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

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#41

Post by whizzter » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC

TMWNN wrote: post #33

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…

Commodore so slowly and ineffectually improving on the OCS didn't help, but the original sin of the Amiga was committed in the beginning, with planar graphics (i.e., slow and hard to work with, even setting aside HAM) and TV-oriented resolutions/refresh rates (i.e., users needing to buy a "flicker fixer"). It's like they looked at one of the most important reasons for the PC and Mac's success—a gorgeous, rock-solid m…

Iirc interlaced display and 6 bitplanes were a compromise to allow color graphics in 1985 with the memory bandwidths available at the time.

If it's a sin or feature can of course be debated but I remember playing games on an Amiga in the early 90s and until Doom the graphics capabilities didn't look outdated.

By 1992 with AGA however I agree, flicker and planar graphics(with 8 bitplanes any total memory bandwidth gains were gone) was a downside/sin that should've been fixed to stay relevant.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#42

Post by bombcar » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:52 PM UTC

Sheeplator wrote: post #39

bombcar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember arguments (and benchmarks) around all the variations of the 486 since the bus speed/clock speed was uncoupled (the /2 is clock doubling). For some applications, a 50Mhz 486 with a 50Mhz bus would beat a DX/2 66Mhz with a 33Mhz bus. And sometimes the DX/4 100Mhz would be slowest of all those at 25Mhz bus.

Nearly correct. The DX/4 100MHz had a 33MHz bus. The DX/4 75MHz had the 25MHz bus. I remember well because I had both.

Now I remember being annoyed that it wasn't the DX/3 as it should have been!

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#43

Post by theodorethomas » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

The 486 and https://www.delorie.com/djgpp/history.html changed everything.

Suddenly, it was possible to imagine running advanced software on a PC, and not have to spend 25,000 USD on a workstation.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#44

Post by bombcar » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

mauriciolange wrote: post #37

bombcar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 486 SX was a fine chip, just no math copro. The 386 SX was a crap, 16 bit wide bus IIRC.

Ahhh but it gave me the opportunity to ran real programs, coming from an XT! *Edited to add an example: I could for the first time use AutoCAD. The price difference between a 286 and a 386SX was negligible, but the software I could use, was other league.

Yeah by the time we were getting into it the 486 was already out, but we wanted the real 32 bit bus and had to be a bit careful when looking at used computers (as by that time the 386SX and DX machines were about the same price).

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#45

Post by realreality » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

I didn't have access to a 486 until around 1999. I was making do with a hand-me-down 8088 and then a 386SX.

Back then, 10 years of technological advancement made a huge difference. Today, you can get by just fine with a 2016-era laptop.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#46

Post by einr » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #42

Sheeplator wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly correct. The DX/4 100MHz had a 33MHz bus. The DX/4 75MHz had the 25MHz bus. I remember well because I had both.

Now I remember being annoyed that it wasn't the DX/3 as it should have been!

Especially since when actual clock quadrupled chips eventually came out they had to call themselves ridiculous things like ”5x86” instead of DX/4. (The Am5x86 133 runs at 4x33 MHz)

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#47

Post by marald » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

Great throwback.. they were awesome proc's. With a few Simms (4 - 16 Mb) it could do multimedia madness never seen before (play a CD-ROM game of mpeg1 video) 486dx4 100 was the latest Intel I had before going to Pentium clones. (AMD K series and the shitty Cyrix 6x86)

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#48

Post by einr » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

Synaesthesia wrote: post #38

einr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#49

Post by nickdothutton » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

Hard to imagine now, but this was a huge turning point. A genuinely powerful CPU in a "Pee-Cee" available for less than RISC workstation money. I had to wait a while, mine was an AMD DX2-66 since I didn't have a budget for Intel... add Slackware... and countess hours messing with XF86config and I had a poor-mans Sun workstation.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#50

Post by whizzter » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 2:04 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…

Was it necessarily a dead end? Considering the ways Intel and later AMD managed to upgrade/re-invent x86 that until x64 still retained so much of the x86 instruction encoding/heritage (heck, even x64 retains some of the instruction encoding characteristics).

Had the Amiga retained relevance for longer and without a push for PowerPC I don't see a reason why 68k wouldn't have been extended. Heck the FPGA Apollo 68080 would've matched end of 1990s P-II's and FPGA's aren't speed monsters to begin with.