I can't really make a choice, there's not much hardware I don't like.

Performance-wise of course my favorite generation is the current one: great performance and we are going back to energy efficiency (unlike the "let's drain more and more!" philosophy of the P4 era).
That said, I find the current gen pretty "boring". In the x86 market AMD and Intel are the only real "competitors", and even then, AMD can't even give Intel a run for their money. Haswell has both the best performance AND energy efficiency while the Bulldozer architecture is a disappointing mess. In the graphics department we have, basically, AMD vs Nvidia, while Intel sets the minimum performance both companies can deliver with their integrated solution. And AMD is starting to lag behind in efficiency thanks to Maxwell, and unless they can come up with a better architecture I can see them becoming to Nvidia what they are to Intel: can't compete technology-wise, so they have to go full throttle on the pricing war, and start being known as "oh, it is not as good, but it is good value".

The most interesting period is probably the Pentium I - III era. A good amount of manufacturers making processors, so you could very well upgrade a Cyrix to a Pentium, and then the Pentium to a K6. We also had quite a number of companies making graphics cards, each implementing different APIs and implementing different features. Everyone and their mothers were trying to come up with new and different stuff to grab a piece of the market. A bit chaotic, but nevertheless interesting.

smeezekitty wrote:

P3 because it was the first generation to really rock in performance and was very modern for its time.

That sounds so relative and I don't recall P3 being that interesting. If outstanding performance is main concern, I would pick first Pentium or Core 2. If modernity, 386 or Athlon 64 comes to my mind.

I love the great 3d graphics chips deathmatch of 1997, so many things were happening. Past decade with two and half players is just meh, but somehow I keep watching.

Iam also cant make a choice on that question.. For me every hardware generation has it own story. So its actually very hard to give specific response.

For me the XT-class computers is a speciallity of its own.. ( why special, if you compare it to the newer generation, its just a reduced version of the AT class computer)
(examples are,)

* Is one of the first widely class consumer available computers to the mass market.. (is only special because it was the first one)
* Hadnt no bios setup, so different style of configuring.
* Its limited to the 8 bit ISA slots
* Its limited to 1024KB (if you had an advanced XT version like NEC v20)
* Its just very basic.

What made the 286 special?

* It became an AT class style computer
* New style of 16-bit ISA bus (so performance could be higher)
* A more faster system compared to the XT one.
* Extended memory was possible.
* I think it was that generation that VGA graphics could make possible.
* The pc mouse would more used an added to the system.
* System got the RTC as standard.
* We now could run 1.44MB and 1.2MB media as standard. (these things where intergrated to the PC bios rom)
* Memory type was switched from dips to sipps.
* Cmos Rom setup was intergrated to the system rom.

What made the 386 special?

* Much faster running system. Speeds till 40mhz where not an exception.
* We got much bigger harddisks.
* Windows 3.1 and where specially writen 386 programs made for this system.
* Co-processor got more interest and was more used.
* Memory type was switched from sipps to simms.

What made the 486 special?

* Higher speeds
* Vesa local bus
* Transformation to the PCI bus as well.
* From 30 pin simms to 72 pin simms
* In later state from FPM memory to EDO memory
* Cpu socket switching from 1 to 4. ( and from PGA to Zif socket model)
* New style of configuring the processor with multiplier.
* 486 was a platform of its own.

What made the pentium 1 special.

* I think new platform
* And the transformation to 3D.

2002 - 2004, Pentium 4, late K7 and Single Core K8.

Its during this period everything we take for granted today became possible.

Fast enough for HD video.
Fast enough for the new generation online games like WOW.
Supported as much much memory as 32-bit Windows XP could handle.
Large HDDs made it possible to save just about everything.
Fiber-Optic Internet and ADSL (I got my fiber connection year 2000 but most people did not get fast Internet in Sweden until 2002 - 2004)
File sharing (Not just piracy)
The Internet community back then.

I like super 7 systems most. It's the last platform shared by Intel, AMD and others. It supports USB peripherals (without using PCI card) that are convenient and abundant today. OS-wise you can install Windows up to 7 on ACPI-enabled motherboards.

For me, it would be the Core 2 era. Boards were manufactured to take DDR/DDR2/DDR3 and AGP/PCIE, pencil mods became more common, bioses were relatively easy to mod, CPU heatsink varieties really took off due to the number of overclocking enthusiasts. The start of ram coolers and crazy northbridge heatsink styles. Still remember having fun modding my LGA775 board to accept a LGA771 Xeon CPU.

