dexvx wrote:

At the time, it was maybe slightly faster than a 1GHz Pentium III, and certainly slower than an Athlon-C 1200. However, with software updates, the Willamette is now heads and shoulders above either.

Not really. I tried playing HTML5 YouTube video under FireFox 48 on both platforms a year ago. 1.4GHz PIII and a 1.8GHz Willamette. Both of them were performing roughly the same: jerky as hell even at 360p.

Sure, there are many programs that require SSE2 and won't run on the Tualatin at all, but programs new enough to require the instruction set will run like ass on a Willamette (or any single-core, really).

Standard Def Steve wrote:

dexvx wrote:

At the time, it was maybe slightly faster than a 1GHz Pentium III, and certainly slower than an Athlon-C 1200. However, with software updates, the Willamette is now heads and shoulders above either.

Not really. I tried playing HTML5 YouTube video under FireFox 48 on both platforms a year ago. 1.4GHz PIII and a 1.8GHz Willamette. Both of them were performing roughly the same: jerky as hell even at 360p.

Sure, there are many programs that require SSE2 and won't run on the Tualatin at all, but programs new enough to require the instruction set will run like ass on a Willamette (or any single-core, really).

I remember hardware accelerated HD flash videos requiring SSE2, which made a gigantic difference between an Athlon XP and a Pentium 4... that was probably 4 years ago though. I tested this by using a 6200 PCI in an old Socket 775 P4 HP with no AGP slot. Youtube HD videos ran fine. Using a better card (AGP 7600GS) in a system with a Sempron 3000+ was a slideshow in the same scenario... this was due to the SSE2 requirement for hardware accelerated flash videos.

I forgot about the transition to HTML5 though... I'm sure that has changed things dramatically. Low end tablet focused x86 processors aren't really that much "faster" than some of these 12-15 year old processors we're talking about, but with all of the modern instruction sets available they can do things that simply aren't possible on the older chips. I don't know what HTLM5 video playback makes use of, but I'm sure it isn't any friendlier to ancient hardware.

appiah4 wrote:

1600x1200 gaming was unheard of in 2000, the fillrate of cards on the market would be hopeless against that many pixels per frame at the framerates you are looking for so that is no wonder. 1280x1024 was a luxury, I could barely run some things at 1280x960. 1024x768 was the norm.

I remember. In 2000 I tough Quake II @ 800x600 looked good - but we're not in 2000 any more, and I like eye candy. Some of these old games look great @ 1600x1200. Surprisingly, a Geforce 2 Titanium 64MB performs decently at that resolution provided you pair it with a very fast CPU.

BitWrangler wrote:

Gatewayuser200 wrote:

Edit: Another interesting link
https://web.archive.org/web/20030306012002/ht … 760_ddr/8.shtml[/color]

Yah, there was a chaintech 760/761 board out for sure before end of 2000 also, can't be sure about the Epox board, that was known for hitting an FSB of 200, so DDR400 speed, it really was unequalled until NF2, KT266 was bugged, KT266A wasn't but only went as fast as the middling 760 boards, KT333 just added a multi divider and didn't go any faster, wouldn't run synchronous stably, KT400 was improved.

A good KT333 board will do FSB 400. Late revision KT333 chips are stable at that speed, but only a handful of motherboards are capable of running stable at that speed. The Shuttle AK35GT2-R is one such board.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Sure, there are many programs that require SSE2 and won't run on the Tualatin at all, but programs new enough to require the instruction set will run like ass on a Willamette (or any single-core, really).

Been through this many times. Even when using 2003/2004 era software optimizations, a Willamette will trade blows with Tualatin/Athlon-C clock for clock, which was unfathomable when it launched in late 2000.

The lack of SSE2 was the main reason why Athlon XP fell so fast from glory. When the Barton 3200+ launched, it was slightly behind a Northwood-C 3.0 Ghz (it was even a weak rating against the 3.06/533 FSB Northwood-B variant). By the time Athlon 64 launched just a year later, the Barton's 3200+ rating was a total joke.

dexvx wrote:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Sure, there are many programs that require SSE2 and won't run on the Tualatin at all, but programs new enough to require the instruction set will run like ass on a Willamette (or any single-core, really).

