VOGONS


Reply 80 of 132, by Socket3

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Error 0x7CF wrote on 2022-05-09, 18:44:
775 performance uplifts were a lot for a modern socket, especially on the singlethread, but for multithread they're not as insan […]
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775 performance uplifts were a lot for a modern socket, especially on the singlethread, but for multithread they're not as insane as AM4.
Passmark:
Celeron 420 -> Q9650
471 ST 235 MT -> 1292 ST 2411 MT
~2.75x singlethread, ~10.3x multithread

A6-9500E -> 5950x
1478 ST 1841 MT -> 3298 ST 46198 MT (not a typo)
~2.2x singlethread, ~25.1x multithread

I second this. LGA775's performance bump from a Prescott P4 to a Core 2 Quad or Core 2 Duo extreme is phenomenal, and so is the performance bump from the A series to Ryzen 5950 and 5800x3d for socket AM4.

My vote would be LGA775, but AM2 is a decent contender as well, IF you include AM2+ in the mix. It ranges from single core Semprons to hexa core Phenoms, and that's a serious performance bump.

Reply 81 of 132, by The Serpent Rider

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AFAIK none of the AM2 mobos support hexacores and the difference between Athlon64 vs Phenom II is not that drastic as Pentium 4 vs Core 2. Although you could argue that AMD has provided fastest stock option, which is Phenom II X4 980 BE working at 3700Mhz.

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Reply 82 of 132, by VivienM

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Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-07, 16:51:

My vote would be LGA775, but AM2 is a decent contender as well, IF you include AM2+ in the mix. It ranges from single core Semprons to hexa core Phenoms, and that's a serious performance bump.

What's the motherboard support like for AM2?

The issue with LGA775, which someone else pointed to, is the fact that you kept needing new motherboards to run new processors. With perhaps the exception of some 965/975 boards being somewhat able to run 45nm C2D/C2Qs, just about every generation of processors required new chipsets, new voltage regulation, new something or other. Certainly you're not running a 45nm C2Q on your circa 2005 i915 or i945 board. And look at the i865 LGA775 boards - the early ones can run hotbursts only, then a subset have newer revisions that can run 65nm C2D/C2Q, then a small subset of that were revised again to run 45nm chips.

Is AM2 better in that regard? How new a CPU can you run on your typical first-gen AM2 board?

Reply 83 of 132, by ElectroSoldier

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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-02-07, 16:38:

Fastest launch CPU for socket 5 was a Pentium 90.
Slot 1 it was in actuality the 266 which was available to go from launch date.

I think I said that already...
I think the last was the 1.1GHz but the CPU was recalled due to instability so making the 1Ghz the last CPU for slot 1.

FC-PGA2 is an interesting one. I think that went from 500 to 1400MHz.

Reply 84 of 132, by Trashbytes

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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-02-07, 16:06:

Slot 2 is interesting as a contender.
Its raw numbers would be a 100% performance increase from the PIII 500 to the PIII 1000.

Slot 2 is Xeon only so not many people ever used it and there were only a handful of slot 2 consumer boards, I had a Compaq server based around that slot with 4 700Mhz PIII Xeons in it, quite a fun system to play with but insane witht he noise.

Reply 85 of 132, by Trashbytes

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VivienM wrote on 2024-02-07, 23:13:
What's the motherboard support like for AM2? […]
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Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-07, 16:51:

My vote would be LGA775, but AM2 is a decent contender as well, IF you include AM2+ in the mix. It ranges from single core Semprons to hexa core Phenoms, and that's a serious performance bump.

What's the motherboard support like for AM2?

The issue with LGA775, which someone else pointed to, is the fact that you kept needing new motherboards to run new processors. With perhaps the exception of some 965/975 boards being somewhat able to run 45nm C2D/C2Qs, just about every generation of processors required new chipsets, new voltage regulation, new something or other. Certainly you're not running a 45nm C2Q on your circa 2005 i915 or i945 board. And look at the i865 LGA775 boards - the early ones can run hotbursts only, then a subset have newer revisions that can run 65nm C2D/C2Q, then a small subset of that were revised again to run 45nm chips.

