Question What's the slowest CPU you have tortured in your history of personal computing?

[igor_kavinski]

I was thinking of Det0x when this question popped up in my head. I was kinda realizing that Det0x gets to experience performance of a low end CPU at least 10 years before they are released to the general public, by tuning his current high end CPU to the extreme. Maybe even 15 years ahead of time? Maybe Det0x can provide more data on that with previous benchmarks (but not sure if he has ever had a low end CPU to play with).

So my question is, what's the slowest CPU you have tweaked/overclocked to get the best performance out of and how satisfied were you with it? Mine was Celeron 700 OCed to about 1 GHz. It was enough to let me enjoy Doom 3 without having to buy a new CPU so that was great but it sure ran hot running that game!

 

[igor_kavinski]

My dad was a programmer

I hope not a COBOL programmer. Did you learn anything from him, like cool scripting or even C/C++?

 

[In2Photos]

I hope not a COBOL programmer. Did you learn anything from him, like cool scripting or even C/C++?

He wrote in several languages, all self taught. C/C++ and Visual mostly. He wrote code for large check reading machines that corporations use for payment processing. He did teach me some things and I took a few courses in HS and college. He wrote several programs for personal use too.

 

[Hulk]

My first PC was a 486 - SX25. It was completely overmatched by the Window OS of the day. I remember waiting literally tens of seconds for screen redraws in Coreldraw.

Before that I had an Atari 800. No GUI so it was pretty snappy actually. I brought it to college when I was studying mechanical engineering at Rutgers and used it for many projects. In Aerodynamics we had to optimize a virtual airfoil using Prandtl's Lifting Line method. I remember using the 4th order Runge Kutta method to solve the differential equations involved. It would take an over night run but would get the job done. Once I knew the code was right I'd take it to the VAX mainframe in the Hill Center basement and rewrite in Fortran and know I wouldn't have to deal with errors because compiling was a PITA.

 

[Markfw]

He wrote in several languages, all self taught. C/C++ and Visual mostly. He wrote code for large check reading machines that corporations use for payment processing. He did teach me some things and I took a few courses in HS and college. He wrote several programs for personal use too.

Slightly off-topic, but... So I wrote MS basic and compiled it, Turbo pascal and compiled it (still using a checkbook program I wrote in TP) Then off the Vax basic, and sql, then Fortron on an IBM mainfraime and Cobol on a unix box, then PL/SQL the rest of my career, and application support on a DEC Vax.

Edit: and how could I forget the 4051. A dual 8086 Tektronix computer. I programmed in 4050 basic, and taught that and IBM PC basic at Portland Community College around 1983-1984.

Edit2: My mmeory was wrong. Here is what wikipedia says about it:

The first model, the 4051, was based on 8-bit Motorola 6800 running at a 1 MHz.

The second model was the 4052, which in spite of the similar name was a very different system. This had a CPU based on four AMD 2901 4-bit bit-slice processors used together to make a single 16-bit processor.

My god, the first computer I used was based on an AMD processor. But I used a 4051 for a few weeks. I think it may win the slowest one here !

 

[Markfw]

More on-topic... In 1983, I was working on one of 28 VAX 780's (I think that was the nomenclature) that was like 12' x 8' x 8' or so, and 2 of them took up the small computer room. They were spread all over the country. By 1999 when we decommissioned the project, it was all in one DEC VAX that had 64 processors and 128 gig ram, and was the size of a large tower PC.

 

[LightningZ71]

While my first "real" computer was a Laser 128 EX/2 (basically an Apple IIe/c clone with all the bells and whistles) that could soft select three speeds from 1Mhz to 4.77Mhz, my first real overclocking was with AMDs 486 clones and the PC that I kept the longest, a Cx5x86 120 that I overclocked the FSB on. I had that stuffed into a Tyan motherboard with a MAtrox Millenium, a Promise cachine IDE controller, and a PowerVR accelerator card and a hodge-podge of hard drives. That got replaced with an overclocked Pentium III-S/T (Tualatin) with a bit of an overclock that would run circles around Pentium 4 75 and 90s and hang with the 100/120/133 crowd. Then I got married and had kids and have been largely using salvage parts to build systems and overclocking them to near death to keep them relevant. Only recently have I been able to get back into "current" gear.

The absolute first system I ever messed with the performance on was a friend's Apple II. We found a guide and the parts to change the timing chip on the board and sped it up. It's been so long ago that I don't really remember the details.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The absolute first system I ever messed with the performance on was a friend's Apple II. We found a guide and the parts to change the timing chip on the board and sped it up. It's been so long ago that I don't really remember the details.

Was it worth it? What ran fast? Games or some calculations that were used frequently? Or the GUI became more responsive?

 

[A///]

OMG you missed out if you never got to play tomb raider with voodoo2 and a Sound Blaster awe 32.
*crys in desperation*

I literally thought so this is the feeling cavemen had when they saw fire for first time. In terms of gaming.

Nah never played tombraider on pc. I had it on the first playstation. My memory of that game is a lot better than the reality given how awful the graphics look while looking back on it through the youtube. In those days I wasn't too concerned about pc audio and would grab the cheapest soundblaster available. Creative cornered the market because it would be years before I came across other brands, although those were aimed at professional use. I have a bad memory of spending days figuring out why my cd drive wouldn't play the latest cd I'd bought until I noticed I forgot to wire the cable from the drive o the soundcard. I don't miss those days. I've got a bluray now but the only time it sees use is to read dual layer DVDs I've filled up with hard to find music. I have a ton of old scratched up discs in boxes I'll sometimes hand out to people I know at the farmers market to string up and use as an animal deterrent. It works well from what I've been told.

