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Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

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Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#81

Post by wiremine »

My first computer was a 486sx 25Mhz [1] The rig (tower, monitor, etc.) cost around $3,000. We got the SX instead of the DX because it was $500 cheaper. And I wanted a 16bit sound card. (Note that this is in 1992 dollars. Today it would cost over $7,000)

My parents didn't have a lot of money, but my great-grand father passed and they used some of the inheritance to buy the computer. I was instantly hooked. In hindsight I see how much of a gift my family gave me.

The announcement reminded me of article John Dvorak wrote around the same time. 1GB hard drives had just come out, and he asked what all the extra space would be used for. Even as a young teenager, I remember thinking how short sighted that comment was. That was before I realized how the tech press tends to get stuck in local optimizations, and can't understand the bigger picture.

It's all a good reminder that cutting edge today doesn't stay cutting edge very long, and the world figures out how to squeeze every ounce ounce of power out of hardware. (Also, yes, that leads to bloat...)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I486SX

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#83

Post by cout »

einr wrote: post #46
bombcar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I think 5x86 had more to do with marketing than anything else, because the Pentium had already been on the market for a while when the Am5x86 came out.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#84

Post by ryandrake »

theodorethomas wrote: post #43

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.

It's hard to convey to today's generation, who think Ivy Bridge to Haswell was a big jump or whatever, how awesome the 286 -> 386 -> 486 changes were to personal computing. It felt almost like what going from a NES to a Super Nintendo to a N64 felt like. The improvements were astounding.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#86

Post by dspillett »

bombcar wrote: post #31
christkv wrote: post #8

486 SX 33Mhz, could not afford the DX

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

For a time systems with a 386SX were significantly cheaper than those with a 386DX because the 16-bit data-bus mean cheaper motherboards could be used.

If you were running 16-bit software they were little slower than a 386DX at the same clock and significantly faster than a 286 because of higher clocks (286's usually topped out at 12MHz though there were some 16MHz options, the slowest 386s were running at 16MHz with some as fast as 40MHz), but also in part, when not blocked by instruction ordering issues, to the (albeit small by modern standards) instruction pipeline which the 286 lacked.

32-bit software was a lot slower than on a DX because 32-bit data reads and writes took two trips over the 16-bit data bus, but you could at least run the code as it was a full 386 core otherwise (full enhanced protected mode, page based virtual memory, v8086 mode, etc).

The SX also only used 24 bits of the address bus, limiting it to 16MB of RAM compared to the original's 4GB range, though this was not a big issue for most at the time.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#87

Post by TheAmazingRace »

einr wrote: post #48
Synaesthesia wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#88

Post by whaleofatw2022 »

einr wrote: post #48
Synaesthesia wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#89

Post by hypercube33 »

bbarn wrote: post #72
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.

I can't remember, could you buy a math coprocessor for it? I know my 286 you could pair with a 287 next to it.. not sure if it really made a difference you could discern outside of hyper-specific uses though.

I believe so the 487 which had a full 486 on board it and disabled your main CPU.

Re: Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

#90

Post by einr »

cout wrote: post #83
einr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I think 5x86 had more to do with marketing than anything else, because the Pentium had already been on the market for a while when the Am5x86 came out.

I think it’s a bit of both. It absolutely tried very hard to pretend that it was a ”586” (Pentium class) but also ”5x” is right there and implies that if the DX4 is 4, this is 5.

The full name on the chip on some of them is ”Am5x86-P75 DX5-133” which implies a lot of things, some of which are flat out misleading (it does not get very close to ”P75” performance)

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