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Comparative CPU Benchmarks From 1995 to 2004
Lux writes "The guys over at Tom's Hardware Guide have been busy recently! They've compared over a hundred different architectures dating all the way back to the Pentium 1 in one huge benchmarking effort. Looking to upgrade an older system? Unlike most benchmarks, which compare modern systems to other modern systems, these charts can help you figure out if the cost of upgrading is worth the speedup or if you should hold off for a bit longer."
I currently have a 486 with an (upgraded) 900MB hard drive, cdrom drive, and a whopping 32MB of ram. And windows 3.1 + dos. What are my upgrade options?
It's easy...if the room is getting a little too chilly for my liking, I upgrade to a faster processor. Problem solved.
A /.'ing that I can actually cheer for!
Artificial benchmarks tend to exaggerate minor differences in speed that aren't noticable or relevant in human time.
The best analysis of whether you should upgrade is a subjective one. Sit down at the computer. Does it do what you want or not?
Benchmarks tell me my Radeon 9800 is horribly out of date and imply its too weak to play any modern games. But I know from experience, that's bullshit.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I went from a 486 to a Sempron 2500+. Unfortunatly the artical doesn't go back far enough so I can't tell if it was worth it.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Well the clock speed of ketchup could be comparable to the 486.
Back when I upgraded my 386 16 Mhz, I told myself that I'd upgrade every 10x in performance gain. I upgraded to a Pentium 90 Mhz, then to an Athlon 900 Mhz. It seems that with the recent troubles of AMD/Intel at breaking the 4 Ghz barrier that I won't keep my 'promise' anytime soon, sadly.
How will they keep their market alive if they can't upgrade the performance? Its not like CPU chips are burning easily anyhow... so why get a replacement if the performance gain is not worth it? (Especially for web browsing / text editing only folks who upgrade based on marketing ONLY... yes! 3 Ghz more will make your internet go faster! Heh)
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Actually, they only benchmark one architecture, x86. A real shame, I would love to see a thorough comparison of *multiple* processor architectures over a long period of time.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
They haven't been busy recently. They just updated the guide they did quite some time ago. Not very much new to see here...
"Comparative CPU Benchmarks From 1995 to 2004"
I only see x86 CPUs. What about the PowerPCs, SPARCs, MIPS, Alphas, ARMs, and so on?
For instance, the m68060 was the first consumer level processor with branch prediction and branch folding, superscalar dispatch, and real-world throughput of more than one instruction per clock cycle. Except for floating point where it performed only modestly, the m68060 seriously outperformed the Pentium in spite of only having a 32 bit data bus as compared with the Pentium's 64 bit bus. Isn't this significant in illustrating the influences in processor architecture?
http://www.sixgirls.org/ is an m68060 Amiga running NetBSD 2.0. Still very useful after all this time. Where are all those Pentium 60 machines?
Part 1: http://www.tomshardware.com.nyud.net:8090/cpu/2004 1220/index.html4 1221/index.html
Part 2: http://www.tomshardware.com.nyud.net:8090/cpu/200
http//injoke.org -- Culling The Interesting
Why did they use an 8mb video card for the older motherboards that don't support AGP?
Matrox Mystique G170
Memory: 8 MB SD-G-RAM
They should use the fastest availible video card if they are testing CPU speed. My 200mhz pentium pro with a 16mb TNT card ran Quake 3.
African ketchup is non-migratory.
A blog like any other.
I bought my computer in 1982... how will I know if it's worth upgrading if the data only goes back to 1995?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Actually I shouldn't give Tom's Hardware a hard time (like everyone else seems to). As articles go, the reviews of high-end ink-jets, the 8-channel RAID6 card and the Viewsonic media center were quite interesting (and a lot more recent than the CPU round-up too).
These days though, my favourite reviewer is Dan (who posts here now and then). Dan seems to understand that a million graphs showing you the statistically insignificant difference between the latest mobos / graphic cards / processors / ram sinks don't really make a great site.
However, beware of the 486DX50 vs the 486DX250. The 486DX 50 was a true 50Mhz part whereas the DX2 were only 50Mhz internal to the chip with the bus running at 25Mhz. Same thing for 486DX2 66's. Most programs ran slower on them than a trus 486DX50 due to the slower (33Mhz) bus speed.
Yup. Then Intel had to confuse the issue by releasing the 486DX4. Just as the DX2-50 had a 2x multiplier with a 25 mhz bus and a 50 mhz core speed, you'd think the DX4-100 would have a 4x multiplier with a 25 mhz bus and 100 mhz core speed. But it was actually a 3x multiplier, with a 33 mhz bus speed. They should have caused it a DX3
AMD was a second-source for Intel CPUs up through the 286 era. I believe this arose out of IBM's requirement to have a second source for whatever CPU it picked for its PC. It appears Wikipedia corroborates my story.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
My wife responded to my description of the SX, DX situation with "So, you want the 486DX, not the 486 Sucks, right?"
I must disagree with you on the "most human eyes can't distinguish the difference between 40 and 80fps." This may be somewhat more true of movies which are made with motion blur that blends the frames together. But you can certainly still tell the difference for the better when a movie is captured at 60fps rather than 30. Its not as big a difference as changing the framerate in a game is due to the motion blur but its certainly more visually pleasing when a video is captured and played at a higher framerate.
Back on track though, games have no motion blur... each frame is sharp and leads into the next with no blur. So in order to get a smooth look to it the framerate must be much higher in order to trick the brain into seeing a smoothly transitioning scene. I can easily tell the difference between framerates up to about 120fps, after which it becomes very difficult to discerne the changes.
Of course if you are playing a game and bump up your framerate without increasing your refresh rate as well, you are basically wasting rendering power as the monitor is only drawing the same number of frames as the current refresh rate. Keeping your refresh at or higher than your average framerate will make for a much more pleasant gaming experience.
Here is an ancient but still very much valid write-up on Framerate and Refresh Rate in regards to gaming:
Framerate and refresh rate write up