Is AM2 better in that regard? How new a CPU can you run on your typical first-gen AM2 board?

There are a number of Gigabyte P45 boards that can happily run the last of the Pentium 4 CPUs along with running the last of the C2D CPUs so you dont need a new motherboard if you do a little digging first. LGA775 was quite a flexible platform if the fabricator took the time with the bios, and even if they didn't many 775 boards could be updated with CPU microcode to support CPUs. You are right that the first gen ones were quite limited but that was more to do with the chipset and bus speeds supported rather than the other components, but with time we dont really need to use the older boards, the P45 boards are super cheap and easy to modify.

As for AM2 if its not a + version then you will be limited to what the BIOS supports unless you mod it but then you may be limited by the VRM for certain late AM2 only CPUs.

Reply 86 of 132, by VivienM

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Trashbytes wrote on 2024-02-08, 00:31:
VivienM wrote on 2024-02-07, 23:13:
What's the motherboard support like for AM2? […]
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Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-07, 16:51:

My vote would be LGA775, but AM2 is a decent contender as well, IF you include AM2+ in the mix. It ranges from single core Semprons to hexa core Phenoms, and that's a serious performance bump.

What's the motherboard support like for AM2?

The issue with LGA775, which someone else pointed to, is the fact that you kept needing new motherboards to run new processors. With perhaps the exception of some 965/975 boards being somewhat able to run 45nm C2D/C2Qs, just about every generation of processors required new chipsets, new voltage regulation, new something or other. Certainly you're not running a 45nm C2Q on your circa 2005 i915 or i945 board. And look at the i865 LGA775 boards - the early ones can run hotbursts only, then a subset have newer revisions that can run 65nm C2D/C2Q, then a small subset of that were revised again to run 45nm chips.

Is AM2 better in that regard? How new a CPU can you run on your typical first-gen AM2 board?

There are a number of Gigabyte P45 boards that can happily run the last of the Pentium 4 CPUs along with running the last of the C2D CPUs so you dont need a new motherboard if you do a little digging first.

Right, but that's the reverse situation. Sure, you can run a Hotburst on a lot of P43/P45 boards (why you would want to is a separate question), but you can't run a 45nm C2D/C2Q on the majority of Hotburst i915/925/i945/etc boards. So if you bought an LGA775 board in 2005, the reality is that you're not putting a C2D/C2Q on it in 2007-8...

Forward compatibility seems like an important element to a socket's greatness, because ultimately, if the C2D had come out on "LGA780", that wouldn't have made any difference to people with LGA775 i915 boards - they need a new motherboard either way...

Reply 87 of 132, by BitWrangler

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It's somewhat unusual to find 775 boards that do 90-45nm though they usually seem to do 90-65 or 65-45nm IDK if that's because they couldn't make all the microcode fit in one BIOS or they didn't wanna spend the extra 25c on a wider range voltage reg or what.

There's definitely an Asus AM2+ board that officially takes a hex core.

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Reply 88 of 132, by Socket3

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VivienM wrote on 2024-02-07, 23:13:
What's the motherboard support like for AM2? […]
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Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-07, 16:51:

My vote would be LGA775, but AM2 is a decent contender as well, IF you include AM2+ in the mix. It ranges from single core Semprons to hexa core Phenoms, and that's a serious performance bump.

What's the motherboard support like for AM2?

(....)

Is AM2 better in that regard? How new a CPU can you run on your typical first-gen AM2 board?

Much better then LGA775. In essence, an AM2 motherboard can run anything from a single core athlon/sempron to a quad core Phenom. AM2+ motherboards can run some AM3 chips, like the Athlon II and Phenom II.

An then there are odd-ball regular AM2 boards that can run both AM2 and AM3 chips, despite not officially supporting AM3 (they are not specified as being AM2+). I don't know what the exact requirements for AM2+ compatibility are, but from what I've been able to discern so far, all you need is a bios update or mod and sufficiently powerful voltage regulators. I might be wrong, so don't quote me on this, especially since documentation states that for a board to be AM2+/AM3 CPU compatible, it needs to have split power planes and HyperTransport 3.0 support.

