Comment by einr
1 day ago
Yeah, there were holdouts of course but the DX/2 really seems like the breaking point.
(Also, a Pentium 60 is barely faster than a DX/2 66 at many tasks — it is a Bad Processor — but that’s another conversation ;)
1 day ago
Yeah, there were holdouts of course but the DX/2 really seems like the breaking point.
(Also, a Pentium 60 is barely faster than a DX/2 66 at many tasks — it is a Bad Processor — but that’s another conversation ;)
Pentium is a bad processor? It's way faster than 486, especially on FP it's not even close.
The original Pentiums (socket 4, 60 or 66 MHz) had the infamous floating point division bug, had underwhelming perf for anything not FP bound (most things), ran hot, and were too expensive for what you got. A DX/4 100 was nearly always a more rational choice.
Second gen Pentiums, starting with the 75 MHz, were great.
Actually the first generation Socket 4 Pentiums (60 and 66 MHz) had the FOOF bug (and yes, they were bad processors — but overall system architecture with the very first PCI bus implementation with ISA legacy rather than ISA and a single VESA Local Bud expansion) was a huge step forward compared to the 486.
The FOOF bug was actually discovered on the first step of the later 90 MHz Pentium (which was released with the 100 MHz Pentium, which also suffered from the bug). However this was corrected with a hardware stepping. The 75 MHz Pentium was actually released as part of this later stepping, and it was a binned 90/100 MHz part. There were no first step 75 MHz Pentiums.
I had a P60 that had the F0 0F bug; Windows would crash for weird reasons on it, but Linux ran like a champ because it actually had a workaround. Luckily my chip was already recalled for the FDIV bug so it wasn't a total boat anchor. Loved that machine. I had BeOS, QNX, and one time I made Linux look like Solaris with all the Open Look stuff - really enjoyed that aesthetic.
Now we have these amazing displays and graphics cards and there's literally no way to make my Mac have different window titlebars or anything. So boring
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Idk if the 75 was really that great tho, mostly in that it had a 50Mhz FSB rather than 60 or 66Mhz like most other parts.
Another factor for the later P1s being better IIRC was improved chipsets.
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It didn't help that the earliest P5 Pentiums ran on a 5V rail. Newer revisions starting with the P54 core used 3.3V and helped with keeping the chips cool.
The Pentium was great, but the 60 and 66MHz versions were not liked, they ran way too hot.
They ran on 5V supplies and it was only later that the whole architecture was changed to 3.3 V with the 90 and 100 MHz Pentiums (which were then discovered to have the infamous FOOF division bug).
I think from the price people also expect a similar performance boost as going from 386 to 486. What made Pentium also confusing is that during this time Intel introduced PCI.
From a 486 with VLB to a Pentium with PCI everything became a lot nicer.
Many tasks perhaps, but running Quake was not one of them.
Yeah, it does alright and is a significant difference to a DX/2, but Quake came out in ’96 and the P60 came out as a super expensive workstation class CPU in ’93. If you were a gamer in ’96 it is unlikely you were rocking a P60 because it was not ever good value for money.
You could play 320x200 Quake acceptably on a P60. On a DX4 too, though barely - my family had both in the mid 90s. I'd be surprised if Quake is playable on a DX2.