Robin4 wrote:

Iam also cant make a choice on that question.. For me every hardware generation has it own story. So its actually very hard to g […]
Show full quote

Iam also cant make a choice on that question.. For me every hardware generation has it own story. So its actually very hard to give specific response.

For me the XT-class computers is a speciallity of its own.. ( why special, if you compare it to the newer generation, its just a reduced version of the AT class computer)
(examples are,)

* Is one of the first widely class consumer available computers to the mass market.. (is only special because it was the first one)
* Hadnt no bios setup, so different style of configuring.
* Its limited to the 8 bit ISA slots
* Its limited to 1024KB (if you had an advanced XT version like NEC v20)
* Its just very basic.

What made the 286 special?

* It became an AT class style computer
* New style of 16-bit ISA bus (so performance could be higher)
* A more faster system compared to the XT one.
* Extended memory was possible.
* I think it was that generation that VGA graphics could make possible.
* The pc mouse would more used an added to the system.
* System got the RTC as standard.
* We now could run 1.44MB and 1.2MB media as standard. (these things where intergrated to the PC bios rom)
* Memory type was switched from dips to sipps.
* Cmos Rom setup was intergrated to the system rom.

What made the 386 special?

* Much faster running system. Speeds till 40mhz where not an exception.
* We got much bigger harddisks.
* Windows 3.1 and where specially writen 386 programs made for this system.
* Co-processor got more interest and was more used.
* Memory type was switched from sipps to simms.

What made the 486 special?

* Higher speeds
* Vesa local bus
* Transformation to the PCI bus as well.
* From 30 pin simms to 72 pin simms
* In later state from FPM memory to EDO memory
* Cpu socket switching from 1 to 4. ( and from PGA to Zif socket model)
* New style of configuring the processor with multiplier.
* 486 was a platform of its own.

What made the pentium 1 special.

* I think new platform
* And the transformation to 3D.

Nice summary!
I think socket 4 is for original pentium, not for 486.

486 all the way!

The amount of excellent games that run really well on a 486 DX2-66MHz with 8MB ram is enough to keep anyone occupied for a lot of years. And not just single-player games. There are also good multiplayer games that can be enjoyed with something as simple as a serial cable, more complex IPX networks or even by using two mice attached to the same PC (Settlers 😁). I think this is the generation where PC gaming really took off and a lot of the current industry giants started to get noticed.

The 386 era (lived through it) - you could really make a difference, getting things like page interleave right, and of course the era before graphics was just a choice of AMD or Nvidia ... testing various cards with Wintach in 3.1 - and finding a bunch of cheap WD80C31 cards that really blitzed Wintach

The Pentium 1 era. So many interesting things happening in the computer world at this time period (1993-1997) - fast 2D and 3D video, ever increasing CPU speeds, frequent new motherboard designs, large variety of hardware manufacturers, and more. The 3D video wars were particularly intense, with 3dfx, Rendition and PowerVR fans going at each other constantly (Nvidia was a latecomer with the Riva 128). Creative Labs was a common name for sound cards, but plenty of other brands (Ensoniq, Media Vision, Advanced Gravis, Aztech Labs, Turtle Beach, ESS AudioDrive) were available as well. MIDI was king on PC games and music, and Roland hardware was the standard others were measured by (with Yamaha being second). By comparison, the computer world today is just too bland for me.

Performance-wise of course my favorite generation is the current one: great performance

I don't even have a "modern" system.My main machine uses a Q9550. I still play games from 2010-2011 on it though.

and we are going back to energy efficiency (unlike the "let's drain more and more!" philosophy of the P4 era).

Except for AMD 😵
FX 9590 🤣

In the x86 market AMD and Intel are the only real "competitors", and even then, AMD can't even give Intel a run for their money. Haswell has both the best performance AND energy efficiency while the Bulldozer architecture is a disappointing mess.

This is quite unfortunate. AMD might have been better off if kept developing on the Phenom 2. Bulldozer is a big screwup.
At this point AMD is falling further and further behind Intel and they are desperately trying to catch up by raising clock speed only (which just means more power and more heat)
Unless they change something soon, AMD's CPU sector is pretty much doomed.

In the graphics department we have, basically, AMD vs Nvidia, while Intel sets the minimum performance both companies can deliver with their integrated solution. And AMD is starting to lag behind in efficiency thanks to Maxwell, and unless they can come up with a better architecture I can see them becoming to Nvidia what they are to Intel: can't compete technology-wise, so they have to go full throttle on the pricing war, and start being known as "oh, it is not as good, but it is good value".