 

[A///]

My dad was a programmer and we had computers in our house from the time I was probably 3 or something. The first PC that I owned myself was a Compaq 233MHz when I worked at Best Buy in high school. That is the only pre-built desktop that I have owned, I built everything else after that. But I never really got into overclocking, probably because PCs for me back then weren't for gaming, they were just for school work, downloading music, and browsing websites about cars and sound systems. I actually didn't get into PC gaming until a few years ago when my kids starting playing. So my first PC that I overclocked was my i7-920. Running it at 3.6GHz it runs folding at home 24/7 since Covid hit.

So you're around 43?

My motto has always been the same. Despite owning gaming hardware I seldom game. I have it just to say I have it and not be told I'm out of touch. I got into F@H in 2005 or 2006 through another forum ironically one centered around a game. Electricity was way cheap then and I'd leave all my systems on 24/7 to help with whatever cause they were working on. My niece who's the only other computer person in our immediately family got into computers much the same as your kids. She's an engineer at TI but worked for the company that shall remain unnamed previously. It was one of the monkey island games that came out in the mid or late 90s.

Recently I read that gen z kids don't know how to work a computer due to most of them being focused on smartphones and tablets, that they don't understand basics of computing and aren't interested in it. Remarkable leap from 13 years ago when everyone was convinced upcoming gen z was going to take over the world because of their adept tech prowess.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Recently I read that gen z kids don't know how to work a computer due to most of them being focused on smartphones and tablets, that they don't understand basics of computing and aren't interested in it. Remarkable leap from 13 years ago when everyone was convinced upcoming gen z was going to take over the world because of their adept tech prowess.

Around my time in the 80s, you needed to understand computers to play all kinds of interesting videogames (like point and click adventures!) so there was no choice but to learn how to use them. Now consoles and gaming on smartphones is fairly common so there is not a big incentive for teens to learn how to figure stuff out on a PC.

 

[A///]

Around my time in the 80s, you needed to understand computers to play all kinds of interesting videogames (like point and click adventures!) so there was no choice but to learn how to use them. Now consoles and gaming on smartphones is fairly common so there is not a big incentive for teens to learn how to figure stuff out on a PC.

My first was the Amiga, but I had limited experience on my dad's 64 which was a loan from work. Admittedly my work and interest in computers didn't spark until several years later. I was more content playing some footy at the local park with the other lads. Moving to the us changed a lot. At the time tech was taken more seriously and there was more rapid deployment than the uk. Tell you the truth I hated computers for most of the 80s and then one day something clicked in my head and I began to learn to love them. It feels just like yesterday. If it weren't for computers I would have gone ahead with becoming a vet because in my young mind I figured that's what chicks digged, a guy who was seen as a savior by animals. A modern day noah, if you will, minus the scent of myrrh.

 

[In2Photos]

So you're around 43?

My motto has always been the same. Despite owning gaming hardware I seldom game. I have it just to say I have it and not be told I'm out of touch. I got into F@H in 2005 or 2006 through another forum ironically one centered around a game. Electricity was way cheap then and I'd leave all my systems on 24/7 to help with whatever cause they were working on. My niece who's the only other computer person in our immediately family got into computers much the same as your kids. She's an engineer at TI but worked for the company that shall remain unnamed previously. It was one of the monkey island games that came out in the mid or late 90s.

Recently I read that gen z kids don't know how to work a computer due to most of them being focused on smartphones and tablets, that they don't understand basics of computing and aren't interested in it. Remarkable leap from 13 years ago when everyone was convinced upcoming gen z was going to take over the world because of their adept tech prowess.

Just turned 44 this past weekend. Both of my kids built their own PCs with a little help from me. And they both have had to figure how to do certain things with them like learning how to set up OBS for streaming or doing mods for Minecraft. I only get involved when they can't figure something out. My dad used to help me with a lot of things but once we had internet he would tell me to look it up and try to figure it out first, then come ask questions. I'm trying to teach my kids the same.

 

[gdansk]

The first computer that I remember enough to know the processor was a Gateway 2000 with a Pentium 133MHz. It was enough to play Age of Empires so it didn't torture me and I didn't torture it. Instead it made me a happy kid. Eventually, after many years of service, we did torture it by overclocking it. But I do not recall by how much. There were some jumpers on the board to configure that.

And web pages looked like this: http://artho.com/age/sysreq.html
So it wasn't a big deal that your CPU was slow. Your modem was slow enough to hide that.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Around my time in the 80s, you needed to understand computers to play all kinds of interesting videogames (like point and click adventures!) so there was no choice but to learn how to use them. Now consoles and gaming on smartphones is fairly common so there is not a big incentive for teens to learn how to figure stuff out on a PC.

Yeah. It was also a joy to play back then, because you'd just spent an afternoon trying to figure out why the sound wasn't working. It also wasn't possible to just go online and get help, so you -had- to learn how-to and problem solving.

Many younger enthusiasts don't know just how easy they have it. Compared with flipping DIP switches, physically moving jumpers, the joys of autoexec.bat/config.sys/IRQs and the fact you had to actually know what you where doing*, things are comparatively easy today.

*Reverse the power connector on an AT mainboard and instant fried mainboard. Worse, it was physically easy to do so.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Yeah, because of no internet, I got into the habit of checking every file in the directory, before they were called folders, and to this day, I discover interesting stuff lying in plain sight.

 

[Golgatha]

Coppermine Pentium 3 700e, 700Mhz running at 933Mhz.

Second slowest was a Pentium D 2.8Ghz running at 4Ghz.