Been through this many times. Even when using 2003/2004 era software optimizations, a Willamette will trade blows with Tualatin/Athlon-C clock for clock, which was unfathomable when it launched in late 2000.

The lack of SSE2 was the main reason why Athlon XP fell so fast from glory. When the Barton 3200+ launched, it was slightly behind a Northwood-C 3.0 Ghz (it was even a weak rating against the 3.06/533 FSB Northwood-B variant). By the time Athlon 64 launched just a year later, the Barton's 3200+ rating was a total joke.

Well, to be fair by the time the Athlon64 launched it made the Pentium 4 look like a joke too, so there's no shame in that.

fsmith2003 wrote:

Just thought I would throw out what I have came up with for the specific "fastest" Intel CPU for each year of 1990-2000 for the […]
Show full quote

Just thought I would throw out what I have came up with for the specific "fastest" Intel CPU for each year of 1990-2000 for the spreadsheet.

1990 - 486 DX-33
1991 - 486 DX-50
1992 - 486 DX2-66
1993 - Pentium 66
1994 - Pentium 100
1995 - Pentium 133
1996 - Pentium 200
1997 - Pentium II 300
1998 - Pentium II 450
1999 - Pentium III 800
2000 - Pentium 4 1.5

Nov 1995. Pentium Pro released. The Pentium Pro 200 would be the fastest in 1995 and 96?

Wasn’t the Pentium Pro geared more towards servers or something? I feel like I’m my research there was a reason I didn’t include Pentium Pro as part of a casual home user based system list.

appiah4 wrote:

dexvx wrote:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Sure, there are many programs that require SSE2 and won't run on the Tualatin at all, but programs new enough to require the instruction set will run like ass on a Willamette (or any single-core, really).

Been through this many times. Even when using 2003/2004 era software optimizations, a Willamette will trade blows with Tualatin/Athlon-C clock for clock, which was unfathomable when it launched in late 2000.

The lack of SSE2 was the main reason why Athlon XP fell so fast from glory. When the Barton 3200+ launched, it was slightly behind a Northwood-C 3.0 Ghz (it was even a weak rating against the 3.06/533 FSB Northwood-B variant). By the time Athlon 64 launched just a year later, the Barton's 3200+ rating was a total joke.

Well, to be fair by the time the Athlon64 launched it made the Pentium 4 look like a joke too, so there's no shame in that.

Common misconception.

Socket 754 Athlon 64's only created parity with Northwood-C. E.g. the Athlon 64 3200+ (Socket 754) was actually slightly behind the Pentium 4 3.2C. However, it was favorable for other reasons. The Athlon FX-51 was trading blows with the Pentium 4 3.2EE. as well.

Athlon 64 pulled ahead in the next 3 years because it scaled much better with Socket 939. Prescott was a total failure that didn't scale to its intended frequencies.

Tech Report wrote:

The P4 Extreme Edition does hold its own against the Athlon 64 FX, and you have to like Intel's willingness to mine its Xeon line for extra desktop performance. I am a little surprised by the breadth of the benchmarks in which the Extreme Edition's massive amounts of on-chip cache improve performance over the stock Pentium 4, especially the games."

For those of us with more pedestrian spending limits, the Athlon 64 3200+ looks like a great value. Yes, it costs over 400 bucks, but the stock Pentium 4 3.2GHz is selling for more than $600 right now. The Athlon 64 3200+ maybe trails the P4 3.2GHz in overall performance by the thinnest of margins, but no way is the P4 worth another $150 to $200. And that's without considering the 64-bit question.

fsmith2003 wrote:

Wasn’t the Pentium Pro geared more towards servers or something? I feel like I’m my research there was a reason I didn’t include Pentium Pro as part of a casual home user based system list.

The ppro is what became the Xeon. Not necessarily for "servers" but it was still priced as such.

The reason many consumers avoided it was because it didn't have any performance gains in 16-bit over a similarly clocked Pentium and came at a major premium.

As for 32 bit it would have been the fastest cpu on the market as of Nov 1995, and home consumers did buy it for general use. Just not nearly as often as a Pentium, these were people with lots of money to spend.

