when games like Doom3 and Half Life2 kind of forced gamers to upgrade to an Athlon XP.

I don't think even the 486 lasted quite this long, although the later DX versions really could give the early Pentiums a run for their money.

I had one of these on an accelerator board in my Amiga 1200. My favorite computer of all time. I still have the Amiga 1200 but I sold the accelerator board to a friend when it became obvious PCs were going to overtake it graphics power wise. Of course now I regret selling it even though my Amiga 1200 really doesn't get any use anymore thanks to some pretty great Amiga emulators out there.

Socket 4 Pentium 60

Intel Pentium MMX - was in awe of its power and capabilities at the time.

AMD Athlon XP (Socket 462) - was my main CPU for 10 years. Worked faithfully until the very end.

(Was never a fan of Pentium II and III. Don't ask me why. I simply cannot explain)

The AMD K8 architecture is over 10 years old and therefor almost vintage.
I have a dual socket 940 system from 2003. Sadly it dosnt support newer faster 90 nm or dual-core CPUs. Only the first generation SledgeHammer Opterons work.
The board do also accept a SledgeHammer socket 940 Athlon FX 51/53 CPU but not in dual mode.

The system is fast enough for everything even today... except gaming 😀.
So my vote goes to the AMD K8 architecture!
The last CPU architecture designed by humans ? 😁

I LOVE The Athlon K7 CPU's. They kicked Intel's ass in the performance category and excelled in 3D. I have lot's of these CPU's now, because I'm so in love with AMD.
And the way they handle half-life and other 3D masterpieces. My PIII 1GHz is pretty lacking, but my Athlon 1GHz is great in handling 3D! Even with identical motherboards and exact graphics cards my Athlons are better than the intel cpus. The only problem, is how horrible they handled heat. Re: Athlon Problems

I guess my favourite vintage CPU would have to be the one that got me started with computers, the 286-16

You left out a lot of the Cyrix 5x86/6x86 line and WinChip...

Easily the PIII Xeon. More specifically, the large cache 700Mhz and 900Mhz Xeons. 700Mhz came in 1 and 2MB versions, 900Mhz came only in 2MB.

I also like the 1Ghz P3 Xeons, but they're not much more than a Coppermine P3 inside a Slot-2 package. Not really a true Xeon.

Celeron 300A:

Beat the PII 450 back in the day when overclocked to 450 because the cache was faster. Took the PIII to finally beat it.

For nostalgia reasons, a 486sx25 because it was my first real PC I owned.

For most 'revolutionary', 'game changing' CPU, it had to be the PIII chip.

Personally my favorite is the Pentium 166MMX because it allows for the widest range of compatibility with new and old games/applications. If I was given the choice of only one retro cpu to own, it would have to be this for the compatibility. Disabling the cache will ensuure you can play some of the oldest sierra games with little trouble and enabling it (and having a decent amount of cache) will allow you to play many late 90s games without too many issues.

I believe that the P1 defined the changing of the guard and set the precedent for more modern "multimedia" systems especially MMX varieties. It bridged the gap between the older generation and what was to become of the modern pc.

I have to go with PowerPC. The Apple/IBM/Motorola consortium managed to squeeze more work out of less silicon than anyone else I'd ever seen up to that time. PC fanboys like to mock the Mac for coming equipped with lower end video cards or slower RAM than what you find in a high end PC but the level of integration and lack of bloat in Mac operating systems makes even mediocre components do amazing things.

Pentium II Overdrive PODP66X333, the fastest CPU to use with system native to ISA. Some say that there are ways to install a Tualatin into a Socket 8, but I haven't found any yet.

Pentium II 350MHz.While it is old,it still runs fast almost like a i7.

It's uncommon, but I'll go with the IBM 486DLC3 (Blue Lightning). Basically a souped up 386 that was competitive with 486 chips and were dirt cheap. They also made great upgrades for older systems. They were also the first x86 chips that used clock tripling.