Question Whats your CPU upgrade history? Performance improvements gaps between upgrades?

[unseengundam101]

Hey guys, I was thinking it would be interesting to go back look at our CPU upgrade interval. And then discuss what type of performance in you look for before upgrading.

1. Pentium MMX 166 Mhz (1997)
2. Pentium III 866 Mhz (2000) - I am thinking 4-5x performance boost.
3. AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.4 ghz, Newcastle, S754 - (2004) - Estimating 4x performance boost
4. Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3ghz, Wolfdale - (2008) - 2x single threaded, 3-4x multi-threaded performance
5. Intel i5 2500k - (2011) - 1.5x Single Threaded Performance, 3x multi-threaded Performance

Right now still on my 2500k. Looking my own history, I had aiming at 3-4x performance improvement between upgrades. Do note I noticed looking at by 2008 and 2011 the single threaded gap went down to 2x and 1.5x. Instead, had look multi-threaded performance for 3x gain. Definitely, seeing that it probably would hard find a CPU today with 4x single threaded performance compared to 2500k. And will need to continue looking at multi-threaded for future gains.

Also, interesting enough I gave up on 3 year upgrades since late 2011. Looks like I will be moving to a 6/7 year upgrade cycle in future. Might result of Moore's Law ending.

Curious to see what kind of performance gaps other here wait before making their upgrade jump. Also, if there similar pattern of slowing down on upgrades in recent years.

 

[chrisjames61]

Hey guys, I was thinking it would be interesting to go back look at our CPU upgrade interval. And then discuss what type of performance in you look for before upgrading.

1. Pentium MMX 166 Mhz (1997)
2. Pentium III 866 Mhz (2000) - I am thinking 4-5x performance boost.
3. AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.4 ghz, Newcastle, S754 - (2004) - Estimating 4x performance boost
4. Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3ghz, Wolfdale - (2008) - 2x single threaded, 3-4x multi-threaded performance
5. Intel i5 2500k - (2011) - 1.5x Single Threaded Performance, 3x multi-threaded Performance

Right now still on my 2500k. Looking my own history, I had aiming at 3-4x performance improvement between upgrades. Do note I noticed looking at by 2008 and 2011 the single threaded gap went down to 2x and 1.5x. Instead, had look multi-threaded performance for 3x gain. Definitely, seeing that it probably would hard find a CPU today with 4x single threaded performance compared to 2500k. And will need to continue looking at multi-threaded for future gains.

Also, interesting enough I gave up on 3 year upgrades since late 2011. Looks like I will be moving to a 6/7 year upgrade cycle in future. Might result of Moore's Law ending.



Curious to see what kind of performance gaps other here wait before making their upgrade jump. Also, if there similar pattern of slowing down on upgrades in recent years.

I started using Macs and pc's in the late 1980's. At the time there were no doubts that the better OS was the Mac OS and the better cpu's were made by Motorola and IBM. Slowly the economies of scale made the AMD and Intel cpu's better and faster than the 68K and PPC counterparts. I still say OSX is way better than Windows. Most Linux distros are way better than Windows. Anyway, I have owned many hundreds of pc's and Macs due to my business which is digital prepress and offset printing and digital printing.

 

[Gundark]

Commodore 64
Pentium 200MMX
K6 3D 300
Duron 750
Athlon 1800+
Athlon X2 5600+
Athlon X2 250
i5 3570k
i5 4670k

 

[StinkyPinky]

Pentium 133
Pentium 233 MMX
Pentium 2- 350
Pentium 3 - 650 (? not sure of the frequency)
AMD XP 1800 (not sure of the name)
AMD 64 X2 (first dual core, cannot remember the frequency)
Q6600 (first quad core)
2500K
4790K
8700K

 

[TheGiant]

amiga500
486dx(don't remember but, we oced it to 50 MHz with frozen rail)
p2-266 oced to 300 on abit with 440bx chipset with sb awe 64, oh how I loved that build
celeron p3 850 MHz- the same 440bx abit with slot, a bad move
pentium 4 2,4GHz northwood on 845PE with SDRAM, oced to 3GHz
AMD Athlon xp 1700+ oced to 2300 MHz on asus nforce 2 with 200MHz fsb, changed that from the p4, it was way faster for pro gaming
Athlon 64 3200+ s 754 - bad cpu piece, oced only to 2400 MHz
core 2 duo e6300, oced instantly from 1866 MHz to 33xx MHz, lasted from 2006 to 2014, second biggest wow effect
core 2 quad q 9650, bought in 2014 used, oced to 3800 MHz - I couldn't get the upgrade from c2d, the worst upgrade I made
core i5-6600k- oced to 4,4GHz, little undervolted, good piece - very nice performance, biggest upgrade ever made from 3800MHz c2q to 4000MHz i5, unbelievable faster
current- waiting to get 10+% st performance, 20+% 4T performance and more - on the market only 9700k,9700k,9900k- 9900K seems fit to upgrade but price is still madness

 

[Shivansps]

1) IBM 5x86 100MHz
2) AMD K6 266MHz
3) AMD K6-2 450MHz
4) AMD Athlon XP 1800+
5) AMD Athlon64 3200
6) AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+
7) AMD Phenom 2 X3 710 unlocked
8) Intel I5 2500k
9) AMD Ryzen 7 1700

 

[IronWing]

Zilog Z80 2.5MHz
8086 4.7MHz
Pentium II
Intel something something Hz
P4 heater
i7 860
i5 Sandy Bridge

 

[IronWing]

double post

 

[Hulk]

Until my last upgrade I at least doubled performance every time.

