Your CPU progression

[Zarathustra[H]]

I am and always was a huge fan of the Pentium Pro. It was awesome back in its day. I still own three of them. One 150MHz CPU and two 180MHz CPUs that were both overclocked to 200MHz every day I used them on an Intel PR440FX motherboard.

My recollection is that the Pentium Pro did one thing absolutely brilliantly, and that one thing was to execute 32bit code.

Only problem was that very few people were actually doing that in the 90's.

Sure, Windows 95 was 32 bit, so it was technically possible, but most software people ran under Windows 95 was still 16bit, meaning that for most people a Pentium Pro was really just a very expensive regular pentium.

It was only later we appreciated how great it was, when 32bit code became the norm.

 

[cpufrost]

I remember buying a handful of Pentium Pro 150s at a hamfest back in 1997. No one wanted those but my Shuttle HOT 613 allowed overclocking them to 180 with ease. Ran Win NT 4.0 on that box dual booting to 95 when I needed to. Of course 9x wasn't SMP aware but the box had 128MB EDO ram which was a crapton back then. Crazy now as we have CPUs with more L3 cache today than a system like that had memory...

 

[Mackintire]

Intel 486 DX4 100MHz
Cyrix 6x86 PR90+
AMD K5 PR200 <-- Ran this with a Peltier cooler at 166Mhz for a while and then it actually did perform nearly as fast as an Intel 200 MMX Processor
AMD K6 II 366MHz (Not inspiring at all)
AMD K6-III+ 450Mhz (Surprisingly one of my favorites)
Intel Pentium III 667MHz (Coppermine)
Pentium III 1400S (S370 Tualatin) x2 (Still have)
AMD Duron 950MHz (this was a huge disappointment as a second PC)
AMD Athlon 1.33GHz AXIA (Thunderbird)
AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (Thoroughbred) (Still have) (this was absolutely revolutionary at the time)
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (Thoroughbred)
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton) (first time I could brute force passwords at 1.4 billion characters per second)
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 90nm
AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ 65nm (Brisbane)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (this processor literally heated my second floor for a number of years)
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (Still have)
Intel Xeon E5-2643 Sandy Bridge x2 (Still using now)
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X (being assembled now)

 

[Unabomber]

I remember buying a handful of Pentium Pro 150s at a hamfest back in 1997. No one wanted those but my Shuttle HOT 613 allowed overclocking them to 180 with ease. Ran Win NT 4.0 on that box dual booting to 95 when I needed to. Of course 9x wasn't SMP aware but the box had 128MB EDO ram which was a crapton back then. Crazy now as we have CPUs with more L3 cache today than a system like that had memory...

That was a most underrated CPU back then. I had no problems either, running mine at 180 MHz.

I was probably the only one out there, though, running that platform with burst EDO (BEDO) RAM. To be honest, it really didn't make any noticeable difference vs. regular EDO RAM.

 

[tbird_]

I am and always was a huge fan of the Pentium Pro.

I still have a running Netserver LX Pro with 4 Pentium Pros with 1MB Cache and 4 GB Ram.

Think I might open a thread here to show it

 

[NattyKathy]

I still have a running Netserver LX Pro with 4 Pentium Pros with 1MB Cache and 4 GB Ram.

Think I might open a thread here to show it

yes please, I'd love to see that.

That reminded me I've tinkered with a couple quad-proc setups, both very DIY and neither ever really came together.
First was a Slot 2 board out of a Dell server, the power supply situation was a nightmare.
Second, much later, was a G34 Socket F? board with quad Barcelonas from a Google datacenter partout. That one had a weird UEFI and was super picky about OS.

The classic big iron from the 90s tho, that's cool stuff. Some years back I had a solid lead on a full working ALR 6x6 board set through someone at 2CPU but the forum died and I lost contact with the person sadly.

 

[Dan_D]

My recollection is that the Pentium Pro did one thing absolutely brilliantly, and that one thing was to execute 32bit code.

Only problem was that very few people were actually doing that in the 90's.

Sure, Windows 95 was 32 bit, so it was technically possible, but most software people ran under Windows 95 was still 16bit, meaning that for most people a Pentium Pro was really just a very expensive regular pentium.

It was only later we appreciated how great it was, when 32bit code became the norm.

All true. However, one thing that it did allow us to do was run SMP back at a time where we were limited to a single CPU most of the time. Granted, you had to run Windows NT 3.5x or 4.0 which presented its own problems on the desktop. When there was the transition to Windows 2000 things got a bit easier on that front.

 

[tbird_]

I still have a running Netserver LX Pro with 4 Pentium Pros with 1MB Cache and 4 GB Ram.

Think I might open a thread here to show it

Thread is open

https://hardforum.com/threads/something-special-the-hp-netserver-lx-pro-quad-pentium-pro.2017372/

 

[havoc lingers]

Mine was Athlon XP 2800 and AMD FX 4100. We'll see what Zen 4 has to offer.

