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The 386 DX50 DID exist. It was uncommon, and was not routinely sold. It did exist however. I know, I distinctly remember that one. (Wikipedia is simply wrong. This is one of those cases where I wish I hadn't thrown it away. It was not an OCed 33. It was a straight up DX50. I ordered it from a computer shoppers magazine.)

Suuuure it did.

I find 173 hits on Google for "386DX/50", and just 14 from all of the depths of Usenet, and zero relevant results from Google Images. This level of result is more easily explained by an eternity of typos than the existence of an actual, mass-produced product that was available for people to buy.

For comparison, "386DX/40" returns many thousands of hits, which seems appropriate for the modern web, and around 7k hits on Usenet, which also seems reasonable.

There were a variety of "486" upgrade chips from Cyrix and TI which were largely pin-compatible with the 386, and these were available in clock-doubled 50MHz variations. But to call any of these a "386DX/50" is just plain wrong.

The 386 DX50 DID exist. It was uncommon, and was not routinely sold. It did exist however. I know, I distinctly remember that one. (Wikipedia is simply wrong. This is one of those cases where I wish I hadn't thrown it away. It was not an OCed 33. It was a straight up DX50. I ordered it from a computer shoppers magazine.)

Suuuure it did.

I find 173 hits on Google for "386DX/50", and just 14 from all of the depths of Usenet, and zero relevant results from Google Images. This level of result is more easily explained by an eternity of typos than the existence of an actual, mass-produced product that was available for people to buy.

For comparison, "386DX/40" returns many thousands of hits, which seems appropriate for the modern web, and around 7k hits on Usenet, which also seems reasonable.

There were a variety of "486" upgrade chips from Cyrix and TI which were largely pin-compatible with the 386, and these were available in clock-doubled 50MHz variations. But to call any of these a "386DX/50" is just plain wrong.

No, if you're a true retrogamer, you want one of these, and that's most definitely an AMD chip. 386DX-40, and that's 40 FSB * 1, w00t! If you can't find the 40MHz chip, then Intel's fair game too - their chips are identical to the AMD chips.

It also seems that other PGA132 chips (even 486DLC chips) had the same Dhrystone performance at the same clock speed, though, on this benchmark (reading graphs, don't know French).

If you need a 486, it gets trickier. Intel was probably the way to go at a certain clock speed, but didn't hit the highest clocks. Still, the Intel DX4-100 was the fastest on Dhrystone. However, Cyrix's 5x86 100MHz owned the Intels on Whetstone. AMD was slightly slower at 100MHz, though.

If you need a Pentium-class chip, determine how much Quake-playing there is. The more Quake, the closer you need to be to Intel (careful about PPros, but it might be 16-bitness on the part of the benchie app), and the further from AMD or Cyrix (and forget NexGen - there are no mobos that take the Nx587, and the Nx586FP is quite rare). However, with integer work, the AMD K6 0wns the Pentium. Then again, anything other than a Cyrix/IBM/ST or a PPro 0wned the Pentium (something tells me the benchie WAS 16-bit).

So, here's what you should have for each situation:

386: As long as it's 40MHz, it doesn't matter. AMD or some 486DLC, IT DOESN'T MATTER. If you can't hit 40MHz, then all 33MHz chips are the same performance according to this benchmark.

486: If you're doing Quake, get a Cyrix 5x86. Otherwise, go Intel.

Pentium: If you're doing Quake, get exactly that - a Pentium. If not, go AMD (but not a late K5).

Anyone want to tell me whether this is possible? I'm considering running Opera and games in monitor 1, and Kopete and my Fluxbox slit in monitor 2. The trick is that the card for the second monitor will be an old ISA card, and it'll run at both a different resolution (640x480 vs. 1280x1024) and color depth (4-bit vs. 16-bit) from the main monitor.

BTW, it doesn't really require 64MB RAM and a 233MHz Pentium II - look at this thread - one 20MHz Pentium I with 32MB RAM, and one 63MHz Pentium Overdrive with 18MB RAM(!)

Anyone willing to try my ideas in that thread (run on a 5x86, and run on Bochs on a 386 STUFFED with RAM)?

Corrections:

The 386 WAS slower than a 286 - many people claim that a 286/25 was on par with a 386/40. Also note that the 386 was designed BEFORE the 286, and the 286 was designed because the market wasn't ready for the 386. Also, from what I heard, the Pentium was slower than the 486. The Pentium Pro was by nature slower than the Pentium, but its 32-bit optimizations pushed it past the Pentium - but since everyone ran old 16-bit apps, it seemed slower. Look at where that architecture's gone though - it's made it to 2.0GHz, and 2.4GHz overclocked, from a humble beginning at 133 (not 150) MHz. The Pentium ramped to 233MHz (a 266MHz OC was really pushing it) from 60MHz.

The x86 series has had 64-bit instructions since 1997. I suppose if you want to exhault Mac for finally catching up 6 years later you're certainly welcome to.