It's a tough call because people still cared about 16-bit performance in 1995-1996. For your average gamer i would probably put it as a tie with a clock matching pentium, or give it the edge if you're talking full 32 bit.

Fun fact: the first computer to reach the teraflop was called ASCI red, using nearly 10,000 pentium pro 200s if I remember right. It consumed nearly a megawatt of power. The newish i9 processor from intel matches about 3/4 of that machine 😀

One thing to note about the Ppro is that voodoo1 drivers at the time were optimized for the PPro.

My first pc at my current job in 1999 was a Compaq Deskpro 6200 XL with a Ppro 200. I still regret i didnt save it after it was replaced.

Scraphoarder wrote:

My first pc at my current job in 1999 was a Compaq Deskpro 6200 XL with a Ppro 200. I still regret i didnt save it after it was replaced.

I know the feeling...🙁

clueless1 wrote:

Scraphoarder wrote:

My first pc at my current job in 1999 was a Compaq Deskpro 6200 XL with a Ppro 200. I still regret i didnt save it after it was replaced.

I know the feeling...🙁

Probably still a good idea to get one or two before the gold hoarders melt every last one down 😜. Thankfully the PPRO is quite ubiquitous, it's value is still in it's gold (for now).

BeginnerGuy wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

Scraphoarder wrote:

My first pc at my current job in 1999 was a Compaq Deskpro 6200 XL with a Ppro 200. I still regret i didnt save it after it was replaced.

I know the feeling...🙁

Probably still a good idea to get one or two before the gold hoarders melt every last one down 😜. Thankfully the PPRO is quite ubiquitous, it's value is still in it's gold (for now).

I still have a Pentium Pro 200 that someone gave me a while back, along with a heatsink and what I think is some kind of VRM for it. I'll probably hang on to it for a while. It was tempting to sell when the price was up to like $60 a pop several years ago, but I'm glad I didn't, as I have a much better appreciation for old hardware now.

Last year I saved a PPro 200 + Gateway motherboard from the scrap heap. It was in a poorly advertised listing on eBay for like $10 and I spotted the odd shaped CPU right away. I bought it, tested it thoroughly and sold it for $100. I was happy. 😀

Going off of the thread topic but ahhhhh this makes me want to grab a dual PPro 200 board while it's still possible. Socket 8 stuff doesn't seem to be cheap though.

I think I may have a ppro 200 with 1024kb l2 cache laying around from an old pull. It doesn't have the usual gold top, so those may fly under the radar a bit more.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Fun fact: the first computer to reach the teraflop was called ASCI red, using nearly 10,000 pentium pro 200s if I remember right. It consumed nearly a megawatt of power. The newish i9 processor from intel matches about 3/4 of that machine 😀

I was running a teraflop for a kilowatt in 2013, GPUs.

I am always surprised to hear positive talk about the Pentium Pro on vogons. Seems like it was considered a waste of money back in the day from what I recall.

Well if you weren't running NT you didn't need it for sure. There was some CAD and engineering stuff on NT it was super good for. There was even, sometime around 95 or 96 a dual P-Pro laptop CAD station, for an as astronomical sum as you might imagine.

Were there any 32-bit games that would have taken advantage of a Pentium Pro over the regular Pentium?

CkRtech wrote:

I am always surprised to hear positive talk about the Pentium Pro on vogons. Seems like it was considered a waste of money back in the day from what I recall.

Yep, word spread around that it was BAD in 16 bit to the point where popular opinion was that it was slower than a Pentium, but that wasn't true.. It just wasn't any faster. I always wanted one, but they were just too expensive back in their time. Views on things change when the price drops to something 😊 😒

fsmith2003 wrote:

Were there any 32-bit games that would have taken advantage of a Pentium Pro over the regular Pentium?

Honestly I can't think of anything that I would have actually cared to play on it before the Pentium 2 was around. There were actually a few issues causing slow video memory writes that could even make some games (Quake) run slower than on a regular Pentium. For a pure gaming machine I would genuinely prefer a MMX233 or faster K6. No reason today to go with it outside of just the fun of having it (unless you want to run a multi CPU NT setup, that would be fun!)