 

[onick]

Intel Pentium II
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Intel Core i7 4720HQ
Intel Core i7 1165G7
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X

 

[Grebuloner]

Intel Pentium II
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Intel Core i7 4720HQ
Intel Core i7 1165G7
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X

Quite a jump, there!

 

[ncknck]

Intel 8086, 5 MHz
Intel 80286, 12 MHz
Intel Pentium MMX, 166 MHz
Intel Pentium II, 266 MHz
AMD Athlon, 900 MHz
AMD Athlon XP T-bred, 2200 MHz
Intel i7-980x, 4000 MHz <- 2010 - today

It' not a long list but it's all i had.

 

[matt167]

I've had so many early on. 386, 486 DX 66, K6-2, p3 800, sempron 2500+, Anthon X2 3000, X3 445 Rana, X5670, W3680, R5 3600. I think I covered them all.

 

[rhkcommander959]

Fun thread, I honestly can't remember them all for sure... I'll just post the ones I remember modding/overclocking

Slot 1 Celeron, 266mhz on a 440bx I believe, slot key replaced it to pentium 3 coppermine 1ghz with fsb mod. (huge upgrade back then).

Amd K6-2 450, overclocked to 550 I think.

Socket A, oh boy. Pretty much all of them, but the sempron M was the favorite, Barton and mendocino... lots of gold finger modding. I did have an AMD slot setup for a quick minute, but it was never a primary system.

Dabbled in s754 but besides modding turion on it I never stayed long, since my dfi board was bad.

S939, my first GOOD gaming rig, opteron 165 right off the batt, 3ghz or better, Athlon 3800x2 at 3.4ghz, using a swiftech peltier water block I got on Craigslist cheap after a guy plugged it in backwards and blew his socket A cpu, and the original TEC. Dfi cfx 3200 mostly, even though they had a cold boot bug, beyond that they were beasts. Still have all the parts but after a house fire I think they're dead. Ran two amd cards in crossfire for a while: HIS 3870 and a 3850, volt modded both to clock match at a high oc. Had UV lamps in there that made the motherboard and cards glow beautifully, and was using 4x512 crucial ballistix tracers which were the first pretty LED ram, they had lighting along the ram slot edge too that made the yellow pop!

Am2, I got the first gen phenom and had to return it because my 939 was better in gaming at the time amd I wasn't made of money. Had several am2-am3+ setups, never used as my primary.

After that I jumped deep into later s775, with an abit p35 and q6600, and then later q9650, both would do at least 4ghz daily, I remember working hard to get ones that would clock well. Eventually got into some x48 boards

Then lga1366. Started with an i7 920, quickly swapped to an unlocked xeon w3520 or something. Sorry I'll check when I get on my pc. Then to a x5650, and lastly with a x5670. All were 4ghz+ daily, still using the x5670 at 4.2ghz daily for idk maybe 5 years straight? Maybe more, but I've had the asus p6x58d-e board since the get go darn near, and it's been steadfast. Been using it with windows 7 forever, ddr3-2000 3x4gb. Was tempted to buy some of the faster ddr3 a while ago to see how high I could push it but never came to fruition.

4770k, probably a few in between, 6700k, 7700k, 8700k, 9600k, 12700kf, oh and my HEDT 7940x

 

[Elios]

486DX, Pentium 120Mhz, K6-2 400Mhz, Athlon Slot A 700Mhz , Slot A 900Mhz, Athlon64 3000+, Athlon64 X2 3800+, Core 2 Duo E7200, i7 860, i7 4790K, i7 9700K, i9 12900K

 

[WAterTriAd]

My rigs CPU's:
Motorola 68000, 8 MHz
Intel 486 SX 66 mhz
Pentium Upgrade 133 mhz @ ~150mhz (This one smoked the FSB when it died so I didn't OC again for a while)
Pentium 2 266 mhz
Pentium 3 1.3 ghz
Pentium Core 2 Duo E8600 @ 3.7 ghz
Core i7 2600k @ 4.7 HT/ 4.8 w/o HT
Core i7 6700k @ 4.8 HT/ 4.9 w/o HT
Core i9 12900k

 

[chrispycrunch]

I am still on an Intel i5-2500K for web surfing and Word. Looking for suggested thread posts on an upgrade path.

 

[matt167]

I am still on an Intel i5-2500K for web surfing and Word. Looking for suggested thread posts on an upgrade path.

Install the best chip your board supports. It can be a xeon as well. Depending on your boards chipset it may support ivy bridge. Something like an E3 1240 or it's v2 counterpart are a good bang for buck. About $30 buys one and that is 3770 level of performance.

