Processor Hall of fame

[desmocat]

If there was such a thing, what would be your nominee? Mine would be the Celeron 300A, the little chip that could.... Please, don't slag anybody on their choices, I would like to see what all processors would show up. Thanks ya'll

[Dominus]

The 8008, for starting this whole mess, and the Z80 for powering just about everything from calculators to microwaves to spacecraft.

[Wiz]

How about the celeron 366?? man, hitting 550-600, mmmmm mmmmm good.

[Warthog]

My personal choice would be the Pentium II 233 MMX only because it was the processor that got me REALLY into computers.

Warthog

[RobRich]

I'm going with Dominus on this one, the Z80 should hold that title. It powers many of the common devices you use every day, and yet it gets little recognition anymore.

RobRich

[alan]

i reckon you cannot have a poll without including the 68000 family from motorla which powered my alltime fav machine the Amiga
alan

[CMonster]

Ahhhh Yes! the Z80! The Zilog Z80! Intel Inside - Not! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

"The new chip could run any program written for Intel's 8080 chip, and would fit interchangeably into the same place as the 8080 on a customer's circuit board. But it incorporated a number of refinements that made it twenty times easier to program. The new chip had a "serial I/O" technology that made it easier to adress peripheral devices. It offered a facility called "direct memory access" that made an attempt to resolve the curious addressing system used in the 8080. And best of all, it took advantage of the op codes that had been left unused in the 8080 design to deliver some advanced functions that were well thought out and truly useful to computer designers. With a price tag of only $200 the Zilog Z80 began to capture the imagination of individual hobbyists."

Source: Inside Intel by Tim Jackson

[rrick31]

i would like to nominate the amd k6-2 450 sweet little runner.long live socket 7

[Konan555]

The Pentium Pro,

5 years old and clock for clock (forgetting SSE and MMX apps) still compeats with a P3.

4-way SMP (the asci-red is made from thousands of Pros)

Onboard cache (yes in '95)

Great to clock (unlocked and high grade)

Socket 8 (1 higher than 7?)

LONG LIVE SOCKET 8 (celery just came out for it)

[welsh wizard]

I think I'll go with the Motorola 68000 series CPU, they started the higher speed kick with Windows/ Gem / or what ever you call it Graphics interface OS, Intel had to pull finger and dump those old 8000 series chips and get beyond 640K systems to keep up. remember the impact Apple had on desk top publishing, Amiga on games, and Atari to the rock Bands with the in built midi, all powered by 68000 series chips. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif
WW

[grandslammer]

How about the old p200mmx? Seems like speed finally started to kick in here. (I mean, no lightning or thunder,but things did speed up some with the advent of the mmx tech. And look what happened after that?)

That was my second computer, and it knocked the socks off of the 486 I had before that...

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

M

[Maginno]

I have to second Konan555. I still use my PPro 200 for my commincations, printing and minor file server. Reliabitlity is unmatched. Not many cores last as long as the Pro has. Not many will.

[Szech]

Don't know which processor I'd like to hold up to the light, but I do know of a couple I'd like to shame:
1) 80186. I didn't think these existed until my friend's boss gave him one for free. I'm guessing the 80286's came out a heartbeat after these did, and then the 80386's a heartbeat after that. Hence the 80186 was washed into obsolecense before it could really make some sales.
2) The 1000 Mhz Pentium III. For being a joke. For requiring a massive heatsink, and an external heatsink. From a company who locked the multipliers to prevent overclocking/remarking comes this overclocked, hyped joke of a CPU.

Actually, scratch that, I would like to glorify one CPU, the Athlon, for knocking Intel off it's pedistal, even if only temporary.

[awwall]

I to vote for the Z80.

It was amazing what you could do with that chip and 64k of memory. ah,,the good ole days.

[pickel]

Until I bought my daugther's celeron 400, all I've ever had is my little AMD 300 @ 350.
It has served me well, thru thick and thin.
I often think about the new Athlon's but I realize, in the long run , I just want but don't really need. They both seem to perform equally and that's what really matters.

[hd581]

Actually Szech, the 80186 is just an 8086 w/ a slight modification (greater addressability or something like that). I don't know why there's so little documentation about it but it seemed to be used as a controller for a lot of devices and never really made its niche as a strict CPU microprocessor like the 8086 and 80286.

[Joel Kleppinger]

No one mentioned the NexGen Nx686? That's the CPU that pulled the CISC core and married it to the RISC core to give us continually higher clock speeds and more work done per cycle.

Look at the P3 and Athlon design (the Athlon more so).... they pull heavily from the NexGen design of breaking a CISC instruction down into microinstructions.

Even though the NexGen 686 lacked in clock speed and integer crunching power, it still gave us the foundation for the overpowered CPUs we have now.

[tonym]

One word:

Athlon


Tony

[jman01pa]

Two Words

One Gigabyte

J http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[hd581]

Three words:

Whats One Gigabyte?

h http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[daveleau]

Three letters:

LOL

d http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

I would guess the best overclockers should be put in. It might be a bit early to say so but I'd put in the Cel 533. Almost a straight across the board 175% overclock.

[Dominus]

I think he means 1GHz.

Theres about a 1GHz CPU that sets it apart from a 900MHz CPU except for the extra clockspeed. In fact, like SZech said earier, the Intel 1GHz, at least, was overclocked and pushed to a ridiculous extent, just to keep on par with AMD.


I have another vote for the ALPHA 21364s. 1.5GHz od pure computing power. Something like 6+ GFLOPS. The most powerful single CPU on the planet.

[Missing the point]

The Celeron 300A!

[Ultima]

Well,

I would have agreed with dominius if it weren't for the fact, that incompatibility is a major issue here.

Therefor, I choose the k6-2 450Mhz.
2.2V version ofcourse, you'd all understand.

I got this baby to 575Mhz, just by adding a "few" extra fans.
This is my all-time favorite.

Athlon comes at a good second, cause it is so very good o/c'able.
It also would have gotten my first place, if it weren't for the fact, that you'd have to buy an o/c'ing card in order to do some serious o/c'ing.

Pim

[Konan555]

RISC was a Brittish invention (I think by ACORN). Hence the reason it was the future.

Anyone ever had an 8088 (pre 8086)? I think there's a couple laying about in the garage.

[Ultima]

He Konan555,

those 8088, do they still work???
And if so, at what speed??? 1/2Mhz????

I would wanna see that.
My slowest one is a 386@8Mhz with a turbo of 25Mhz.

Pim