The graphics war is a different story. AMD is still keeping pace with NVidia in performance. Yes it takes more power to do it
but that doesn't really matter much. Also their 3xx series is claiming to help with power consumption. Personally I refuse to buy any new NVidia product
because I despise them as a company and the way they conduct business.

We also had quite a number of companies making graphics cards, each implementing different APIs and implementing different features.

Interesting, yes. But I prefer being able to pick one brand and have it support pretty much a standard set of features
so I don't need a different card for every game.

That sounds so relative and I don't recall P3 being that interesting. If outstanding performance is main concern, I would pick first Pentium or Core 2. If modernity, 386 or Athlon 64 comes to my mind.

P3 was actually interesting. Being SSE and having a lot of performance per clock before Intel tanked it with the release of P4

It took Intel 5(!) years to come up with Core 2 while everybody had to endure the P4 junk. Core2 is actually based on the P3 core!

Robin4: I agree with you.

2002 - 2004, Pentium 4, late K7 and Single Core K8. […]
Show full quote

2002 - 2004, Pentium 4, late K7 and Single Core K8.

Its during this period everything we take for granted today became possible.

Fast enough for HD video.
Fast enough for the new generation online games like WOW.
Supported as much much memory as 32-bit Windows XP could handle.
Large HDDs made it possible to save just about everything.
Fiber-Optic Internet and ADSL (I got my fiber connection year 2000 but most people did not get fast Internet in Sweden until 2002 - 2004)
File sharing (Not just piracy)
The Internet community back then.

I am quite sure that a Tulatin machine could do most or all of those things. Although now WoW now has a minimum requirement of a C2D so
I doubt its ability to run smoothly on a P4
http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=53196

It's the last platform shared by Intel, AMD and others.

That is a pretty cool thing to have both brands with the same socket.

Windows 7 on a socket 7...slow??!

For me, it would be the Core 2 era. Boards were manufactured to take DDR/DDR2/DDR3 and AGP/PCIE, pencil mods became more common, bioses were relatively easy to mod, CPU heatsink varieties really took off due to the number of overclocking enthusiasts. The start of ram coolers and crazy northbridge heatsink styles. Still remember having fun modding my LGA775 board to accept a LGA771 Xeon CPU.

I love Core2. Though I don't know anything newer;)

The amount of excellent games that run really well on a 486 DX2-66MHz with 8MB ram is enough to keep anyone occupied for a lot of years. And not just single-player games. There are also good multiplayer games that can be enjoyed with something as simple as a serial cable, more complex IPX networks or even by using two mice attached to the same PC (Settlers 😁). I think this is the generation where PC gaming really took off and a lot of the current industry giants started to get noticed.

Agreed! The modern 32 bit-ness of the 386 but with much better performance. The 386 was almost like an early prototype with its low clock speed and loosely coupled architecture.
The 486 is where it really took off.

The 386 era (lived through it) - you could really make a difference, getting things like page interleave right, and of course the era before graphics was just a choice of AMD or Nvidia ... testing various cards with Wintach in 3.1 - and finding a bunch of cheap WD80C31 cards that really blitzed Wintach

Cool! My 486/33 actually has a WD ISA card in it. I should check the model number on it.

The Pentium 1 era. So many interesting things happening in the computer world at this time period (1993-1997) - fast 2D and 3D video, ever increasing CPU speeds, frequent new motherboard designs, large variety of hardware manufacturers, and more. The 3D video wars were particularly intense, with 3dfx, Rendition and PowerVR fans going at each other constantly (Nvidia was a latecomer with the Riva 128). Creative Labs was a common name for sound cards, but plenty of other brands (Ensoniq, Media Vision, Advanced Gravis, Aztech Labs, Turtle Beach, ESS AudioDrive) were available as well. MIDI was king on PC games and music, and Roland hardware was the standard others were measured by (with Yamaha being second).

P1 was a fun generation as it emerged.

By comparison, the computer world today is just too bland for me.

Yes it less dynamic, but I also like the standardization so you don't need different hardware for every program/game.

Well if we go by number of years using it, probably Core2. I really like my Core2Duo, but I felt the need to finally upgrade it in my main machine, so I decided maybe I'd like 2 Core2Duo's working together, aka my "new" Core2Quad Q6600. He's been a great chap and is working nicely. 🤣 My original Core2 now is powering my classic games machine running Windows XP. It has a "wide" gaming reach and with the CPU power to spare again!

