This almost always happens when Intel releases a new core. I think the 386 was worse than the 286 at 16 bit code, even.
It's very difficult to manufacture an architecture that is both more efficient and remains 100% compatibility (performance and otherwise) with previous generations. Sure that Athlon TBird 1.2 GHz will kill that 286 in any 16 bit app, but I bet if you break down performance per megahert, the 286 may very well come out on top.
I never liked this chip and AMD's claims at how "fast" it was. Yes, it was seven megahertz faster than Intel's 33 MHz, but it yielded only about a 12% improvement, about half as much as its clock speed indicated. In addition, it ran absurdly hot and had many more assorted troubles than Intel's chips. I cannot remember how much this chip cost in relation to the Intel 33 MHz, but if it was cheap enough, it would have made a good personal computer. But this chip stunk for production use.
Sorry, your post is absolutely correct, but I felt compelled to post this rant for some reason.
I always wondered why Intel didn't continue its 486 line after the Pentium came out. The higher clocked 486s would make for a good "Pentium SX" kind of thing. I mean, just shrinking the fab process alone would probably allow them to hit around 150MHz - 200 MHz (eventually) without significant core revisions. The 486s probably wouldn't cost much more to manufacture, and thus Intel could probably get similar margins to the Pentium and ensure rapid obsolescence. I also wonder that about the Pentium line: I'm pretty sure Intel could have taken it above the 233 mark if they really wanted to. I guess when you're #1 you play by your own rules.
And what you say about buying cheaper CPUs to afford more RAM: thank you. I make this point to every associate who thinks buying some 733 MHz "essentials" computer that only has 32MB of RAM and a 2MB video card is a good idea. I tell them a Pentium Pro 200 with 128MB RAM and a decent video card will outperform that joke of a machine.
I think that is what Intel wanted to imply also, yes. I can't back that quote of mine up, but I read it in a magazine a long, long time ago. It was one of those 486 FAQ deals, and one of the questions was something like "Where is the DX/3?" and the magazine said that Intel named it the DX/4 to "remind" people of the 486. I don't know exactly what kind of reminding those numbers serve; all I know is that the DX/4 had a 3x multiplier.
It's the same difference between the 8088, the 80186, and the 80286. Also the same difference between the Pentium and the Pentium Pro (II/III/Celeron/Xeon, etc). I don't define what a generation is, that's up to Intel's marketing, but I'm sure a "generation" is termed as a new number to the x86. To be fair, though, each generation that has been given a new number has been worthy in my opinion. The only exception to this would be the original 186, but the souped up low power embedded clones that run at 40 MHz can compete with 386s! Likewise, the 486 ran approximately 100% - 150% faster than a 386 at the same clock speed, so I'd call that "generation worthy."
As for your statements to the 386 and 486, they're a bit off. Yes, a 486SX had no math co-processor and the 486DX did, but the SX/DX in the 386 era referred to its data bus. The 386SX had only a 16 bit data bus while the DX had a 32 (I think) bit one. While the average 386DX did come with the 387 processor, you could not assume this from the DX name. Intel's naming standards are so clear, aren't they? I especially liked how they named the 486 DX/3 the 486 DX/4 because the 4 "reminded people of a 486." Right.
The article said that a new architecture came out about every five years. Not to get nitpicky, but seven archs in eighteen years is quite a far stretch from "every five". Maybe their latest change was five years (which it was), but certainly not the ones before it. Were this statement true, we'd be hitting the 486 in 2002.
And the service in general is atrocious. There are constant circuit problems which leads to modem hangups and "busy signals". The lines here are all rotting, and I repeatedly called them and demanded they fix our lines so that our phone doesn't ring whenever someone else's on the block rings. Ever pick up a phone and hear four or five conversations simultaneously at the same volume? It might as well have been a party line.
The actual repair people are friendly, though, and they do a quick, efficient, and effective job. But that's like saying your doctor is good at keeping you struggling to survive at the last months of your life while he misdiagnosed your cancer two years ago. Those lines should have been dug up and replaced a decade ago; this is a coastal area exposed to constant salty ground water and Version thinks lines will still last 25 years. Hahaha!
DSL? Ha! They cram that advertising down your throat on every channel but they don't offer it here...or in neighboring towns. Verision just gives you that "within the next six months" response if you ask them about it.
On top of that, "short distance" calling is something like 20 cents a minute! Thank God we're allowed to get that service cheaper from AT&T now. I wish there was competition at the local level; I don't know many, if anybody, who are impressed with Verison. I hear complaints from people who lease T-lines from them on the level of, "Man, it took Verison two weeks to fix our T-1." Hardly what I would call a "dedicated" service.