I have a few of these odd-ball boards my self. First one is a Gigabyte GA-MF3 - socket AM2, DDR2 + AGP, nforce 250 chipset. It only officially supports AM2 dual core CPUs, but when I got the board it had a Phenon X4 9500 CPU installed, and it posted with it just fine. It will even post with a Phenom X4 9950, but it will hand shortly after post.

Reply 89 of 132, by ElectroSoldier

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Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-08, 12:43:
Much better then LGA775. In essence, an AM2 motherboard can run anything from a single core athlon/sempron to a quad core Phenom […]
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VivienM wrote on 2024-02-07, 23:13:
What's the motherboard support like for AM2? […]
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Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-07, 16:51:

My vote would be LGA775, but AM2 is a decent contender as well, IF you include AM2+ in the mix. It ranges from single core Semprons to hexa core Phenoms, and that's a serious performance bump.

What's the motherboard support like for AM2?

(....)

Is AM2 better in that regard? How new a CPU can you run on your typical first-gen AM2 board?

Much better then LGA775. In essence, an AM2 motherboard can run anything from a single core athlon/sempron to a quad core Phenom. AM2+ motherboards can run some AM3 chips, like the Athlon II and Phenom II.

An then there are odd-ball regular AM2 boards that can run both AM2 and AM3 chips, despite not officially supporting AM3 (they are not specified as being AM2+). I don't know what the exact requirements for AM2+ compatibility are, but from what I've been able to discern so far, all you need is a bios update or mod and sufficiently powerful voltage regulators. I might be wrong, so don't quote me on this, especially since documentation states that for a board to be AM2+/AM3 CPU compatible, it needs to have split power planes and HyperTransport 3.0 support.

I have a few of these odd-ball boards my self. First one is a Gigabyte GA-MF3 - socket AM2, DDR2 + AGP, nforce 250 chipset. It only officially supports AM2 dual core CPUs, but when I got the board it had a Phenon X4 9500 CPU installed, and it posted with it just fine. It will even post with a Phenom X4 9950, but it will hand shortly after post.

Is Anything AM vintage?

I mean there is an official definition for something to be vintage, which means none of the AM nor LGA sockets could be considered vintage for some time to come.

Reply 90 of 132, by Socket3

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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-02-08, 14:21:
Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-08, 12:43:
Much better then LGA775. In essence, an AM2 motherboard can run anything from a single core athlon/sempron to a quad core Phenom […]
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VivienM wrote on 2024-02-07, 23:13:

What's the motherboard support like for AM2?

(....)

Is AM2 better in that regard? How new a CPU can you run on your typical first-gen AM2 board?

Much better then LGA775. In essence, an AM2 motherboard can run anything from a single core athlon/sempron to a quad core Phenom. AM2+ motherboards can run some AM3 chips, like the Athlon II and Phenom II.

An then there are odd-ball regular AM2 boards that can run both AM2 and AM3 chips, despite not officially supporting AM3 (they are not specified as being AM2+). I don't know what the exact requirements for AM2+ compatibility are, but from what I've been able to discern so far, all you need is a bios update or mod and sufficiently powerful voltage regulators. I might be wrong, so don't quote me on this, especially since documentation states that for a board to be AM2+/AM3 CPU compatible, it needs to have split power planes and HyperTransport 3.0 support.

I have a few of these odd-ball boards my self. First one is a Gigabyte GA-MF3 - socket AM2, DDR2 + AGP, nforce 250 chipset. It only officially supports AM2 dual core CPUs, but when I got the board it had a Phenon X4 9500 CPU installed, and it posted with it just fine. It will even post with a Phenom X4 9950, but it will hand shortly after post.

Is Anything AM vintage?

I mean there is an official definition for something to be vintage, which means none of the AM nor LGA sockets could be considered vintage for some time to come.

