I think the only reason AMD was able to one up Intel was because Intel was too busy picking its butt trying to figure out ways to scam people with the Pee4, Rambust and Itanic. Intel probably didn't deserve to survive a mistake like that, but somehow they did.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I think the only reason AMD was able to one up Intel was because Intel was too busy picking its butt trying to figure out ways to scam people with the Pee4, Rambust and Itanic. Intel probably didn't deserve to survive a mistake like that, but somehow they did.

It's funny how they're in almost the exact opposite situation now. AMD is pushing for higher clocks but Intel has a way higher IPC that beats AMD's clocks.

I wouldn't say that any of them deserved to go out of business.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

... Pee4 ... Rambust ... Itanic ...

🤣 🤣 🤣

Tr3vor42532 wrote:

It's funny how they're in almost the exact opposite situation now. AMD is pushing for higher clocks but Intel has a way higher IPC that beats AMD's clocks ...

I thought exactly that the first time I learnt about the Bulldozer architecture, history repeating itself with reversed roles .

We need an AMD (or an ARM or a Cyrix or whoever) in the game to keep Intel (reasonably) honest. Competition improves the breed and keeps monopolies at bay.

I have often wondered what part naming has to do with a company's success. "Intel" certainly sounds a lot cooler to me than "AMD". If two companies had similar performance and reviews, I might be more inclined to buy the one with the better name. This is especially true for me concerning restaurant names and people naming their business after themselves.

"ARM" sounds better to me than "A-M-D".

feipoa wrote:

I have often wondered what part naming has to do with a company's success. "Intel" certainly sounds a lot cooler to me than "AMD". If two companies had similar performance and reviews, I might be more inclined to buy the one with the better name. This is especially true for me concerning restaurant names and people naming their business after themselves.

"ARM" sounds better to me than "A-M-D".

What about "Advanced Micro Devices"? That sounds pretty cool 😜

Depends on the competition. Nobody advertises the Athlon as an "Advanced Micro Devices Athlon", it is just an "AMD Athlon". When faced with the competition, "Intel" is short and sweet. Now if the scenerio was, say, "Intelligent Micro Devices" vs. "Advanced Micro Devices", then perhaps "Advanced Micro Devices" would sound better to some people.

Hard for me to pick just one.
The first computer that was ever all my own and not a family machine was a 286-16. Had some happy times with that system.
Upgraded to a 486sx-33 motherboard when heading off to college, then upgraded the chip on that to a DX2-66 and finally a 5x86-133.
I then made the leap to a PII-266, then a 1.2 and then 2ghz Thunderbird Athlon, and a dual processor Athlon MP system that lasted a good 4 or 5 years?

I then moved to a socket 939 system since I could no longer upgrade the AGP graphics, and settled on the sytem I have now, a core i7. I suspect if I buy one more really high-end graphics board in a year or two I could probably make the i7 system last a full ten years, maybe even 15.
With the exception of the PII-266 and the Core i7 box, most of these systems were built from parts migrated from other systems. I think I got the most mileage out of the 486 and the Athlon MP systems. The i7 may surpass it, if only because I'm sick of the upgrade treadmill and computers are more than fast enough for what I want to do. If I didn't care about playing games beyond about 2008 and had managed to upgrade the AGP card back when it was cheap to do so, I could probably still be using the Athlon MP box. That would put it at 10 years old, but it will easily run Win 7.

If I had to say which of those were iconic for me, it would be childhood family PC (8 bit Tandy 1000) the 286-16 (first system I played Wolf 3d and Wing Commander on), and the DX2-66/5x86-133 box I built. The others are just computers without any particular emotional attachment.

K6III+. Cheaper than pentium II, lots of cache and had 3dnow. Overclocked to 600mhz with pc133 sdram. Best K6 CPU; was actively available during pentium iii time I think.

Shagittarius wrote:

http://i58.tinypic.com/242tyjn.jpg […]
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I had one of these on an accelerator board in my Amiga 1200. My favorite computer of all time. I still have the Amiga 1200 but I sold the accelerator board to a friend when it became obvious PCs were going to overtake it graphics power wise. Of course now I regret selling it even though my Amiga 1200 really doesn't get any use anymore thanks to some pretty great Amiga emulators out there.

I was worried. That nobody else mentioned the M68K series of processor. But thankfully I was not disappointed 😀 Cause then. I would have written "where the bloody f*cking hell is the M68K series of processors ?"

DonutKing wrote:

Zilog Z-80

Arguably the most widely used processor of all time, used in the master system, the mega drive as a copro and the Game boy CPU is like a distant cousin of it.

Well the GB CPU has been a matter of different sources saying, it was a 8080, others say it is a CPU more related to a 8088, and others again says it is in fact a 8086 with the Z80 register mixed with it. But none the less great machine, and great processor 😀

Intel Pentium III, because it is the fastest CPU to put on a 440BX motherboard.

Intel Pentium 4, because it is the fastest CPU to put on a Soyo 845PE ISA motherboard.

I have to go with my two favorite. The intel 8088, as it was in my first pc. Next would be the 233MMX. The MMX just seemed like a huge step forward at the time.

