Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989 • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#21

Post by icedchai » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

einr wrote: post #9

fabiensanglard wrote: post #2

The 486 killer app was DOOM. It was butter-smooth at 20 fps if you also had a VLB graphic card. The 486 DX2 66MHz was the target platform for gaming during almost two years (1992-1994). That was an huge achievement back in the days to be at the top that long.

The DX/2 66 is a true legend of a chip. It was so good. The final nail in the coffin for the Amiga and for 68k. I love the Amiga, but it just didn’t Doom. Before it, you could claim that a 68040 was kinda-sorta keeping up with the 486 and that the nicer design and better operating systems of other computers made up for the delta in raw performance, but the DX/2 66 running Doom was the final piece of proof that the wo…

Yep. 486DX/2 was when I started seriously looking at moving on from the Amiga. I wound up with a DX/4 100 sometime in 1994.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#22

Post by bluebarbet » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

christkv wrote: post #8

486 SX 33Mhz, could not afford the DX

My experience too, as I dimly remember it.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#23

Post by mc-serious » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:09 PM UTC

skerit wrote: post #7

It comes over as so incredibly insane to me that people from the late 80s (people working with computers! Reporting on them!) would look at their current technology stack and basically go: "I have no idea whatsoever what else we can do with these things, we've reached the end" The lack of imagination is just disturbing.

[flagged]

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#24

Post by actionfromafar » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:09 PM UTC

einr wrote: post #16

whizzter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I noted in my other comment (1), in 1985 Amiga OCS bitplane graphics (separate each bits of a pixel index into separate areas) was a huge boon in 2d capability since it lowered bandwidth to 6/8ths but made 3d rendering a major pain in the ass. The Aga chipset of the 1200/4000 stupidly only added 2 more bitplanes. The CD32 chip actually had byte-per-pixel (chunky) graphics modes but the omission from the 1200 was f…

The CD32 chip actually had byte-per-pixel (chunky) graphics modes but the omission from the 1200 was fatal. I agree. Unfortunately, even with chunky graphics and/or 3D foresight, 68k would still have been a dead end and Commodore would still have been mismanaged into death. It’s fun to dream though…

There were no tech problems IMHO, it was all mgmt problems. They could have chosen a handful of completely different (edit: mutually exclusive even!) tech paths and still have won, but instead they chose to do almost nothing except bleeding the company dry.

Edit: I don't mean that their success was certain if they executed better. I mean they did almost nothing and got the guaranteed outcome: failure. (And their engineers were brilliant but had very little resources to work with.)

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#25

Post by feintruled » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

whizzter wrote: post #14

einr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DX/2 66 is a true legend of a chip. It was so good. The final nail in the coffin for the Amiga and for 68k. I love the Amiga, but it just didn’t Doom. Before it, you could claim that a 68040 was kinda-sorta keeping up with the 486 and that the nicer design and better operating systems of other computers made up for the delta in raw performance, but the DX/2 66 running Doom was the final piece of proof that the wo…

As I noted in my other comment (1), in 1985 Amiga OCS bitplane graphics (separate each bits of a pixel index into separate areas) was a huge boon in 2d capability since it lowered bandwidth to 6/8ths but made 3d rendering a major pain in the ass. The Aga chipset of the 1200/4000 stupidly only added 2 more bitplanes. The CD32 chip actually had byte-per-pixel (chunky) graphics modes but the omission from the 1200 was f…

> The Aga chipset of the 1200/4000 stupidly only added 2 more bitplanes. The CD32 chip actually had byte-per-pixel (chunky) graphics modes but the omission from the 1200 was fatal.

The intention was good, but the Akiko chip was functionally almost useless. It was soon surpassed by CPU chunky to planar algorithms. I don't think it was ever even used in any serious way by any released games (though it might have been used to help with FMV).

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#26

Post by phplovesong » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:14 PM UTC

Uuh! I recall i had this setup, not in 89, but sometime in the early 90s.

Played some awesome games, like DOOM, Wolfenstein. Later duke3d was the shit. But i cant remember if i run on the same setup or something newer.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#27

Post by esafak » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

fabiensanglard wrote: post #2

The 486 killer app was DOOM. It was butter-smooth at 20 fps if you also had a VLB graphic card. The 486 DX2 66MHz was the target platform for gaming during almost two years (1992-1994). That was an huge achievement back in the days to be at the top that long.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Local_Bus for the younger crowd.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#28

Post by bombcar » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:25 PM UTC

ahartmetz wrote: post #19

skerit wrote: post #7

It comes over as so incredibly insane to me that people from the late 80s (people working with computers! Reporting on them!) would look at their current technology stack and basically go: "I have no idea whatsoever what else we can do with these things, we've reached the end" The lack of imagination is just disturbing.

On the other end, you have people who have no idea how insanely fast computers are today, and how little computing power is "really" needed for most things that computer users do - or how much you can do with one average machine ("Oh no, 1000 requests per second - let's erect another rube goldberg machine to handle that!").

The 80s and 90s were filled with new things computers could do - spreadsheets, wysiwyg word processors, games - things that simply were impossible before (or not done).

In the 2000s through now we've mostly had improvements - 4k Youtube is much better than realplayer, but it's still just "online video". AI is definitely a "new" thing and it's somewhat awoken a similar spirit to the 80s/90s - but not the same breadth. Dad bringing home a computer because he wants to do spreadsheets and you finding it can run DooM or even play music.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#29

Post by TMWNN » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

skerit wrote: post #7

It comes over as so incredibly insane to me that people from the late 80s (people working with computers! Reporting on them!) would look at their current technology stack and basically go: "I have no idea whatsoever what else we can do with these things, we've reached the end" The lack of imagination is just disturbing.

The first 80286-based system (IBM PC AT), 80386 (Compaq Deskpro 386), and 80486 all had people writing about their suitability as servers, with the consensus's implication being that normal people didn't need them.

The Pentium is the first one, I think, that this didn't happen, because by then it turned out that people need a computer that can do what they are currently doing—but faster—much more often than they need servers.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#30

Post by bombcar » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

welfare wrote: post #17

How was the person incorrect that speed increases won't continue forever? Pentium 4 was 3.8GHz and Ryzen 7 has 4.7Ghz some 20 odd years later?

Clock speeds used to be going up in a straight line (the normal "interpretation" of Moore's law) - but once the P4 hit a (kind of useless 3.8GHz) we leveled off for decades.