I guess not, more like obosolete, but I don't really care. I just like collecting and tinkering with stuff, wether it's vintage or not doesn't really interest me.

Reply 91 of 132, by Joakim

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The socket needs some love. P75-p200 MMX (with overdrive) is quite a big speed jump I suppose.

Reply 92 of 132, by ElectroSoldier

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Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-08, 16:51:
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-02-08, 14:21:
Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-08, 12:43:

Much better then LGA775. In essence, an AM2 motherboard can run anything from a single core athlon/sempron to a quad core Phenom. AM2+ motherboards can run some AM3 chips, like the Athlon II and Phenom II.

An then there are odd-ball regular AM2 boards that can run both AM2 and AM3 chips, despite not officially supporting AM3 (they are not specified as being AM2+). I don't know what the exact requirements for AM2+ compatibility are, but from what I've been able to discern so far, all you need is a bios update or mod and sufficiently powerful voltage regulators. I might be wrong, so don't quote me on this, especially since documentation states that for a board to be AM2+/AM3 CPU compatible, it needs to have split power planes and HyperTransport 3.0 support.

I have a few of these odd-ball boards my self. First one is a Gigabyte GA-MF3 - socket AM2, DDR2 + AGP, nforce 250 chipset. It only officially supports AM2 dual core CPUs, but when I got the board it had a Phenon X4 9500 CPU installed, and it posted with it just fine. It will even post with a Phenom X4 9950, but it will hand shortly after post.

Is Anything AM vintage?

I mean there is an official definition for something to be vintage, which means none of the AM nor LGA sockets could be considered vintage for some time to come.

I guess not, more like obosolete, but I don't really care. I just like collecting and tinkering with stuff, wether it's vintage or not doesn't really interest me.

I cant say vintage interests me a whole lot either, but that is what this whole conversation is about 😀

One of the problems the AMD sockets have within the confines of this conversation is that they last so long. Which is good for real world ownership...
I mean you could have bought your PC with a 1.2 Duron and then ended up with an Athlon XP 3000+. Which is great, but that it lasted so long stops it serving the purpose of vintage.

Maybe in 10 years time those sockets will be considered vintage and they will count, but we are having this conversation today and I struggle to put the Athlon XP 3000+ in the same age classification as a 486 or the original Pentium processor.

Reply 93 of 132, by The Serpent Rider

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Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-08, 12:43:

Much better then LGA775. In essence, an AM2 motherboard can run anything from a single core athlon/sempron to a quad core Phenom. AM2+ motherboards can run some AM3 chips, like the Athlon II and Phenom II.

Majority of AM2 mobos weren't capable of working with anything but Athlon 64. Some ASUS and Gigabyte mobos are notable exceptions. And practically all AM2+ motherboard can work with Phenom II (AM3), but some don't have microcode BIOS updates for hexacore family of chips.

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Reply 94 of 132, by VivienM

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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-02-08, 14:21:
Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-08, 12:43:
Much better then LGA775. In essence, an AM2 motherboard can run anything from a single core athlon/sempron to a quad core Phenom […]
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VivienM wrote on 2024-02-07, 23:13:

What's the motherboard support like for AM2?

(....)

Is AM2 better in that regard? How new a CPU can you run on your typical first-gen AM2 board?

Much better then LGA775. In essence, an AM2 motherboard can run anything from a single core athlon/sempron to a quad core Phenom. AM2+ motherboards can run some AM3 chips, like the Athlon II and Phenom II.

An then there are odd-ball regular AM2 boards that can run both AM2 and AM3 chips, despite not officially supporting AM3 (they are not specified as being AM2+). I don't know what the exact requirements for AM2+ compatibility are, but from what I've been able to discern so far, all you need is a bios update or mod and sufficiently powerful voltage regulators. I might be wrong, so don't quote me on this, especially since documentation states that for a board to be AM2+/AM3 CPU compatible, it needs to have split power planes and HyperTransport 3.0 support.