Some people I know put up their entire video game music collections (some of the more rare albums can go for over $200 alone!) just to see what the collection is worth. The only problem is that all of their auctions were taken down by eBay's patrols.
It's a misnomer: no hardware or even operating system is really being emulated. The OpenBSD "emulation" just reads the FreeBSD API and runs the software natively. It's just like WINE but for a UNIX system, but since FreeBSD's, Linux's, et. al's. APIs are open and do not have to be reverse engineered, you can expect apps to run at full speed or near full speed.
but now I'm excited to see what this technology can bring. How difficult would this be to implement on the OS level? Would SSE2 even benefit OSes? How about this funky MMX? How does the 16-bit discrepancy between SSE2 and X87 FPU affect things? Do we need that precision for most things? Tom didn't mention much about how the quality of the resulting movies varied, either.
Intel fan or not, a lot of people must at least be interested! I sure am.
Thank you for reminding me of that. It's been so long since I used DOS/Win32 that I forgot that certain cards like the Live! do use multiple IRQs. However, I would hardly qualify this as a "usual" case, but it is a case, nonetheless.
Poor device support was one of the reasons I couldn't stand Windows (9x) anymore. I'm sick of hearing of "hardware incompatibilities" with alternate operating systems. Sure, it may not be as easy as "Hardware Wizard found new hardware and is installing," but at least you don't have to wrestle with driver modules and such with other operating systems (Well, maybe OS/2). Maybe it's just me.
Adding an apostrophe is an acceptable, albeit becoming outdated, method of expressing plural acronyms. It was just the way I was taught in school, so that's the way I do it.
Besides, where do you get the notion I was grammar flaming? I corrected a number, a fact. That's quite different than picking on spelling. You're the only one grammar flaming here.
The 386 (faster than a 286, but oh so expensive, and no one uses 32 bit apps yet anyway)
And no one did use 32 apps for years to come, however. The 386 was a revolution, anyway; almost the entire industry recognizes that. Bad example.
The 486 (who needs a math co-processor? Geez it's expensive)
You'd only believe you didn't need a math coprocessor if you listened to Intel's marketing. Ever buy a game? Nothing is more disappointing than buying a $2000 hunk of metal and seeing that "Sorry, this software requires a math coprocessor to run. Please contact your manufacturer."
The Pentium (Gosh 486's are available with the same or higher clock speed)
Same with the 386. The Pentium was hailed as the Macintosh killer when it was released, and rightly so since it was the first chip from Intel to even rival the decaying Motorola 68k line.
The Pentium Pro (16 bit apps actually run _slower_)
The PPro was viewed in the same exact manner as the P4 is viewed now. I'll give you that.
The Pentium II (oh, bummer, L2 cache is at half-speed, PPro is so much better...)
Ditto on this one, except by this time, it was 1997, and most people were using 32-bit apps by now.
May I ask what sound cards use two IRQ's? I've seen enough sound cards over the last seven/eight years or so to determine how they "usually" behave, and I cannot think of one that uses two IRQs. Sound cards (especially Creative Labs cards) historically tended to use two DMA's, which are even more scarce than IRQ since you only got eight.
In fact, the only devices I can think of that use multiple IRQs are dual-chipped video cards, serial controllers - ATAPI controllers (multi-device controllers in general), and those funky dual-channelled ethernet adapters. Most of what I just listed gives you twice as much functionality for two IRQ's, so it can be said that you really are getting your two IRQ's worth.
Anyway, since when has the 16 IRQ limit been a problem? Back in the ISA days there weren't enough types of devices to even fill up all the slots, let alone IRQs, and with the advent of PCI, IRQ sharing became possible. Now with USB, Firewire, et. al. all the devices are packed on one bus which communicates to the computer via one interrupt (Or is it two? I don't use USB or 1394).
Since I shut off my serial and parallel ports, I'm only using about half my IRQ's, and I don't use SCSI.
I said I felt like I was the only one using, but the way the Slashdot discussions are going these days, it seems "everybody" is using either KDE or GNOME. Personally, I don't get what's so cool about either of them (keeping in mind I haven't tried KDE in two years).
GNOME seems to suffer from the Mozilla syndrome: no matter what version you get, it acts like a beta. I've noticed GNOME improving over the past few releases, but that's all I can say for it.
KDE was kinda cool when I tried it way back. KDE two years ago seemed more solid and cohesive than GNOME is today, but KDE didn't seem to stick with me, either. I reformatted that Linux install and never chose to reinstall KDE, which is the primary reason why I haven't tried it since.
