They run memory bandwidth and FPU intense games really well, usually faster than a similarly clocked Pentium Classic or MMX. SVGA simulations come to mind. Quake. DOS, Win9x, whatever.

PPro had some weak early chipsets though. Even 440FX should have Fastvid loaded if possible to massively speed up video transfers.

dionb wrote on 2024-04-19, 15:19:

Short-lived? PPro was introduced in 1995 and superseded by P2 in 1997. That is as long as Intel's flagship as the P2 managed and longer than the P3. The reason PPros are so rare isn't that they were on the market for a short time, it's that they served a specific very expensive niche, and did not offer compelling performance benefits for mainstream computing (er, unless you considered Quake to be the only game in town). So they sold in small numbers to people running 32-bit code and FPU-heavy loads who nonetheless wanted an x86 system to do that on - and happily did so until the Pentium 2 came along that offered everything the PPro could do at a lower price and higher clocks. Oh, and with better 16 bit code performance, AGP and DMA IDE and yes, even MMX (for if you had a Winmodem).

I installed a dozen dual socket PPro compaq workstations for a demanding client back in 1997. Those were some fussy computers, but the client had their heart set on them. They were using some very complicated excel 95/97 spreadsheets running on NT3.51 / NT4.0. That fit the work load that you described. Floating point heavy, 32 bit apps, price is no object. But we could only get the 200Mhz 512KB cache chips at the time. They would have bought the 1MB chips if they could have gotten them.

I remember chatter that there might be 2MB cache versions at some point. Did the 2MB cache PPro chips ever show up?

Not that I know of, the black ones are 1MB cache.

I remember that the first PPro I encountered was when our CEO requested one (because f* it, I'm the CEO), it was a 200/256k. We had similarly clocked standard Pentiums for all other employees and honestly saw no difference for Word and Excel...it was also the first time I have seen a flat screen, and it was real junk compared to the Eizo F56 screens we had.

2MB was one of the Pentium II Xeon CPUs.

If overclocking is considered. 1 Mb versions are probably the worst ones to pick. Also there are some Slot 1 adapters for Socket 8.

You could also get socket 370 adapters for socket 8. Limited to celeron, but still.

Imho, the ppro is just a beta version of the pentium 2/3 line.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-04-19, 20:19:

If overclocking is considered. 1 Mb versions are probably the worst ones to pick. Also there are some Slot 1 adapters for Socket 8.

Good luck finding an adapter 🙁

douglar wrote on 2024-04-19, 19:18:

dionb wrote on 2024-04-19, 15:19:

Short-lived? PPro was introduced in 1995 and superseded by P2 in 1997. That is as long as Intel's flagship as the P2 managed and longer than the P3. The reason PPros are so rare isn't that they were on the market for a short time, it's that they served a specific very expensive niche, and did not offer compelling performance benefits for mainstream computing (er, unless you considered Quake to be the only game in town). So they sold in small numbers to people running 32-bit code and FPU-heavy loads who nonetheless wanted an x86 system to do that on - and happily did so until the Pentium 2 came along that offered everything the PPro could do at a lower price and higher clocks. Oh, and with better 16 bit code performance, AGP and DMA IDE and yes, even MMX (for if you had a Winmodem).

I installed a dozen dual socket PPro compaq workstations for a demanding client back in 1997. Those were some fussy computers, but the client had their heart set on them. They were using some very complicated excel 95/97 spreadsheets running on NT3.51 / NT4.0. That fit the work load that you described. Floating point heavy, 32 bit apps, price is no object. But we could only get the 200Mhz 512KB cache chips at the time. They would have bought the 1MB chips if they could have gotten them.

I remember chatter that there might be 2MB cache versions at some point. Did the 2MB cache PPro chips ever show up?

that must have came with a heavy price tag, do you remember what company or business this individual was in to be using multiple of these machines?

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-04-19, 08:37:

Identical till you try running 16bit DOS applications on that PPro at which point the P166 should be much faster, 32bit stuff though they should be neck and neck.

My experience is that traditional DOS games are roughly comparable between a Pentium Pro versus Pentium / Pentium MMX. The big exception are Build engine games, particularly at higher resolutions which run noticeably slower on a Pentium Pro.

In older DOS games performance differences end up being negligible once FPS limits are hit.

32-bit heavy games (e.g. Quake) do better on a Pentium Pro.

And while still have to do my own Win 9x benchmarks, from seen from others, Win 9x games all run faster on a Pentium Pro. In some cases the performance is approaching that of a Pentium II.

Imho, the discussion about what is "faster" is purely academic. These chips are 30y old now almost. If you want something faster, you can just get something faster.

The only right answer is to which is "better" is whatever blows your skirt up, little girl.

Daddy likes gold, and for the longest time, multi-cpu machines made my knees weak. That's why I'm all about these chips.

My only reason for building a PPro system was to see how it performed relative to other systems of the era (e.g. 1996-1997).