I'm going to add to my original vote for PowerPC with one for the 6502. Prior to the 6502, chip yields were typically low which made processors very expensive and really held computing back because it wasn't very affordable. The process used to produce the 6502 increased yields dramatically allowing the 6502 to undercut all competitors and soon 6502's were appearing everywhere. Other CPU manufacturers had to improve their own yields to stay competitive and a price war ensued and price wars are typically very good for consumers.

The 386(DX-40) and 486(DX2-66) and Pentium 90.

These, to me, are the true "vintage" era style CPUs used in systems that I gamed on....and now still do!

I'm fond of the MOS 6502. It was really a breakthrough at the time for making CPUs affordable. It follows a "keep it simple" philosophy, one could argue that it's a RISC - but this was before "RISC" had become a marketing buzzword and so it doesn't meet the modern interpretation of that term. "RISC" processors are thought to always have tons of registers, and the 6502 has very few, but that's just a result of what made sense at the time. The bottom line is, the 6502 succeeded at it's job by keeping things simple, just like any "RISC" design.
It typically runs slower clocks than a Z80, but gets more work done per clock, so it was a good competitor against it.
There are 2 processors that I've programmed in assembly. One is the x86 (mostly in the days when we had a Cyrix 6x86 and a 486 in the basement), and the other is the 6502. I actually learned the x86 first. Some years ago, out of hobby interest I downloaded the documentation for the 6502 and was pleased at how simple it is. It's a nice CPU to deal with, everything about it makes sense. Back in the 70s they couldn't afford to overcomplicate it.

For x86 processors, I think I really like the Coppermine. I never owned one when they were new. But in more recent times I've used them a lot and been impressed at how cool and low power they are. The low end coppermines are cheap and common as dirt, and when they are adequate they are very cheap to run. I run some small stuff 24/7 on a headless Compaq iPaq with a Coppermine 550/100, and that whole running system uses 27W. With the original Mendocino Celeron it was in the 30s.
I've also enjoyed Coppermine based 440BX desktop machines. I like the motherboards they're used with, but that's straying from the topic I suppose. At one time, I think every computer I had built for members of my family, as well as myself, were 440BX based with Coppermine CPUs. I just love that platform.

For what I'd call modern CPUs, I like the K8. I really admired these when they came out, but didn't own one until recently. The NUMA architecture is cool, and the power management capabilities are a big leap forward from anything mainstream that I saw before it.

My favorite is the Intel Pentium III 1 ghz s370.

Advanced Micro Devices K 6 - II 3D Now !

With a title like that it can't be beat! Seriously though the price/performance of this chip was great, only to be beaten by the Celeron 300A

MartinC wrote:

Advanced Micro Devices K 6 - II 3D Now !

With a title like that it can't be beat! Seriously though the price/performance of this chip was great, only to be beaten by the Celeron 300A

Back when I bought my first K6-II 3DNow! (TM), the cost of a decent slot 1 motherboards was almost twice that of a decent super7 motherboard, at least from the computer shops I had access to, which made the K6-2 better value over-all even than a Celery 300A.

LunarG wrote:

MartinC wrote:

Advanced Micro Devices K 6 - II 3D Now !

With a title like that it can't be beat! Seriously though the price/performance of this chip was great, only to be beaten by the Celeron 300A

Back when I bought my first K6-II 3DNow! (TM), the cost of a decent slot 1 motherboards was almost twice that of a decent super7 motherboard, at least from the computer shops I had access to, which made the K6-2 better value over-all even than a Celery 300A.

Have to agree with you on that although the upgradability of super 7 might have been more limited it was still very affordable

My first computer was a K6-II 500 MHz with integrated graphics and no AGP (the integrated graphics claimed to be AGP), I still managed to upgrade to a RIVA TNT PCI which allowed me to run the latest games

MartinC wrote:

LunarG wrote:

MartinC wrote:

Advanced Micro Devices K 6 - II 3D Now !

With a title like that it can't be beat! Seriously though the price/performance of this chip was great, only to be beaten by the Celeron 300A

Back when I bought my first K6-II 3DNow! (TM), the cost of a decent slot 1 motherboards was almost twice that of a decent super7 motherboard, at least from the computer shops I had access to, which made the K6-2 better value over-all even than a Celery 300A.

Have to agree with you on that although the upgradability of super 7 might have been more limited it was still very affordable

My first computer was a K6-II 500 MHz with integrated graphics and no AGP (the integrated graphics claimed to be AGP), I still managed to upgrade to a RIVA TNT PCI which allowed me to run the latest games

Sounds simialr to the Compaq machine that I had. 533mhz K6-2 and integrated S3 Trio3D AGP video and no AGP slot.The last video card I ran in that was a GeForce 4MX 440 PCI. It was way past time to buy a new system so I stopped upgrading it and bought a Compaq Evo W4000 2.4ghz Northwood machine and Radeon 9500 (unocked to 8 pipes) to replace it.

sliderider wrote:

Sounds simialr to the Compaq machine that I had. 533mhz K6-2 and integrated S3 Trio3D AGP video and no AGP slot.The last video card I ran in that was a GeForce 4MX 440 PCI. It was way past time to buy a new system so I stopped upgrading it and bought a Compaq Evo W4000 2.4ghz Northwood machine and Radeon 9500 (unocked to 8 pipes) to replace it.

Shit that would have been some great upgrade. But I bet you still looked fondly on the K6-2 😀