These days I feel I am the only one who uses WindowMaker. I've been repeatedly disappointed with GNOME (but I think that may have something to do with my Linux install since I never hear repeats of my problems). I've been meaning to try KDE again since I haven't used it in almost two years, but whatever I try (FVWM and friends, Afterstep, Enlightenment) or mean to try (KDE 2, IceWM, Plan 9), I always fall back on WindowMaker.
The download is small, it doesn't have three miles of dependencies, execution and loading speeds are very fast, and it doesn't eat eighty megs of RAM.
WindowMaker can run programs from GNOME, KDE and more, if you have some weird stuff to run. I'm not saying WindowMaker is perfect, but it was so simple and intuitive to me and so easy to setup that it stuck with me.
This is one of the things I like about the UNIX world. WindowMaker isn't what "everybody" wants, but it exists anyway, and I think this is the way to go in general, rather than attempting a homogenized environment that tries to suit everyone's needs.
CTM rules, too. That is, after you get that first painful delta. But after that, you just CTM all those little 4k updates, and you've got an up to date system. CVSup is probably less hassle, but because CTM doesn't check anything before it starts butchering your sources, it ends up being a little faster for people with slow connections.
Look at your first post in this thread. It doesn't use the word "Amaya" once. How can I or Wonko possibly be any more off topic than you? This whole thread is about web design which is entirely on topic with Amaya's goals.
You don't have to justify yourself to me, anyway. I was mostly playing Devil's advocate with a little personal opinion thrown in.
What I'm trying to say is that a professional should always try to strive for betterness. Simply shutting everything out and thinking things are perfect the way they are will eventually put you behind in the game. Just a little friendly advice.
Also, I took the smiley to mean, "I'm better than you so I can say this" not as a gesture of sarcasm. When you're trying to be funny to people you don't know, you should try to avoid the use of "fuck". Just some more advice.
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This almost always happens when Intel releases a new core. I think the 386 was worse than the 286 at 16 bit code, even.
It's very difficult to manufacture an architecture that is both more efficient and remains 100% compatibility (performance and otherwise) with previous generations. Sure that Athlon TBird 1.2 GHz will kill that 286 in any 16 bit app, but I bet if you break down performance per megahert, the 286 may very well come out on top.
I never liked this chip and AMD's claims at how "fast" it was. Yes, it was seven megahertz faster than Intel's 33 MHz, but it yielded only about a 12% improvement, about half as much as its clock speed indicated. In addition, it ran absurdly hot and had many more assorted troubles than Intel's chips. I cannot remember how much this chip cost in relation to the Intel 33 MHz, but if it was cheap enough, it would have made a good personal computer. But this chip stunk for production use.
Sorry, your post is absolutely correct, but I felt compelled to post this rant for some reason.
I always wondered why Intel didn't continue its 486 line after the Pentium came out. The higher clocked 486s would make for a good "Pentium SX" kind of thing. I mean, just shrinking the fab process alone would probably allow them to hit around 150MHz - 200 MHz (eventually) without significant core revisions. The 486s probably wouldn't cost much more to manufacture, and thus Intel could probably get similar margins to the Pentium and ensure rapid obsolescence. I also wonder that about the Pentium line: I'm pretty sure Intel could have taken it above the 233 mark if they really wanted to. I guess when you're #1 you play by your own rules.
And what you say about buying cheaper CPUs to afford more RAM: thank you. I make this point to every associate who thinks buying some 733 MHz "essentials" computer that only has 32MB of RAM and a 2MB video card is a good idea. I tell them a Pentium Pro 200 with 128MB RAM and a decent video card will outperform that joke of a machine.
I get modded down for apologizing?
This is what I said, wasn't it? My posts must be confusing or something.
I think that is what Intel wanted to imply also, yes. I can't back that quote of mine up, but I read it in a magazine a long, long time ago. It was one of those 486 FAQ deals, and one of the questions was something like "Where is the DX/3?" and the magazine said that Intel named it the DX/4 to "remind" people of the 486. I don't know exactly what kind of reminding those numbers serve; all I know is that the DX/4 had a 3x multiplier.
80386: 1985 (this one is tricky because it was released well before it was actually used)
:)
80486: 1989
80586: 1993
60686: 1995
I think since the Pentium 4 is out now, we can assume it's not to be released in 2001
It's the same difference between the 8088, the 80186, and the 80286. Also the same difference between the Pentium and the Pentium Pro (II/III/Celeron/Xeon, etc). I don't define what a generation is, that's up to Intel's marketing, but I'm sure a "generation" is termed as a new number to the x86. To be fair, though, each generation that has been given a new number has been worthy in my opinion. The only exception to this would be the original 186, but the souped up low power embedded clones that run at 40 MHz can compete with 386s! Likewise, the 486 ran approximately 100% - 150% faster than a 386 at the same clock speed, so I'd call that "generation worthy."
