Whats faster, 486DX4 100MHZ OR Pentium 75...?

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Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
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Originally posted by: StrangerGuy
For CPUs of that era, higher FSB > higher CPU clock. So, Pentium 75 is faster

That's not necessarily true. The Pentium 75 had other reasons making it better than the 486DX4-100 besides running with a 50MHz FSB.

There was a 486DX-50 and a 486DX2-50. The DX running at full 50MHz FSB was faster than DX2 running at 2x25MHz FSB. There was a 486DX2-66 that was faster than both, running at 2x33MHz FSB. I'm sure somewhere in-between the performance overlapped, but who knows where.

That still holds true to this day, with higher FSB giving "better" performance, but easily made up for by a few more MHz.
 

hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
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pentium 75 probably.


dx4100 was generally regarded as as fast as the pentium 60 on apps of that era.

which meant non FPU intensive 16bit apps.


the 75 had a 50mhz bus, and the 60 had a 60 mhz bus, b ut i i think the clock speed still won out. that and the 60 was not the greatest cpu, had the fpu bug etc.

at the time i was like... 12.

but my dad had a dx 50 ES chip from back in the day. and a dx2-66. the dx2-66 based machine had vesa local bus though and well that gave it the upper hand. in general though the dx 50 was nearly as fast as a dx2-66.

 

hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
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Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
Originally posted by: George Powell
It is dependent on the application but overall it wll be the Pentium.

The P60 and P66 that preceded the P75 were however not quicker than the DX4 chip.

Any reason why? There were what I'd call significant performance improvements in the original pentium, right?
One word: superscalar. The P5 was the first superscalar in the x86 universe.

486 - first pipelined x86
pentium - first superscalar x86
pentium pro - out of order execution, speculative execution

So in a way, x86 processors haven't really advanced a whole lot in terms of big new architechtural features since the Pro.

well the pro at th etime was a bad deal unless you ran 32bit stuff which almos tno one did.

the pro architecture with a dual package cache basically is the pentium II, p3 was a p2+ sse. and the pentium M was derived off that too.

i mean cpu design is generally the same, there have been advancements like say macro/microps fusion , hyper threading and the like, but an adder is an adder and a shift unit still more or less is the same.

that said, i think amd still sells the original geode system on a chip adn that was basically a 486.

i remember i used to have a 386SL dead die keychain. friend of mine has a pentium 60 one. 386SL had an onboard memory controller! back then an onboard l2 cache controller was a big deal but the SL had the memory controller. in like 1986.
 

Colt45

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Apr 18, 2001
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I vaguely remember running a dx4 100 (or maybe a similar cyrix chip) at 2x50?

anyhow, should be able to overclock the P75 to 1.5 x 66, and it will smoke the dx4.
 

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
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Originally posted by: Colt45
anyhow, should be able to overclock the P75 to 1.5 x 66, and it will smoke the dx4.

Many people did run it at 1.5x60 for Pentium 90 performance, and some ran them at 1.5x66 for Pentium 100 performance.

486DX4-100 can sometimes overclock to 120MHz, 486DX2-66 can sometimes do DX2-80, list goes on...
 

Burpo

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Sep 10, 2013
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1.185 million transistors vs 3.1 million.. yes the Pentium 75 by far.. I remember rendering a 57 Chevy wire frame in Autocad took from 6 in the evening until 10am next morning with the 486 DX-66 and it still wasn't done, but when we got the first Pentium 60 in, I ran it again & the Pentium knocked it out in 8-9 hrs. P75 in 6-7 hrs (iirc), may have been the P90
 
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Deders

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Oct 14, 2012
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Didn't the original Pentium have problems dividing? From what I remember it didn't have a divide function so it had to do multiple multiplications to get the result which slowed things down.
 

Burpo

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Sep 10, 2013
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Yes, the P60 was short lived for that reason. I remember trying the equation with a Packard Bell P60 and it failed. We sent it back and got a P90 replacement for same price ($900). Intel grew quickly after that. The Pentium Pro 200 was next big leap @ 5 1/2 million transistors, P6..
 
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SlowSpyder

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Jan 12, 2005
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I had an AMD 133MHz K5. It was about as fast as a Pentium 75MHz. That was my second computer upgrade ever, the first being the 16MB of ram I installed in that same 486. :)
 
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