On a completely objective level though I think if I had every generation to use my favorite would probably be the first generation i7 (Nehalem). Since it was the first multicore to introduce hyperthreading, oh man that would be awesome. If I happened to get a first gen i7 920 when it came out for example, I'd STILL be using it and wouldn't even think about upgrading for years to come. They overclock like beasts too.

So's life though, Core2 has treated me well. Me and my Q6600 are getting along.

smeezekitty wrote:

I don't even have a "modern" system.My main machine uses a Q9550. I still play games from 2010-2011 on it though.

Q9550 is still a respectable CPU. If you overclock it you can still put it well above a Haswell i3, even in not so well threaded applications, I think. You can probably run 2013/2014 games just fine if you put something like a 750TI (or AMD equivalent) and don't have some sort of OCD for setting everything to Ultra.

smeezekitty wrote:

Except for AMD 😵
FX 9590 🤣

🤣

smeezekitty wrote:

This is quite unfortunate. AMD might have been better off if kept developing on the Phenom 2. Bulldozer is a big screwup.
At this point AMD is falling further and further behind Intel and they are desperately trying to catch up by raising clock speed only (which just means more power and more heat)
Unless they change something soon, AMD's CPU sector is pretty much doomed.

Luckily for them, their APUs still hold up well in the "really low budged PC gaming market" thanks to the integrated graphics still being significantly better than Intel's solution (as of Ivy Bridge... integrated graphics do not interest me much so I do not know how the situation is now with the Haswell);

smeezekitty wrote:

The graphics war is a different story. AMD is still keeping pace with NVidia in performance. Yes it takes more power to do it
but that doesn't really matter much. Also their 3xx series is claiming to help with power consumption. Personally I refuse to buy any new NVidia product
because I despise them as a company and the way they conduct business.

I hope the 3xx series deliver. It would be really sad to see no expressive competition in the graphics market.
If not, then AMD will be in a horrible position. Maxwell's efficiency means that Nvidia still has a lot of headroom to put faster cards on the market based on the same core, and there is only so much AMD can keep up with their current architecture due to power/thermal constraints. I didn't read too much about it (since I do not own the card), but apparently people with GTX980 OCing that beast are stumbling on the card's firmware throttling power consumption before having issues with artifacts and stability.

smeezekitty wrote:

Interesting, yes. But I prefer being able to pick one brand and have it support pretty much a standard set of features
so I don't need a different card for every game.

Me too, I just miss the sort of amazement you could get back then, when a graphics card 1-2 years newer than yours made stuff look so different and better... whereas nowadays when a 3-4 year jump in graphics card have such diminished returns if you are not picky with the settings. On another note this means that hardware has a longer lifespan (for modern applications).

Robin4 wrote:

Iam also cant make a choice on that question.. For me every hardware generation has it own story. So its actually very hard to g […]
Show full quote

Iam also cant make a choice on that question.. For me every hardware generation has it own story. So its actually very hard to give specific response.

For me the XT-class computers is a speciallity of its own.. ( why special, if you compare it to the newer generation, its just a reduced version of the AT class computer)
(examples are,)

* Is one of the first widely class consumer available computers to the mass market.. (is only special because it was the first one)
* Hadnt no bios setup, so different style of configuring.
* Its limited to the 8 bit ISA slots
* Its limited to 1024KB (if you had an advanced XT version like NEC v20)
* Its just very basic.

What made the 286 special?

* It became an AT class style computer
* New style of 16-bit ISA bus (so performance could be higher)
* A more faster system compared to the XT one.
* Extended memory was possible.
* I think it was that generation that VGA graphics could make possible.
* The pc mouse would more used an added to the system.
* System got the RTC as standard.
* We now could run 1.44MB and 1.2MB media as standard. (these things where intergrated to the PC bios rom)
* Memory type was switched from dips to sipps.
* Cmos Rom setup was intergrated to the system rom.

What made the 386 special?

* Much faster running system. Speeds till 40mhz where not an exception.
* We got much bigger harddisks.
* Windows 3.1 and where specially writen 386 programs made for this system.
* Co-processor got more interest and was more used.
* Memory type was switched from sipps to simms.

What made the 486 special?

* Higher speeds
* Vesa local bus
* Transformation to the PCI bus as well.
* From 30 pin simms to 72 pin simms
* In later state from FPM memory to EDO memory
* Cpu socket switching from 1 to 4. ( and from PGA to Zif socket model)
* New style of configuring the processor with multiplier.
* 486 was a platform of its own.