As for your statements to the 386 and 486, they're a bit off. Yes, a 486SX had no math co-processor and the 486DX did, but the SX/DX in the 386 era referred to its data bus. The 386SX had only a 16 bit data bus while the DX had a 32 (I think) bit one. While the average 386DX did come with the 387 processor, you could not assume this from the DX name. Intel's naming standards are so clear, aren't they? I especially liked how they named the 486 DX/3 the 486 DX/4 because the 4 "reminded people of a 486." Right.
The article said that a new architecture came out about every five years. Not to get nitpicky, but seven archs in eighteen years is quite a far stretch from "every five". Maybe their latest change was five years (which it was), but certainly not the ones before it. Were this statement true, we'd be hitting the 486 in 2002.
Something like, "Don't have a Macintosh at work but wish you did? Download desktop themes for your OS and make it look like your Macintosh!"
Seriously, though,these things are free advertizement. What more could you want than people willing to do advertizing for you?
And the service in general is atrocious. There are constant circuit problems which leads to modem hangups and "busy signals". The lines here are all rotting, and I repeatedly called them and demanded they fix our lines so that our phone doesn't ring whenever someone else's on the block rings. Ever pick up a phone and hear four or five conversations simultaneously at the same volume? It might as well have been a party line.
The actual repair people are friendly, though, and they do a quick, efficient, and effective job. But that's like saying your doctor is good at keeping you struggling to survive at the last months of your life while he misdiagnosed your cancer two years ago. Those lines should have been dug up and replaced a decade ago; this is a coastal area exposed to constant salty ground water and Version thinks lines will still last 25 years. Hahaha!
DSL? Ha! They cram that advertising down your throat on every channel but they don't offer it here...or in neighboring towns. Verision just gives you that "within the next six months" response if you ask them about it.
On top of that, "short distance" calling is something like 20 cents a minute! Thank God we're allowed to get that service cheaper from AT&T now. I wish there was competition at the local level; I don't know many, if anybody, who are impressed with Verison. I hear complaints from people who lease T-lines from them on the level of, "Man, it took Verison two weeks to fix our T-1." Hardly what I would call a "dedicated" service.
Some people I know put up their entire video game music collections (some of the more rare albums can go for over $200 alone!) just to see what the collection is worth. The only problem is that all of their auctions were taken down by eBay's patrols.
It's a misnomer: no hardware or even operating system is really being emulated. The OpenBSD "emulation" just reads the FreeBSD API and runs the software natively. It's just like WINE but for a UNIX system, but since FreeBSD's, Linux's, et. al's. APIs are open and do not have to be reverse engineered, you can expect apps to run at full speed or near full speed.
I hear it can speed up integer loops and such.
but now I'm excited to see what this technology can bring. How difficult would this be to implement on the OS level? Would SSE2 even benefit OSes? How about this funky MMX? How does the 16-bit discrepancy between SSE2 and X87 FPU affect things? Do we need that precision for most things? Tom didn't mention much about how the quality of the resulting movies varied, either.
Intel fan or not, a lot of people must at least be interested! I sure am.
Thank you for reminding me of that. It's been so long since I used DOS/Win32 that I forgot that certain cards like the Live! do use multiple IRQs. However, I would hardly qualify this as a "usual" case, but it is a case, nonetheless.
Poor device support was one of the reasons I couldn't stand Windows (9x) anymore. I'm sick of hearing of "hardware incompatibilities" with alternate operating systems. Sure, it may not be as easy as "Hardware Wizard found new hardware and is installing," but at least you don't have to wrestle with driver modules and such with other operating systems (Well, maybe OS/2). Maybe it's just me.
Adding an apostrophe is an acceptable, albeit becoming outdated, method of expressing plural acronyms. It was just the way I was taught in school, so that's the way I do it. Besides, where do you get the notion I was grammar flaming? I corrected a number, a fact. That's quite different than picking on spelling. You're the only one grammar flaming here.
The 386 (faster than a 286, but oh so expensive, and no one uses 32 bit apps yet anyway)
And no one did use 32 apps for years to come, however. The 386 was a revolution, anyway; almost the entire industry recognizes that. Bad example.
The 486 (who needs a math co-processor? Geez it's expensive)
You'd only believe you didn't need a math coprocessor if you listened to Intel's marketing. Ever buy a game? Nothing is more disappointing than buying a $2000 hunk of metal and seeing that "Sorry, this software requires a math coprocessor to run. Please contact your manufacturer."
