ditch the atom. Nobody would have gotten one as an "upgrade", particularly not in the spot where you put it, because it was MUCH later (around 2010) and pretty much only used in netbooks.

I would replace the celeron with 1GHz with an Athlon 1000 (first GHz CPU, more powerful architecture in general compare to intel, first time AMD was more powerful than intel in general), and the Athlon XP with the athlon 64 Sledgehammer/Clawhammer/Newcastle (first consumer level 64 bit CPU, More powerful than higher clocked Intel P4 CPUs, first time memory controller on the CPU). I guess you could put the P4 Northwood between those two, as it was reasonably powerful and quite common at the time.

Was the jump from 16-bit 286 to 32-bit 386 not mainstream?

I could understand maybe ditching the 286 as it's not a 32-bit CPU but not having a 386 there!?

Where did the 486 come from?... what would the average person do before the 486?

I agree with a 1.0-1.4GHz Athlon being more interesting than the Celly or Atom in that spot, but they do the job. I think you're missing a high end single core CPU, around 3GHz+, could be an A64.

Depends on what are you after. Some go the same route that they went originally. Some prefer top cpus at the time.

I'd go the same route as my upgrades... 286-16, 486slc-33, 386DX-40, 486DX2-66 (@80), P-90 (@100), P-166MMX (@250), AMD K6-2 500, P2-300 (@475), Athlon XP 1800+, Athlon XP-M 2500+ (@2500), Athlon64 X2 3800+ (@2500), Phenom X6 1055 (is still in my main desktop).

Sharing a hard drive isn't good idea after DOS even if it might work in some cases (but it will take a lot of time installing drivers).

My current very sparse setup is

DX4-100 (120Mhz)

Pentium 3 450Mhz

A P4 machine of some sort

Athlon XP+ @ something or rather

2x Athlon 64 (Might be a bit newer)

I suggest for you, throw of course a 386 in there at least, a better 486, and IMO some P4 machine

I would recommend the i7 860 as it was substantially cheaper than the i7 870, whilst only being 100MHz slower (if I recall correctly) and would be a more attainable jump achieved by a greater number of people (typically from the C2D CPUs).

You could definitely add some high-end (>1GHz Pentium III), a P4-HT, and an Ahthlon64.

I think an i7 920/940/965 is a better choice than an i7 860 or 870!

in Sweden pretty much everyone with an interest for hardware jumped on the Socket 1366 victory train and many of us are still riding it. Around here Socket 1156 mostly sold in the form of OEM and pre built systems.

edit: 6 ---> 9

dr_st wrote:

You could definitely add some high-end (>1GHz Pentium III), a P4-HT, and an Ahthlon64.

In terms of speed, wouldn't the athlon xp cover the gap between 1ghz celeron and p4 3ghz? Just looking at the sheer speed aspect of things.

firage wrote:

I agree with a 1.0-1.4GHz Athlon being more interesting than the Celly or Atom in that spot, but they do the job. I think you're missing a high end single core CPU, around 3GHz+, could be an A64.

I thought the p4 prescott was almost the fastest single core at 3ghz.

bluejeans wrote:

In terms of speed, wouldn't the athlon xp cover the gap between 1ghz celeron and p4 3ghz? Just looking at the sheer speed aspect of things.

That depends on the level of granularity you want. Since you are also considering mobile CPUs, a ~2GHz Pentium 4-M can be interesting.

Skyscraper wrote:

I think an i7 920/940/965 is a better choice than an i7 860 or 870!

Why?

Skyscraper wrote:

in Sweden pretty much everyone with an interest for hardware jumped on the Socket 1366 victory train and many of us are still riding it.

I think the same can be said for the i860 and i870. They are virtually the same performance (actually, even slightly better: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2839/7), and many people (including myself) are still using them today, as the base performance level is still quite acceptable.
The advantage of the i860/i870 could be that it has lower power consumption and only needs two matched DIMMs (dual channel) instead of 3 (triple channel).

Scali wrote:

Why? […]
Show full quote

Skyscraper wrote:

I think an i7 920/940/965 is a better choice than an i7 860 or 870!

Why?

Skyscraper wrote:

in Sweden pretty much everyone with an interest for hardware jumped on the Socket 1366 victory train and many of us are still riding it.

I think the same can be said for the i860 and i870. They are virtually the same performance (actually, even slightly better: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2839/7), and many people (including myself) are still using them today, as the base performance level is still quite acceptable.
The advantage of the i860/i870 could be that it has lower power consumption and only needs two matched DIMMs (dual channel) instead of 3 (triple channel).

Simply because they were released first.

To me at least an overcloked i7 920 @~4Ghz was a real game changer. I had an E8600 @ 4+ GHz for a few months before I upgraded (and an E6750 @ 3.8 before that) to Socket 1366 and while I did not see much difference in gaming (read World of Warcraft) I do also do other things with my computer. 😀

The goal depends obviously on your intended upgrade cycle length. In brackets if you want more steps.

8088 4.77 MHz
[286-8]
286-12
[386SX-16]
386DX-33
[486SX-25]
486DX2-66
[486DX4-100]
Pentium 100
[Pentium 233 MMX / AMD K6 233]
Pentium Pro 200 or Pentium II 266 MHz
[Pentium III 450]
Slot Athlon 600 - 800 MHz
[Athlon TB 1.4 GHz 133 FSB]
Pentium 4 Northwood 2.4 GHz with HT
[Athlon XP 3200+]
Core2 Quad 6600

I would still consider going down and getting XT class machine and 386.
There is a potentially huge gap between 386 and 486 class machines.
XT gaming capabilities are limited to 80's software, but it makes this machine even more interesting if you aim at creating a collection of machines that each belong to different era.

I would also skip DX33 and use DX2-66 instead along with 386 machine.

XTs are interesting because they are so different from ATs, it's almost a different standard.
Different keyboard interface, only 8-bit ISA slots, one DMA controller, one interrupt controller, no standardized realtime clock yet, no CMOS setup etc.
I think you should either go for a real IBM, for 100% compatibility, or for some turbo XT clone, which can run at 4.77 MHz and at 8-10 MHz. The ~10 Mhz XT is another interesting standard, especially when coupled with EGA or VGA graphics. You can play some interesting games like Prince of Persia or Commander Keen on them.

I love IBM 5150 (PC) and 5160 (XT) machines (I owe one 5160). Nontheless, deciding on an XT class machine I would go with some turbo clone. It's really hard to imagine how slooooow the original XT really is.

Don't event think of playing Prince of Persia on a stock machine. It's way to slow.

Upgrading IBM XT in terms of speed is rather tricky (simply replacing i8088 with NEC V20 is just not enough) and expensive (there are some turbo cards, but they're hard to get. I'm looking for one myself).

Turbo XT would surely run a much wider range of games, especially when EGA graphics is in question.