It does occupy a bit of a retro-no-man's-land in my opinion. Not a daily-driver retro rig by any stretch.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-04-19, 20:53:

My only reason for building a PPro system was to see how it performed relative to other systems of the era (e.g. 1996-1997).

It does occupy a bit of a retro-no-man's-land in my opinion. Not a daily-driver retro rig by any stretch.

I feel like for many enthusiasts, that is the whole appeal of these chips. "retro-no-man's-land" the ppro is something that needs to be desired enough to actually be used and acquired by someone in 2024. The idea of not having a regular old socket 7 pentium 1 "like everyone else" makes people drop to their knees for this platform. I honestly can fully understand the appeal.

winuser3162 wrote on 2024-04-19, 21:00:

I feel like for many enthusiasts, that is the whole appeal of these chips. "retro-no-man's-land" the ppro is something that needs to be desired enough to actually be used and acquired by someone in 2024. The idea of not having a regular old socket 7 pentium 1 "like everyone else" makes people drop to their knees for this platform. I honestly can fully understand the appeal.

I get the appeal of acquiring or building systems that are less common for sure. That was part of the appeal for myself ever since seeing CGW use the Pentium Pro for one of their annual ultimate gaming rigs (Jan 1997).

However upon building such a system, it feels like a case of having such a system wasn't as interesting as wanting it.

If anything it does satisfy my curiosity about this system and makes me realize I wasn't missing out by not having one back in 1997.

Yep, often the desire for something is far more interesting than the possession of it. A bunch of French novelists have made that theme their life's work.

I can think of lots of examples where I lusted after some unusual old hardware, eventually found it - then lost a lot of interest. I'm looking at a PPro here, it's looking back at me but I turn away and mess around with a different system.

dionb wrote on 2024-04-19, 22:23:

Yep, often the desire for something is far more interesting than the possession of it. A bunch of French novelists have made that theme their life's work.

I can think of lots of examples where I lusted after some unusual old hardware, eventually found it - then lost a lot of interest. I'm looking at a PPro here, it's looking back at me but I turn away and mess around with a different system.

another example "why spend over a grand on a voodoo 5 when you can get the same if not better performance out of a geforce 2 MX 400 for $45 maximum?" because people WORSHIP 3DFX and for good reason.

I mean... I wouldn't call it a "good" reason. It's 100% rose tinted goggles and weapons grade copium.

Credit where it's due, V1 & V2 were blazing stars of awesome. Then the company just shit the bed for a myriad of reasons.

The V4 & V5 were junk compared to the competition. The GeForce 256 ate voodoo for lunch, and the GF2 deflowering 3dfx's mother.

I lived through this in high-school, nobody gave 2 shits about 3dfx once nvidia released their cards. You either have the highest fps in the current popular games, or you were nobody. Something that has not changed.

I don't get the Voodoo-hype either.

Back in the day everything from the Voodoo3 to Voodoo5 were considered feature-inferior compared to nVidia cards. It felt like 3Dfx had fallen behind and was constantly playing catch-up.

Though admittedly some of the more exotic Quantum Voodoo cards would have been interesting to have at the time.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-04-20, 00:13:

I don't get the Voodoo-hype either.

I get it, for a very simple reason - because the Voodoo was the last of something. It's one of those rare inflection points in (especially) DOS/Windows PC history where something just... ends... without a backwards-compatible replacement. Especially at a time when it was still relevant. So you have this body of Glide software from a few years that works best on Voodoo...

I never owned a Voodoo at the time (or today for that matter) and I agree with the previous poster - by 2000-2001, everybody playing current games had moved on to the GeForce, then GeForce 2, etc. But those... didn't really hit an end point in the same way. Or at least, not an obvious one. Maybe the end of driver support for 98SE or the end of AGP is ... somewhat... of an end point, but not in the same way.

Now, interestingly, if you want to see a card that costs even more than Voodoos, go look at Apple GeForce 4 Ti4600s. Those things are now at $1000USD buy-it-now on eBay. I bought one from a dude on reddit for... quite a bit less... but still a lot. And why are they so valuable? Because, effectively, they are the Mac world's equivalent of a Voodoo - the last, and best, graphics card compatible with the classic OS. And every person who picked up a Power Mac G4 retro project during the pandemic wanted one...

I would even go as far as to call this VivienM's Law of Collectible Items: the last and greatest item to have the ability to do something will become the most collectible and therefore, over time, the highest priced.

People who played GLIDE games want a Voodoo 3dfx card and since they are no longer made, they are valuable. Once DirectX was the only API supported then ATI and Nvidia were the ones to get.

I don't game on my Powermac G4's but I do like the ATI 9000 since it works good in OS 9 and OSX. You have less options for Powermac G5 AGP and a handful for the last PCIE based ones.

VivienM wrote:

I would even go as far as to call this VivienM's Law of Collectible Items: the last and greatest item to have the ability to do something will become the most collectible and therefore, over time, the highest priced.

That's totally fair, I've paid a premium for "the best" piece to a build, many many times. I will do it again. But paying a 10x premium is the definition of asinine.