What made the pentium 1 special.

* I think new platform
* And the transformation to 3D.

Good summary but you forgot important things:

386:
*Main improvement of the 386 was the introduction of Virtual86 mode (V86) and the ability of switching between modes without hardware reset. 286's could not. It think this is the main thing why 386 was so special.
No need for EMS boards, EMM386 could emulate it.

486:
*Pipelined CPU architecture
*Introduction of SRAM cache on die (easily the biggest improvement factor vs 386)
*FPU on die as well

Pentium:
*Superscalar architecture
*Higher Bus Speeds allow better I/O performance
*Faster cache subsystem

alexanrs wrote:

smeezekitty wrote:

I don't even have a "modern" system.My main machine uses a Q9550. I still play games from 2010-2011 on it though.

Q9550 is still a respectable CPU. If you overclock it you can still put it well above a Haswell i3, even in not so well threaded applications, I think. You can probably run 2013/2014 games just fine if you put something like a 750TI (or AMD equivalent) and don't have some sort of OCD for setting everything to Ultra.

I have a Q9650 Extreme in my current system (overclocked to 3,6ghz). It runs all the modern games fine with my ATI R290 crossfire setup.

I personally like the 1996-1997 hardware the most.

I'm with vets on this one, I'm in favour of the mid 90's PC hardware.

The gap between a 486DX4/120 and a Pentium 100 alone is probably much higher than the gap between the first generation Core 2 Duo and Haswell i7. So I wouldn't classify a 7 year old PC as really "retro" or old anymore, the development of PCs is really sluggish nowadays. It is funny that Intel keeps releasing ticks and tocks while in the 90s computers used CPUs that were developed 3 or more years before (486 became mainstream in ~1994 despite being a 1989 chip, Pentium in 1995 despite originating in 1993), yet computer development was faster than today despite that.

As for the "max out" gamers, I wonder how they would fare in the Quake/Duke 3D era, when the games already offered 1600x1200 VESA modes that would require a supercomputer to play in the years that they were released.

smeezekitty wrote:

This is quite unfortunate. AMD might have been better off if kept developing on the Phenom 2. Bulldozer is a big screwup.
At this point AMD is falling further and further behind Intel and they are desperately trying to catch up by raising clock speed only (which just means more power and more heat)
Unless they change something soon, AMD's CPU sector is pretty much doomed.

In my opinion this is common misconception. Yes Bulldozer is not AMD's best effort but we got to put things into perspective. People have this idea that a CPU micro-architecture is a copy paste thing.

When AMD was designing Bulldozer they wanted to depart from a more traditional micro-arch not only to try and get more integer cores in less die space, but also because they were pushing for their designed SSE5 standard. Bulldozer was optimized for the SSE5 SIMD instrcution set.

AMD's big mistake was to assume Intel would follow their SSE5 instruction set proposal. If Intel had accepted they would have to get its designs on the drawing board and/or face a performance penalty, because their micro-architecture were optimized for Intel's SSE. So Intel rejected SSE5 and instead proposed AVX. Funny thing is that AVX is nothing but SSE with 256bit registers, it's just an SSE upgrade basically, and not radical new instructions like those proposed by AMD on SSE5. In the meanwhile the FMA instructions debacle provided nothing than more delays for AMD.

AMD's Bulldozer problems derive not only from micro processor design but from stubborn approach as well.

Then there's another problem. AMD still has not recognize to this day the importance of a built in house compiler. One of the great weapons in Intels success is their main compiler.. Intel can assure their processors run properly optimized binaries and at the same time cripples AMD (or VIA or any other) performance by running not optimal code even though non-Intel CPU can run optimal code.

Example: 1- Compiler checks CPU vendor string as "GenuineIntel". So compiler runs the most optimized code using the best SIMD instruction available for that CPU.
2- Compiler checks CPU vendor string is NOT "GenuineIntel", so it runs other code path using a lower SSE instruction set or even 386 code even if the top SIMD instruction IS available on non-Intel CPU.

This is called unfair CPU dispatching.

Agner Fog even wrote a CPU ID string manipulator tool for VIA CPU's. This allowed to change the CPU ID string at convenience. When the VIA CPU string is changed to "GenuineIntel" there was a significant performance gain. Changing the string to something else would lose performance again, and changing to "AuthenticAMD" would make it even slower.

And some people still think that Cinebench is a tool of measuring CPU performance. What a joke.

And this actually happened.