jakethompson1 wrote on 2020-07-09, 23:38:

[...]

I think first-gen in this case means everything before the Pentium Pro. And you could argue it did "take the wind out of the sails" of the idea of moving PCs to RISC [all arguments of later x86 having a RISC core aside] - the final blow of course being x86_64. Now, with Apple Silicon, perhaps there's an Act II?

The Pentium Pro was a 1995 chip, Pentiums before that (1st gen 5V So4 P5 models, 2nd gen 3.3V So5 P54 models) were still as described, hot, slow and expensive. It was only after 1995 that Pentiums of any description started to gain real traction. And as for RISC, they were still king in those days, with 64b architectures debuting around the same time - this was the era of the DEC Alpha, UltraSparc and MIPS R10k. It was only with the introduction of the P2 and thus relatively affordable P6 systems in 1997 onwards that x86 really started to undercut the RISC market.

And indeed, the roles are reversed now - all the more as that Arm isn't beating x86 at its own game (the desktop PC), it's just that people are moving their computing to platforms that Arm owns (phones, tablets, smart TVs etc), just as happened with PC vs dedicated RISC workstation. Apple silicon is as much about turning the Mac into an iDevice as it is about putting Arm in a laptop.

TOPGUN ( My favorite roller coaster in Silicon Valley.
Right across the street from Intel head quarter campus.
And right down the street from where I was enrolled in Computer education school.

For best DOS game play back you want a pentium CPU.
I has enough power to crunch threw any DOS game.
The 486 stutters and lags in DOS game play.

https://youtu.be/9VhfvVRPlwY

If money is not a problem, K6 2/3Plus or VIA c3 build.