1984 - Atari 800 - The "good" one with 64Kb memory!
1989 - IBM SX20
1992 - Gateway P90
1997 - Home built Celeron 300 o/c 450
1999 - CPU upgrade to PIII 833
2001 - CPU/mobo upgrade to P4 3.06HT
2007 - Upgrade to Core2Duo 6400
2012 - Upgrade to 2500k
2014 - Upgrade to 4770k

 

[Paratus]

• 1981 Monochrome Terminal & 300baud modem (my moms - I was a little kid - played Rogue on it )
• 1988 IBM PS2 30 286 1MB RAM & VGA graphics (family computer)
• 1993 Dell 486 DX 33mhz 4MB ram (college computer)
• 1997 Dell Pentium 90 24MB ram 1280x1024 17” monitor (hand me down college computer)
• 1999 Pentium 3 500mhz 384MB ATI Rage Fury 32mb GPU (local computer shop built)
• Dell 1.4GHz Pentium M Laptop 512MB Ram
• 2004 Pentium 4 Prescott 3.2GHz 2GB DDR400 2-2-2 RAM ATI 9600XT 128MB VIVO upgrade to an ATI X1950Pro 512 AGP (first machine I built after finding AT)
• 2010 i7920 X58 12GB 1333 DDR3 HD5870 1GB upgraded to HD7970GHz Lightening 3GB (still using this as a secondary computer)
• Sony Vaio laptop Sandy Bridge i72670QM 6GB Ram GT540 1GB
• 2018 Threadripper 1900X 32GB 3200 DDR4 Red Devil RX Vega 56.
  

Notables

The VGA graphics on the IBM was amazing for the time

The 486 had the absolute most memorable games.

The P4 was a surprisingly decent machine and it was my first build.

The i7920 was an amazingly beefy machine and the only time I’ve had arguably top of the line parts and performance

The threadripper Is a beast and the most blinged out.

 

[ericlp]

wow, I started back in the 8080 days! LOL Heathkit H8!

Then the MOS 6502, Zilog Z80, Motorola 68000, --- Apple 2, Timex ZX81, Mac 128K

I remember playing Marathon (yeah I got the free T-shirt) on appletalk networks! (before the internet) and in case you didn't know what Marathon was it was the first......FPS for Macintosh from Bungi (multiplayer) along with Spectre...Slow as hell network but...those were the days..........

Was a Sysop for awhile....Even help build a 4 line chat system... Run off an Atari 400 (4 joystick ports) 4 300 BPS external modems. It was the thing back then... Dialup!

The days of hacking sprint / ATT for satellite access codes so you one could get pirated warez for apple floppy disks. 300 bps took awhile! LOL

Then a 286 built for my dad...(lived in Hawaii) Hawaii sucked for tech...

Moved to Oregon... Got a job with CTL downtown Portland (computer technology link) Built probably 10 or so machines a day from case, ps, mb, 386/486 SX/DX (AMD and Cyrix clones) at the time (floppy/HD/Tape Drive and occasionally a GPU)... Holidays we worked overtime and I probably built around 20 or so machines per day...

Then had a few tech jobs after working there for 3~4 years... Worked for Lucky Computers as a tech in beaverton... Built a lot of Pentium SLOT/5V Systems....

Then... Moved up to work for the Army Corps of Engineers 10 floor building Probably a 1000 PC's to maintain. Plus had my own computer repair biz on the side.. Anyway... That was the day of Slot / Intel Pentium 3/4 AMD K 5/6 and Core Duo CPUs...

In those days I built 10 K7 AMD PC's to run SETI to crunch for the Team anandtech. Even sold a few intel CPU's can't remember who I sold them too ... here on the Buy and Sell back then.

Retired from that job as a network admin... back in 08, got a Intel Q9500... I sold that one right here on the forsale forums....

Built my dad a AMD APU A10 and myself an i3 3220... i5 and i7...

Currently,

I have a APU ryzen 3 2200G for a media server and a Thread Ripper 1950X for my main PC.

Yeah, I guess I'm a bit of a tech geek and the fun never ends....

This doesn't include all the ARM PC's I've had.

