I never felt during this era that the information about these chips was hard to come by as the author claims. Retrospectively I appreciate that’s because I grew up living by a large, well funded library in a tech centric town, so they always had all the latest tech publications.
What came after the 486?
91–100 of 158 posts
Re: What came after the 486?
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, a lot of people here would have loved to have 10-year old Xeons in their motherboards; while power hungry, I guess they would make good CPUs since they have good cache sizes. But no, there's no Xeons in our offers here. What people get here now are Intel Pentium and Celeron-branded CPUs, or N-class CPUs, with the onboard GPU only, 4GB RAM and 1 TB HDD running unlicensed Windows with understandable results. But…
> Intel Pentium and Celeron-branded CPUs, Don't look at the branding. Look at the core type, count, and speed (maybe). It's been a while since I shopped Intel, but they used to typically release a low core count/lower clock speed Pentium/Celeron on the mainstream cores, often with no hyperthreading. These were typically low cost and could be a good value, you'd get decent single core performance because it's the newe…
> These are definitely worth avoiding most of the time.
They may not be ideal for desktops, but they are great low power home server CPUs. In fact, they are much better than ARM alternatives like Raspberry Pis for the money.
Re: What came after the 486?
#93My first PC was a 286/12 with an AMD chip in it.
I well remember the 486SX/2-66's and how terrible they were. I liked to say that Compaq put the "sorry" in Presario.
In the late 90's, between around 96 and 98, I made good money building AMD 486 DX/4 133's. Those things were blindingly fast for the price. As I recall there was even a 150MHz variant.
Still, my favorite CPU of all time remains the AMD K6/2-450. It wasn't until the Phenom II BE950, a dual core that I unlocked to quad core , that I felt I had a CPU that matched the K6/2-450 in value. Since then I've had a couple of Ryzen's for my daily driver/work machine, and couldn't be happier. AMD has done a fantastic job keeping price and performance in tune. But, it goes even further if you shop smartly.
Overall, this was an excellent read, and brought back a lot of memories. The 6x86 for example- too much promise for what they actually delivered. And, thanks to this article I now know why so many cheap motherboards had their CPU's soldered. It wasn't a technology decision, but a legal one. I had no idea of that at the time.
Re: What came after the 486?
#94I remember writing a cyberpunk story as a kid, in which everyone was rocking badass 786s.
I recall as a teen wondering if the 486 was so good, how amazing a 1086 was going to be someday :D
Re: What came after the 486?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Intel Pentium and Celeron-branded CPUs, Don't look at the branding. Look at the core type, count, and speed (maybe). It's been a while since I shopped Intel, but they used to typically release a low core count/lower clock speed Pentium/Celeron on the mainstream cores, often with no hyperthreading. These were typically low cost and could be a good value, you'd get decent single core performance because it's the newe…
> These are definitely worth avoiding most of the time. They may not be ideal for desktops, but they are great low power home server CPUs. In fact, they are much better than ARM alternatives like Raspberry Pis for the money.
Yeah, I consider home server to be non-interactive. If it's got your connectivity needs (and won't self-destruct), n/atom is a good fit.
Re: What came after the 486?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those sellers never disappeared; although I'm from not from Paraguay, the situation is familiar. These days they're selling desktops built on 10+ year old Xeons which you can buy for dirt cheap on AliExpress, installed on frankenstein motherboards from noname Chinese manufacturers which are desktop-oriented, but take server processors. The graphics card is something old like RX480, and comes from being run into the g…
The notion that GPU chips can be "run into the ground" by years of crypto mining or AI workloads has been debunked pretty thoroughly by now. The hardware is quite resilient, it doesn't really fail at a higher rate.
I bought a XFX RX 580 that was used for cryptomining from eBay, used it for 3 years then handed it down to my son who used it for 2 more. It still worked when he removed it. Can confirm.
Re: What came after the 486?
#97I remember fondly the AMD K6/2 architecture. It was the CPU of a ultra-budget priced Compaq Presario laptop that got me through graduate school back in the day. Some years later, back in my home country (Paraguay) I met a lady who had a side business being a VAR builder of desktop PCs. In my country, due to a lot of constraints, there was (and is) quite a money crunch and people tried to cheap out the most when purch…
I indeed remember too the family of K6 chips and their Super Socket 7 motherboards. They were cheap and affordable, and allowed cpu upgrades to classical Socket 7 motherboards.
The peak of the Super Socket 7 performance CPUs was reached when AMD released the + versions of those chips, the K6-2+ and K6-3+. Those were initially designed for laptops with lower powerconsumption and some enhanced instruction set. But they quickly became common in typical overclockers setup.
I got myself a K6-3+ that I was able to overclock to around 600MHz, probably on an ASUS motherboard.
Back then AMD was fighting so much to get marketshare that you could order for free all types of merchandising from AMD like posters, stickers and CPU badges, and they would even ship it for free from US to Europe. I remember always bringing some to hacker meetings.
Re: What came after the 486?
#98My first PC was a 286/12 with an AMD chip in it. I well remember the 486SX/2-66's and how terrible they were. I liked to say that Compaq put the "sorry" in Presario. In the late 90's, between around 96 and 98, I made good money building AMD 486 DX/4 133's. Those things were blindingly fast for the price. As I recall there was even a 150MHz variant. Still, my favorite CPU of all time remains the AMD K6/2-450. It wasn'…
I bought an AMD Sempron "single core" CPU for a pittance (can't remember now how much it was, but it was the cheapest new CPU available) and as able to unlock the second core in the BIOS immediately with no issues, saving a ton of money. Those were the days.
Re: What came after the 486?
#99I really like that VIA produced a CPU with integrated graphics, prominently labeled "VIA GRA", the same year that the FDA approved sildenafil.
Re: What came after the 486?
#100I remember writing a cyberpunk story as a kid, in which everyone was rocking badass 786s.
The Pentium III does sound like a good chip choice for a retro cyberpunk story. Like they said in “The Matrix”, 1999 was the peak of human civilization. (586 became Pentium, so 686 would be the Pentium Pro/II microarchitecture.)
I remember 1999/2000-ish I had both a Pentium III/Intel motherboard and Athlon PC. The Pentium III system was rock solid, and performed fantasic. Even the CPU and motherboard looked amazing.
The Athlon was solid but less reliable, various reboots and glitches. I kind have always had a preference for Intel since then.