I have a few of these odd-ball boards my self. First one is a Gigabyte GA-MF3 - socket AM2, DDR2 + AGP, nforce 250 chipset. It only officially supports AM2 dual core CPUs, but when I got the board it had a Phenon X4 9500 CPU installed, and it posted with it just fine. It will even post with a Phenom X4 9950, but it will hand shortly after post.

Is Anything AM vintage?

I mean there is an official definition for something to be vintage, which means none of the AM nor LGA sockets could be considered vintage for some time to come.

Well, I have a lovely AM2 motherboard with a Via AGP chipset, primarily PATA support, etc. 20 year old chipset on a... less than 20-year-old... socket, which is another interesting combination that AMD HyperTransport magic enables. I got it for a 98SE machine, so isn't that vintage...y?

Reply 95 of 132, by Error 0x7CF

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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-02-08, 18:37:

Maybe in 10 years time those sockets will be considered vintage and they will count, but we are having this conversation today and I struggle to put the Athlon XP 3000+ in the same age classification as a 486 or the original Pentium processor.

You can't even fully patch Windows 7 on an AXP. By the time of the AXP you could still run basically anything you wanted (XP included) on a Pentium Classic, albeit slowly. They're even separated by less than a decade. It's been over 20 years since the AXP 3000+ released.

Its lack of SSE2 and thus incapability for modern software makes it a hell of a lot more vintage than any Pentium 4 at least, and consensus seems to definitely be in favor of the Pentium 4 as retro. Even a Willamette P4 has SSE2 and so could run basically a modern OS and software stack. Windows 11 excluded.

I'm not gonna argue in favor of AM2/+ as retro since there are people actively willingly using those systems with modern software stacks, I think my great aunt is one. I do, however, think it's very interesting to circumvent the "vintage" part of the thread's question and illustrate, when possible, that modern socket-compatible motherboards sometimes have as much (or more!) of an uplift than the golden standard example Socket (super or not) 7 that often gets thought of. It's easy to overlook by applying nostalgia logic, especially considering CPU speed climbed so fast so quickly back then.

Sock.7 came out around 1995 and was more or less abandoned about 1999 with the Athlon series, and as such I'd say AM4 (note again: not at all saying it's retro, it's obviously not) achieving a similar-ish (better if multithreaded) uplift but having been supported for coming up on a decade at this point, is if anything an even more impressive show of platform longevity than a single 4-year socket riding the tiger with Moore's Law and introducing random voltage regulator incompatibility the whole while.

I could buy an A320 board right now and throw a 5700x3d in it, which released a week or so ago, about 8 years after the launch of AM4, no modding required. VRMs might throttle under load but the CPU won't blow up and the BIOS will probably support the new chip, after maybe an update flash with an older chip to get it up to a newer (OFFICIAL) BIOS. Could the same be said of an early S5/S7 board?

I've kind of rambled a bit but I hope I made my (two) points.

It's a fair admission that the entry to 'retro/vintage' has gotten slower these days, I would no way argue that any 10 year old CPU is retro unless it's Bulldozer, and that's just because nobody in their right mind should be using Bulldozer 😜
But I think 20 years is plenty. The AXP 3000+ is above legal US drinking age. High school graduates are younger than those CPUs, 4-year college graduates will be soon. You can't run anything modern on it. Daily driving it would be an experiment in CBT, if it's even possible at all. It's vintage. You're just old, which is fine. I will always see the i7 4790k as high end and shiny. Our mental framing of these things decides how we categorize these things, even when it is based in pure irrationality.

Ultimately I think the question "which socket saw the biggest increase in horsepower" is a proxy to "what platform had the best long term support" and by a long shot, if we exclude the "vintage" mark, it is AM4.
Within the "vintage" mark it will be entirely down to what is and is not vintage, and so cannot be answered in any meaningfully concrete way.

Old precedes antique.

Reply 96 of 132, by ElectroSoldier

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VivienM wrote on 2024-02-08, 22:19:
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-02-08, 14:21:
Socket3 wrote on 2024-02-08, 12:43:

Much better then LGA775. In essence, an AM2 motherboard can run anything from a single core athlon/sempron to a quad core Phenom. AM2+ motherboards can run some AM3 chips, like the Athlon II and Phenom II.