Run that until Amd drops AM5 and then see if it's worth the switch to AMD or go 12th gen Intel

 

[Bigbacon]

least when I started building PCs and what was my main PC.
cyrix 166
AMD 233
AMD 350
Celeron 366
P3 450
P3 750
Athlon 1ghz
dual athlon 1.4ghz
P4 2.4
P4 2.8
X2 3800+
Core 2 Duo (don't remember the speed)
i7 920
Xeon ( can't remember the number now, 6 core thing)
ryzen 2700
ryzen 3800

 

[NattyKathy]

ooh, i like this game!
I've had too many, some of the model #'s may be a little off. Yes, it's all more or less in chronological order. Yes, I've done some weird down/side-grades lol

Desktop CPUs in primary systems
Motorola 68020 @ 16Mhz (Macintosh LC)
PowerPC 603e @ 160Mhz (PowerMac 6360)
PowerPC 603e @ 240Mhz (UMAX C600 Mac "clone")
AMD Duron @ 1300Mhz
Dual Pentium III @ 1133Mhz
Athlon XP 2400+
Athlon XP 3200+
Pentium D 820
Dual Xeon LV ("Prestonia") overclocked to 2.6Ghz
Pentium M Dothan "Extra Spicy" edition clocked at ~2.6-2.8Ghz
Core 2 Duo E6300
Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition
Pentium E2160
Dual PowerPC 7455 @ 1.25Ghz (PowerMac G4)
Athlon X2 3800+
Athlon X2 5200+
Phenom II X4 840
FX-8120 OC to 4.2Ghz
A10-5800K
i7 920 OC to 3.8-ish
Opteron 6344 (12-core Piledriver)
FX-8320 OC to 4.4Ghz
Core 2 Q6600 OC to 3.6Ghz
i5 2320
Ryzen 1600 OC to 4Ghz allcore
Ryzen 3600
FX-8320 OC to 4Ghz - 4.6Ghz
Ryzen 5800X @ 4.8Ghz
Ryzen 5900X @ 4.6Ghz


Mobile CPUs
PowerPC 603e @ 240Mhz (PowerBook 3400c)
Pentium III @ 850Mhz (Compaq EVO N400c)
Core Duo T2250 (some Everex ultraportable)
Pentium M ULV @ 1.1Ghz (some Fujitsu ultraportable)
Pentium P6000 (some utterly forgettable 15.6" Plastic Fantastic)
PowerPC 7447A @ 1.33Ghz (PowerBook G4 12")
Core Duo T2500 (Macbook)
i7 2670QM (HP Envy 15)
i5 4200U (Surface Pro 2)
Core M 5Y10C (Acer convertable)
i5 2520M (Dell E6420)
i7 2670QM (15" Macbook Pro)
i7 2760QM (HP Elitebook 8560W)
i7 6700HQ (MSI GE72)
Celeron N3050 (EVOO Elite 2-in-1)
i7 5600U (HP zBook 14)
Core 2 P8600 (Dell E6400)
i7 2670QM (HP DV6)
i5 8300H (Acer Nitro 5)
i7 10750H (Omen 15)
i7 10875H (Powerspec 1530/Clevo PB50)

Honourable Mentions
MIPS R4400 @ 150Mhz (Silicon Graphics Inc. Indy workstation)
MIPS R10000 @ 195Mhz (SGI Indigo 2)
MIPS R5000 @ 180Mhz (SGI O2)
Dual MIPS R10000 @ 250Mhz (SGI Octane)
More Pentium 4's than I can possibly count
A few K6/2 systems
Dual Slot 2 Xeon
Dual Xeon LV "Sossaman" Socket 479
A handful of Pentium 3's
Various SPARC chips
Dual Athlon, MP & modified XP-M
Legendary Celeron 300A i found in the trash
an i5 2500 I found in the trash
Dual Xeon X5650 (Mac Pro)

Updated with recent upgrade to Ryzen 5900X in my main system, and added more Xeons to the honorable mentions (was given a free 12-core Mac Pro, woo!)

 

[PhDGuy83]

Love thinking about this:
Laptop CPUs:

1. Intel 80C88 inside an IBM PC Convertible
2. Intel Core i3-4130 in work laptop
3. Intel Core i7-4320M in work laptop
4. Intel Core i7-4600M in work laptop
5. Intel Core i7-4810M in Dell Precision
6. Intel Core -7-4930MX in Dell Precision
7. Intel Core i7-7700HQ in work laptop
8. Intel Core i7-10750H in work laptop

Personal Desktop CPUs:

1. AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4Ghz
2. Pentium 4 2.8Ghz Prescott
3. Core 2 Duo E6670 2.66Ghz Conroe
4. Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge
5. Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake
6. AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Zen 2

Systems I have built for family/Friends:

1. Pentium 4 3.0Ghz Prescott
2. AMD Athlon II X2 250
3. AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition
4. AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
5. AMD Llano A8-3850
6. Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge
7. Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake
8. Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge - first machine for daughter
9. Intel Core i5-6500 - first machine for son
10. Intel Core i5-6600K - second machine for son
11. Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake - second machine for daughter
12. AMD Ryzen 7 5700G