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Intel's Pentium Chip Turns 20 Today

Posted by Soulskill on from the and-many-moore dept.

girlmad writes "Intel's Pentium processor was launched 20 years ago today, a move that led to the firm becoming the dominant supplier of computer chips across the globe. This article has some original iComp benchmark scores, rating the 66MHz Pentium at a heady 565, compared with 297 for the 66MHz 486DX2, which was the fastest chip available prior to the Pentium launch."

6 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Ahh, Pentium. by ZorinLynx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The 66MHz original Pentium. What a beast.

    It ran on a full TTL +5V. So it sucked down power. Lots of power. I've disassembled first generation Pentium chips, removing the golden cover that protects the die beneath. The die is HUGE! Much bigger than any current production CPU.

    In fact, the early models produced so much heat that we boggled at the big fans needed to cool them! It was one of the first Intel x86 chips that REQUIRED a fan for cooling. We used to run our 486DX2/66 and below fanless and they worked great.

    All this for only less than twice the performance, at three times the cost.

    The vast majority of us skipped the first generation Pentium, instead going for more affordable chips as the i486DX4/100 and the Am5x86/133, which was RIDICULOUSLY popular for several years! In fact, the latter was faster than a Pentium 75MHz for anything that didn't require the FPU. And not much needed the FPU back then.

    Then of course we laughed our asses off when the FDIV flaw became known. Clearly the Pentium was the #0.9999999998855 processor on the market!

    Ahh, memories.

    1. Re:Ahh, Pentium. by ZorinLynx · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I wonder if you had a cacheless 486 system. These were very common in the early 90s! There were even "fake cache" chips that motherboard vendors would put in to make it look like you had cache when you didn't.

      I suffered with such a system for a long time before realizing that it had no cache. I always wondered why my friend's 486 system felt so much faster, then I finally read about the cache issue in a magazine! Those were different times, when you couldn't just use Google to get an instant answer as to why something sucks.

      Being a broke teenager, I suffered with that cacheless 486SX/25 (overclocked to 33) from 1993 until 1996 when I finally got a job and upgraded to a Pentium 166MHz. It was like getting out of slow computer prison. :)

  2. Re:66MHz? Nice for you Rockefellers by Joce640k · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The rest of us made do with 60MHz versions.

    We couldn't afford the cooling systems for the 66MHz version?

    (Or didn't want to live in a wind tunnel...)

    --
    No sig today...
  3. Re:66MHz? Nice for you Rockefellers by SJHillman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I still have a P90 that I use for old games. It runs Windows 98 like a beast, although my Cyrix P166+ naturally blows it away.
    The P90 has a dual 3.5"/5.25" floppy drive and a 2X CD-ROM drive. The part that surprises most people is that there is no cooling fan on the processor heatsink or power supply, just a small one on the back of the case.

  4. Perspective by Paperweight · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you performed a calculation that took a week to complete on a modern Core i7 2600k, you'd still be waiting for your Pentium 1 to finish the same calculation even with a 20 year head start!

    Source

  5. Re:0.99904274017st post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Let me be the first to say f00f.