An then there are odd-ball regular AM2 boards that can run both AM2 and AM3 chips, despite not officially supporting AM3 (they are not specified as being AM2+). I don't know what the exact requirements for AM2+ compatibility are, but from what I've been able to discern so far, all you need is a bios update or mod and sufficiently powerful voltage regulators. I might be wrong, so don't quote me on this, especially since documentation states that for a board to be AM2+/AM3 CPU compatible, it needs to have split power planes and HyperTransport 3.0 support.

I have a few of these odd-ball boards my self. First one is a Gigabyte GA-MF3 - socket AM2, DDR2 + AGP, nforce 250 chipset. It only officially supports AM2 dual core CPUs, but when I got the board it had a Phenon X4 9500 CPU installed, and it posted with it just fine. It will even post with a Phenom X4 9950, but it will hand shortly after post.

Is Anything AM vintage?

I mean there is an official definition for something to be vintage, which means none of the AM nor LGA sockets could be considered vintage for some time to come.

Well, I have a lovely AM2 motherboard with a Via AGP chipset, primarily PATA support, etc. 20 year old chipset on a... less than 20-year-old... socket, which is another interesting combination that AMD HyperTransport magic enables. I got it for a 98SE machine, so isn't that vintage...y?

LoL

No. Not to me anyway.
Just because it runs Windows 98 and has AGP, IDE and a chipset thats past its best doesnt make it "vintage"...

The title says it all.
It doesnt say what socket saw the biggest CPU horsepower increase.

What is vintage anyway?

"The classification of an item as "vintage" is somewhat subjective and can vary depending on the context, industry, and individual perspectives. However, there are some general guidelines that people often use:

20 to 100 Years Old: Many consider items to be vintage if they are between 20 and 100 years old. This means that an item from the early 2000s could be considered vintage, though this may not be a universally accepted definition.

Era-Specific Definitions: Some people associate certain decades with vintage items. For example, items from the 1960s or 1970s might commonly be referred to as vintage.

Cultural and Industry Differences: In certain industries or cultures, the definition of vintage can vary. For example, in the fashion industry, items from the 1980s might be considered vintage, while in the automotive industry, cars from the 1980s might be considered more classic than vintage.

Collectible and Desirable: Often, the term "vintage" is also associated with items that are collectible, have historical value, or are considered desirable by enthusiasts."

The age...
Well computers have been with us long enough to be bracketed by age.

Bracketed by era... Thats a good one.

Bracketed by industrial differences... Maybe architectural in our case. Thats another good one... Can anything x64 be considered vintage yet?

Collectible or desireable... Well they all are in their own way. But I doudt anybody will be in a rush to snatch up an E6700 (or its AMD equal)

Once you nail that down then you can look for the socket that will fit the bill.

Maybe we can bracket the Athlon XP 3000+ in with the Pentium because when you get right down the it its the same just a whole lot more powerful.

Problem is that socket had its last release in 2005, but thats not when it died... Not by a long way.

But when you think about slot 1, Im not really sure why Intel released the 1Ghz PIII on slot 1 because it was already dead by that point because of socket 370.

Reply 97 of 132, by VivienM

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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-02-08, 22:58:

Bracketed by era... Thats a good one.

Bracketed by industrial differences... Maybe architectural in our case. Thats another good one... Can anything x64 be considered vintage yet?

That's a much easier way to do it in vintage Macland than here (where you literally have an architecture switch one day and all software from before that day runs in emulation), though, in part because... PC hardware is so backwards compatible and the eras are so blurry. Is, say, a 486 that always ran Windows 3.1 a 32-bit system? Is a C2D that always ran 32-bit XP an x64 system? Arguably, yes, but at the same time, those machines were not actually used for that ability.

