If i ask myself what cpu bring me the most fun and lasted the most, then ofcourse Intel 486 DX/2 66MHz, because before that i had a 286 12MHz and well it was in 1995, when Doom was out, and i suffered in home. But if you ask me what groundbreaking CPU I had, well after my 486 and P 166 MMX, i aquired a P3 500, and finally could watch DVD/DivX movies.

Definitely, it's am386-40.

Hmm, I'm between the Pentium Pro or the Thunderbird Athlons..
On the intel side, the P6 architecture is the forerunner to all other CPUs.. (PII, PIII, Core, ect..)
However, on AMD's side, the Thunderbird was better than the Coppermine CPU's, and the equal clock speed Athlon 1GHz could beat the Pentium III 1GHz.
Also, AMD chose DDR vs Intel's idea of innovation.. *gasp* RDRAM 😵 . Intel's early p4's were no match to teh s00p3r l33t athlon XP. (Not only that, some later Athlons were double the FSB speeds to the PIII. 😲)

Screw intel's shitium 4, Athlon is the best.

The CPU in my avatar - Cyrix 5x86-133/4x.

I've often wondered how the future may have been altered for AMD, and to a lesser extent Intel, had Cyrix found capacity to produce this chip with significant yields for all of 1996 instead of a narrow 5-week span. I was still using a 486 until Dec. 1998, so I am rather fond of the concept of a die hard 486-socket3. I used an AMD 5x86-133 until Dec. 1998. When I finally obtained a Cyrix 5x86-133 and noticed how much faster it was, especially with enhancements on, I feel that the low-cost availability of this CPU would have postponed the need for a Pentium or K5/K6 upgrade for most users for perhaps another 2 years.

The next most useful era chip for me was the PII-400. The BX board this came-in allowed for a drop-in replacement to a PIII-850. These two processors, in SMP form, lasted me nearly 14 years as an everyday use computer.

Definitely the Slot A AMD Argon 0.25m fab 23 year 00 week 52 which was selling as 550mhz cpu were in fact a non published 750mhz core that i actually overclocked it at 1gig using the GlobalWin VOS 38 on an epox 7KXA.....The fastest official p3 was running at 700mhz and i was leading the ghz barrier....Those were the good days.....I still have this machine in working condition with my original elsa Geforce 256 DDR.I will post fotos tomorrow .

It is very difficult to decide what I could consider a "favorite". So many good ones. But I think we all know that already 😉.

I'll first mention the 5x86 processors. But particularly the IBM fab'd Cyrix 5x86 chips, for reasons that I'm sure everyone here already knows.

Second, I have a soft spot in my heart for the Socket A CPUs because the first computer that my family actually bought was an Athlon 1700+.

From there it continues on to the Tualatin's, 386, 286... etc... I could list all day long. And I'm sure most of you are hard pressed to pick a favorite too.

Zilog Z-80

Arguably the most widely used processor of all time, used in the master system, the mega drive as a copro and the Game boy CPU is like a distant cousin of it.

DonutKing wrote:

Zilog Z-80

Arguably the most widely used processor of all time, used in the master system, the mega drive as a copro and the Game boy CPU is like a distant cousin of it.

Not to mention kajillions of pre-IBM PC computers.

if we are expanding this beyond x86 I would say my favourite non x86 would be the 68000 , the Amiga , Atari ST and Mega Drive all used it as a main CPU (it or one of its variants) , the Saturn also used it in its audio system (more accurately an 11Mhz 68EC000).

given the fact Im a big fan of both the Saturn and Dreamcast I was tempted to put the SH2 and SH4 CPUs into this, but the 68000 series was just much more commonly used, wheres the SH series was quite obscure by comparison

1) Pentium II-450, have no idea why.
2) 80186, because it's neat and cool 😀

DonutKing wrote:

Zilog Z-80

Arguably the most widely used processor of all time, used in the master system, the mega drive as a copro and the Game boy CPU is like a distant cousin of it.

I think the 6502 and it's variants including the 6507 in the Atari 2600 and 6510/8502 found in Commodore computers probably sold more. MOS Technology developed an entirely new process that increased yields over other CPU's of the time dramatically, resulting in lower prices that competitors couldn't match and the then fledgling home computer and game console industries took notice and bought millions of them.

Tough call between the Pentium MMX at 166 MHz and the 350 MHz Slot1 Pentium II.

Both due to nostalgy and because they really felt like big improvements compared to their predecessors. No machine since the P2 has felt like as big an upgrade when it came to running games.

I might have gone for 80386 but dear god, those things felt slow even back then...

SquallStrife wrote:

DonutKing wrote:

Zilog Z-80

Arguably the most widely used processor of all time, used in the master system, the mega drive as a copro and the Game boy CPU is like a distant cousin of it.

Not to mention kajillions of pre-IBM PC computers.

Home computing wasn't nearly as prevalent in the 70's as it is today. It wasn't until the end of the 70's with machines like the Apple II that it really started to catch on. Even a lot of businesses wouldn't see the need for computers for a while yet, still relying on people with pencils and paper to keep track of their records. Those "kajillions" of Z-80 based machines probably didn't number more than a million or so total over the entire decade. In contrast, Commodore sold more C64's in their best year than all the Z-80 machines ever sold.

Wow, I couldn't possibly choose just one.

The Motorola 68000 as some others have mentioned, thanks to that, we got the Amiga, which was totally kickass in it's day. To be quite honest, it took me years after the death of Amiga as a viable home computer to realize how great it had really been.

