Features - QOTW: What's the best CPU you've ever bought?

[zaph0d]

Tough one - it's either my old Xeon 3210 2.13GHz core2quad @ 3.2Ghz a 50% oc or my i7 920 thats now 4 years old and still cracking on @ 3.9GHz with all power saving options & HT enabled and still within intel spec voltages

[Kanoe]

For me the AMD K7 1GHz Socket A.

I remember waiting months and months in anticipation for it to come out and blowing my first student loan check on it (and a new mobo, ram and PSU). In terms of what was out there at the time it was immense and blew the P3 away. Wouldn't overclock though.

Best value overclocked chip I ever had was a hand picked AMD Athlon 1700XP that I got running at 200x10

[MrRez]

AMD phenom x4 965 BE has been my favorite chip off all time. Had for a few years now and still going strong.

[benegerton1985]

I just realised the best chip I ever had was my Phenom II X2 550 that unlocked to a quad core (Phenom II X4 B50) and overclocked to 4Ghz from 3.1Ghz that I bought for £55 in a sale. Best bang for buck chip I've ever bought.

[The Hand]

I think it must be my Athlon 64 3200+ (socket 754!) CPU in 2004! Such a staggering upgrade from my old Celeron 533mhz previously! It's still in my desktop pc now, though I barely use it anymore.. I'm on an i5 based laptop now.

[Caveman]

I would have to say the best CPU I ever bought would be my Q6600. Its still a very capable CPU and ive only upgraded to my i5 3570k because it was free.

However when a TNT (the company) driver who was a friend of my dads accidentally misplaced a computer that was being delivered to some customer magically landed in my living room years and years ago that housed a dual CPUd P3 Xeon 733Mhz, 20GB SCSI HDD, I would have to say was the biggest noticeable increase CPU ive ever used. It was a breath of fresh air coming from P2 266Mhz Klamath CPU.

[YePsy_ZA]

it 3570K

[harryj1995]

Pentium 4 Oh yeah

[jharne]

486dx-100 I upgraded from a 486sx-25, the difference was immense. Nothing since has made such a huge difference.

[danroyle]

picked up an amd fx60 dual core one of the first for £40 on ebay and it is still running strong in a mates pc about four years on. The last Cpu were AMD beat intel.

[crossy]

Althon 64 3700 (San Diego) gets my nomination as "best cpu". It was pretty damn fast at the time, and the fact that it's been running (stably!) at a 20% overclock from about the first month I got it was pretty nice too. It's still working - providing one of the kids with a Windows7 PC - and will only finally get ditched because said kid is getting an i5 based laptop for Christmas.

Unless kid #2 wants it of course ....

I was going to say the hexa-core Phenom II that replaced it, but I've still got that one.

[Ricco]

1) Intel P2 333mhz SL2T iirc. (era of TA)
Would manage P2 450 speeds with just the pin trick on any 100mhz board, and the jump from 66mhz bus 333mhz to 100mhz bus/450mhz was amazing performance increase. Gigabyte board and 112mhz bus was out of this world performance !

[JimmyBoy]

I was dead chuffed with my p3 450mhz chip, it was blazing fast windows 98 ran like a dream I installed xp on the same system when it was released and it still worked well

[Belgarath]

My latest CPU for my server is the best I ever bought, AMD Opteron 4256 EE, 8 cores, 1.6GHz, max 2.8GHz, AND JUST 35W TDP.

[Bagpuss]

Amd Phenom II x2 550 for £75 in 2009, which promptly unlocked to a fully stable Quad Core @3.8Ghz..

[suneel944]

intel core i7 2600k is best for gaming,programming and editting as of my concern.