The Pentium (Gosh 486's are available with the same or higher clock speed)
Same with the 386. The Pentium was hailed as the Macintosh killer when it was released, and rightly so since it was the first chip from Intel to even rival the decaying Motorola 68k line.
The Pentium Pro (16 bit apps actually run _slower_)
The PPro was viewed in the same exact manner as the P4 is viewed now. I'll give you that.
The Pentium II (oh, bummer, L2 cache is at half-speed, PPro is so much better...)
Ditto on this one, except by this time, it was 1997, and most people were using 32-bit apps by now.
16 IRQ's. Anyway.
May I ask what sound cards use two IRQ's? I've seen enough sound cards over the last seven/eight years or so to determine how they "usually" behave, and I cannot think of one that uses two IRQs. Sound cards (especially Creative Labs cards) historically tended to use two DMA's, which are even more scarce than IRQ since you only got eight.
In fact, the only devices I can think of that use multiple IRQs are dual-chipped video cards, serial controllers - ATAPI controllers (multi-device controllers in general), and those funky dual-channelled ethernet adapters. Most of what I just listed gives you twice as much functionality for two IRQ's, so it can be said that you really are getting your two IRQ's worth.
Anyway, since when has the 16 IRQ limit been a problem? Back in the ISA days there weren't enough types of devices to even fill up all the slots, let alone IRQs, and with the advent of PCI, IRQ sharing became possible. Now with USB, Firewire, et. al. all the devices are packed on one bus which communicates to the computer via one interrupt (Or is it two? I don't use USB or 1394).
Since I shut off my serial and parallel ports, I'm only using about half my IRQ's, and I don't use SCSI.
I ran both the KDE and the GNOME widgets simultaneously in WindowMaker to confuse myself (and my friends).
I didn't mean it doesn't check ANYTHING before it starts because I know it does. I consider any kind of overlay patch as "butchering sources".
What I meant was that it doesn't check anything compared to CVSup, which looks at every file and asks the server if the file has changed.
I said I felt like I was the only one using, but the way the Slashdot discussions are going these days, it seems "everybody" is using either KDE or GNOME. Personally, I don't get what's so cool about either of them (keeping in mind I haven't tried KDE in two years).
GNOME seems to suffer from the Mozilla syndrome: no matter what version you get, it acts like a beta. I've noticed GNOME improving over the past few releases, but that's all I can say for it.
KDE was kinda cool when I tried it way back. KDE two years ago seemed more solid and cohesive than GNOME is today, but KDE didn't seem to stick with me, either. I reformatted that Linux install and never chose to reinstall KDE, which is the primary reason why I haven't tried it since.
These days I feel I am the only one who uses WindowMaker. I've been repeatedly disappointed with GNOME (but I think that may have something to do with my Linux install since I never hear repeats of my problems). I've been meaning to try KDE again since I haven't used it in almost two years, but whatever I try (FVWM and friends, Afterstep, Enlightenment) or mean to try (KDE 2, IceWM, Plan 9), I always fall back on WindowMaker.
The download is small, it doesn't have three miles of dependencies, execution and loading speeds are very fast, and it doesn't eat eighty megs of RAM.
WindowMaker can run programs from GNOME, KDE and more, if you have some weird stuff to run. I'm not saying WindowMaker is perfect, but it was so simple and intuitive to me and so easy to setup that it stuck with me.
This is one of the things I like about the UNIX world. WindowMaker isn't what "everybody" wants, but it exists anyway, and I think this is the way to go in general, rather than attempting a homogenized environment that tries to suit everyone's needs.
CTM rules, too. That is, after you get that first painful delta. But after that, you just CTM all those little 4k updates, and you've got an up to date system. CVSup is probably less hassle, but because CTM doesn't check anything before it starts butchering your sources, it ends up being a little faster for people with slow connections.
Look at your first post in this thread. It doesn't use the word "Amaya" once. How can I or Wonko possibly be any more off topic than you? This whole thread is about web design which is entirely on topic with Amaya's goals.
You don't have to justify yourself to me, anyway. I was mostly playing Devil's advocate with a little personal opinion thrown in.
What I'm trying to say is that a professional should always try to strive for betterness. Simply shutting everything out and thinking things are perfect the way they are will eventually put you behind in the game. Just a little friendly advice.
Also, I took the smiley to mean, "I'm better than you so I can say this" not as a gesture of sarcasm. When you're trying to be funny to people you don't know, you should try to avoid the use of "fuck". Just some more advice.