The i80486 SX 33 because it was my first proper "IBM Compatible" PC processor. I don't count the shitty 8086's I'd had before then with their green on black screens and such.

The original Pentium 60MHz because of it's hilarious decimal error.

The Pentium Pro from a historical point of view because it was the first properly "modern" CPU.

And of course the Athlon because it was the first time AMD actually had a product that was superior to Intel's offerings not just in price to performance, but quite simply in pure performance numbers, and also on a MHz to MHz basis. It was lovely seeing the underdog finally give the big giant a proper kick in the gonads. Unfortunately they never really managed to get much further than the Athlon 64 before they started lagging behind. Today, if you're after performance computing on x86 platforms, Intel is sadly the only choice.

These are my initial thoughts at least. I was never much of a Cyrix fan, although my current retro 486 has a "It's ST" branded Cyrix chip in it 😁 Oh the irony.

LunarG wrote:

These are my initial thoughts at least. I was never much of a Cyrix fan, although my current retro 486 has a "It's ST" branded Cyrix chip in it 😁 Oh the irony.

Apart from AMD, I never really thought the smaller CPU manufacturers were ever going to be serious competition to Intel. Some of them found niche markets like Via did with the C3 but most were bottom feeders, going after customers that Intel and AMD couldn't get because of pricing. Of course, those people at the bottom of the food chain also got a lot less performance. Some of them might have actually been better served by buying used computers 2-3 years old than buy some of those low performing alternatives.

sliderider wrote:

LunarG wrote:

These are my initial thoughts at least. I was never much of a Cyrix fan, although my current retro 486 has a "It's ST" branded Cyrix chip in it 😁 Oh the irony.

Apart from AMD, I never really thought the smaller CPU manufacturers were ever going to be serious competition to Intel. Some of them found niche markets like Via did with the C3 but most were bottom feeders, going after customers that Intel and AMD couldn't get because of pricing. Of course, those people at the bottom of the food chain also got a lot less performance. Some of them might have actually been better served by buying used computers 2-3 years old than buy some of those low performing alternatives.

Well, in retrospect I'm happy those bottom feeders lasted as long as they did. It makes for some interesting possibilities (for instance those VIA chips and the latest Cyrix MII parts).

1.) Motorola 68000. This CPU appeared in all sorts of great computers and gaming systems, from the Sega Genesis/Megadrive, to the Amiga, many of the early Macs, and even the Neo Geo and the Capcom CPS 1/2 arcade platforms. Considering it was originally developed in 1979, this CPU was amazingly powerful for its time, and many of the systems it powered delivered fast, fluid gaming action. It was so powerful, in fact that many arcade games continued using it nearly 20 years after it first launched! Another fun fact, this same CPU powered the Prophet VS synthesizer, which was used extensively on Nine Inch Nails' debut album "Pretty Hate Machine". It just so happens that this is one of my favorite albums of all time, and with both a Prophet VS and a Macintosh Plus being used extensively in its production, that's twice the 68000 goodness. 😁

2.) MOS 6502/65816. This humble little processor developed in 1976, along with its many variants powered such great systems as the Apple II line, the NES, the Atari 2600, and the Commodore 64. Its 16-bit variant, the 65816 powered the Apple IIGS and the SNES. Need I say more?

3.) 486DX2 66MHz. This was a classic CPU for DOS gaming, and it holds a lot of sentimental value to me as one of the first "retro" boxes I ever owned had one at its core. It ran Doom and Nesticle like a champ, and with some technical wizardry I even managed to play back some MP3s on this CPU.

4.) Celeron 300A. This was a kick-ass gaming CPU for the late 90s, and it actually delivered better performance than a "real" Pentium II running at the same clockspeed, thanks to its faster L2 cache. I never tried the famous trick of running one in a BX board and overclocking it to 450MHz, but the fact that this CPU became so well-known for its easy overclocking really says something. Even at stock speed though, it still seemed like a nice, zippy CPU.

5.) Pentium M. OK, I'm kind of cheating here since this CPU isn't exactly "vintage", but being released in 2003, it certainly isn't new either. Not only was this CPU extremely power-efficient and high-performance for its time, but it also helped pave the way for many of Intel's newer CPUs, such as the Core 2 and Core i3/i5/i7 series. For a long time, I used a 2004 Acer laptop powered by one of these chips as my main laptop, and even when I got my Core i5 Alienware, I still brought this thing out once in a while. It's a shame Intel relegated this CPU to the mobile market, instead of taking advantage of its killer performance and marketing it as a desktop CPU.

I agree. Celeron 300A was a great little slice of silicon. I've even heard of some people getting them as high as 512mhz.

Athlon MP - Mainly because Intel killed off non-Xeon dual processor support after the P3.

P3-S 1.4GHz Tualatin - As other's have said, this thing SCREAMS.

Celeron 466 - I had mine running at 525MHz for years without so much as a hiccup.

Pentium Pro 200 - Because it's the first truly great processor from Intel (the P6 is also the oldest processor that supports PAE).

Can't go past the AMD 386 DX40 for helping bring PCs into the mainstream, with its balance of price/performance.

I also like the Athlon series, firstly Slot A with AMD beating Intel to 1GHz, and later the Athlon XP series for being 'the' CPU option for that era. The fact the mobile series maintained the desktop socket was a nice bonus - remember the XP-M 2500+? I hated the lack of a IHS though!