Two people could have gone down and bought some C2Ds in mid-2007. Person 1 was an adventurous early adopter and bought a Vista machine, possibly in the brave new 64-bit land. Person 1 bought a Windows 7 upgrade two years later, continued using it for a long time, then was quasi-forcibly upgraded to Windows 10 for free around 2015. Person 2 heard that Vista sucks, picked 32-bit XP. Kept using XP until they heard XP was going to stop being supported around 2014, at which point in 2013 they went out, bought a Haswell with Windows 7, and put the C2D in the attic for 10 years.

I'd suggest to you that person 2's computer "feels" more retro/vintage than person 1's, even though they are identical hardware.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-02-08, 22:58:

Collectible or desireable... Well they all are in their own way. But I doudt anybody will be in a rush to snatch up an E6700 (or its AMD equal)

One thing that I've observed is that over time, everything becomes collectible or desirable to some degree. It's true of cars, it's true of computers, I think it's true of everything.

Basically, you have things that are initially collectible/desirable. Things that are recognized roughly at the end of their 'natural' life, if not earlier, as being significant, often in part because what came after is very obviously worse from a collectibility perspective.

Over time, the supply of those things drops, especially as the surviving units all land in the hands of collectors. If the item happened to be unusually unreliable, then the number of survivors will drop even further. Try to buy, say, a 1GHz titanium PowerBook G4 today - good luck, the few surviving units in good conditions were snatched up by collectors/YouTubers a long time ago. You might as well try to buy a numbers-matching muscle car from the best year in the late 1960s in pristine condition at Barrett-Jackson.

And so, over time, people start to become more interested in the next best thing, whatever's still available, and so on, until eventually... all the surviving items end up being collectible.

One place that one sees this with computers is how large-OEM systems seem to now be valuable. No one would have wanted those a decade or two ago, but I think the supply of high-end, enthusiasty hardware from the pre-P4 era is just... really low, so people will take the Compaq with on-motherboard graphics that spent 15+ years in someone's attic because no one dropped it off at an e-waste place.

I think you see it with AGP video cards too - the Voodoo 3s and 5s are priced off the charts, the more desirable other options like GeForce 4 Ti4600s are probably as expensive today as they were when they were new (not counting inflation), etc. I think there will likely be a day when a GF4 MX will be big money.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-02-08, 22:58:

But when you think about slot 1, Im not really sure why Intel released the 1Ghz PIII on slot 1 because it was already dead by that point because of socket 370.

Socket 370 was originally largely for celeries on i810 boards and I think there may have been a prior low-end chipset too. The high-end boards, especially from the large OEMs like Dell, were all slot 1 - both the 440BX/100FSB and the i820/RDRAM/133FSB boards. Although it looks like a later revision of Dell's i820 XPS B systems switched to socket 370.

At some point, enough decent socket 370 PIIIs became available that the usual Taiwanese suspects started making socket 370 440BX boards, but I think large OEMs only really embraced socket 370 on the high end with the i815 chipset.

Also worth noting according to Wikipedia - they launched 4 1GHz variants the same day. Socket 370 100MHz FSB, slot 1 100MHz FSB, and socket 370 133MHz FSB and slot 1 133MHz FSB. So a full lineup that would accommodate everybody's existing and upcoming board designs. My guess is that Compaq and friends probably shoved a lot of those 100MHz FSB socket 370 flavours in the "flagship" versions of their i810 systems... although maybe not at launch, not with a $1000 price tag...

Reply 98 of 132, by ElectroSoldier

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It feeling retro doesnt change what it is though.
I ran XP on a dual X5365 system for a while... It doesnt matter if it was XP or Vista though, now it is what it is and it isnt retro to me, its original, not a remake version pretending to be old. I have a dual PIII 1400 system that isnt retro to me either, its just old because its original. I have a C2D running Windows 98 which is retro even though its much newer than my dual PIII 1400.

Reply 99 of 132, by BitWrangler

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This all sounds like long term echoes to me...
2002ish "486es are just so much trash, made in the millions, they'll never be vintage or collectable like original IBM PCs are becoming"
1997ish "IBM PCs are just so much trash, they're just obsolete junk, they'll never be vintage or collectable like Commodore PETs"
...

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.