Answer: Socket 7

These days, it’s not uncommon to have a motherboard and a CPU socket that accepts a very narrow selection of CPU modules from a single manufacturer. If you read computer building forums, certain boards and socket styles are recommended because they accept maybe two or three different processor designs from the same manufacturer.

Long before the age of hyper-specialized sockets, however, it was common for motherboard manufacturers and CPU designers alike to use common standards. In fact, the pinnacle of this cross-compatibility was, far and away, the mid-1990s Socket 7 design.

Released in the late spring of 1995, Socket 7 offered a higher degree of cross-compatibility than any preceding socket and any socket design that followed. Socket 7 could accept Intel’s Pentium P5 and Pentium MMX processors as well as AMD’s K5 and K6 processors, Cyrix’s 6×86 processor line, the IDT WinChip, and the Rise Technology mP6 (AMD Geode LX and Geode GX used Socket 7 until 2015).

Thanks to its backward compatibility with Socket 5 (Socket 6 was never released for public use), Socket 7 boasted support for a multitude of processors across almost a half dozen manufacturers.