 

[burninatortech4]

Personal

• 2000/2001 Pentium 4 2ghz (Willamette) in a Dell Optiplex -2GB RAM - Wow! - later upgraded with a Geforce 6800 GT for WoW
• 2007 Core 2 Duo T7300 - Macbook Pro for College - 4GB RAM
• 2013 Athlon 760k - My first custom build! - 8GB RAM R7 260x
• 2015 A10-7870k - Mid life A88X upgrade - why not?
• 2015 A10-7300 - Grad school - 8GB RAM R5 M230 - A driver nightmare
• 2017 Ryzen 7 1700 - A revolution in computing for me - it blew my socks off. 16GB RAM RX 480
• 2018 Ryzen 7 2700x - My 1700 clocked poorly and my original AM4 motherboard sucked. 16GB RAM Vega 64
• 2018 A6-9220e Netbook for travel - it works.. not quickly

I've also done family/friends builds with Athlon x4 845, Core i3-4100, A8-7600, A8-9600, A10-7870k over the last 3-5 years.

 

[NTMBK]

I think the biggest improvement I've ever seen was for my parents- they went from a Northwood Pentium 4 to a Sandy Bridge i5.

 

[hayhayhayday]

386? 25mhz > 486? 75mhz >pentium 100mhz > pentium 166mhz > pentium 2 266mhz > p2 333mhz >p3 400mhz >athlon 1400 > sempron 2200 > sempron 2600> athlon 2600+> athlon 3200+>athlon 2 5600+> phenom x3 450 > a10 apu> i5-4690k> i5-4770k

~50% improvement each time

 

[Spartak]

386? 25mhz > 486? 75mhz >pentium 100mhz > pentium 166mhz > pentium 2 266mhz > p2 333mhz >p3 400mhz >athlon 1400 > sempron 2200 > sempron 2600> athlon 2600+> athlon 3200+>athlon 2 5600+> phenom x3 450 > a10 apu> i5-4690k> i5-4770k

~50% improvement each time

Solid steady upgrade path! But can I ask why that last upgrade? It's basically the same chip but HT enabled.

 

[Roger Wilco]

Athlon 64 3000+ > i5 m450 > FX 4130 > i7 7700K / R5 2500U

 

[Titonus]

Spectrum 128k / Commodore 64
Intel 80286
Intel 80486 33/66 Mhz
Pentium 166 Mhz
Pentium MMX 200 Mhz
AMD K6-2 300 Mhz
AMD K6-3 450 Mhz
AMD Athlon 750 Mhz
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Intel Celeron M 380
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+
Intel Core 2 Duo P7550
AMD Phenom X4 9100e
AMD Phenom II X4 945
Intel Xeon X5670

 

[Spartak]

seeing a lot of Athlon XP 1800+ mentioned...I guess it was at the sweet spot of price and performance back then. Don't recall if it was the fastest AMD option available when I bought mine around feb '02.

 

[Shlong]

386 with a Turbo button (My dad's)
Pentium 60 mhz (my first PC when I was in elementary school, I think my dad paid $3,500 for the PC with 15" monitor and a color inkjet 360dpi printer back in 1994). I used to also play around with the Macintosh at our school lab.
AMD K6II 350mhz
Celeron 300A (First PC I built by myself in middle school and overclocked to 450 mhz, started lurking Anandtech forums around this time).

After that we always had 2 PC's in the household
AMD Athlon XP2400 Barton (I overclocked to 2.2ghz I think it was)
Pentium 4 2.4C Northwood (I think I overclocked to 3.2ghz)

Moved out of my parents house
AMD Athlon X64 2.6ghz
Intel Core2Duo E4300 (overclocked to 2.4 ghz I believe) -> Upgraded this to a Q6600 G0 stepping a few years later
Sandy Bridge i7 2600K (overclocked to 4.8 ghz)
Ryzen 7 1700 (overclocked to 3.9 ghz and my current PC).

 

[EXCellR8]

I'll just list the main ones, from when I started getting more into building.

Athlon XP 3200+
Athlon XP-M 2600+
Intel Q6600
Intel i7 920
AMD FX-6300
AMD FX-8350
Intel 6600K*
AMD Ryzen 7 1700

Too many other ones to list but those are the main ones. I was using the 6600K until I was finally able to piece together the 1st gen Ryzen computer, so I just included it and it was a good CPU that I recently just sold to another forum-goer.

Projected upgrade is Ryzen 7 3700X (or whatever the official SKU ends up being)

 

[ozzy702]

I remember playing Marathon (yeah I got the free T-shirt) on appletalk networks! (before the internet) and in case you didn't know what Marathon was it was the first......FPS for Macintosh from Bungi (multiplayer) along with Spectre...Slow as hell network but...those were the days..........

Growing up in the South Bay, I played Marathon on whatever Apple's state of the art mac was back then on the Apple campus. A friend of my dad's worked for Apple and would get us in to play. It was mindblowing for me as a 15 year old and I'd never played anything like it. That got me into first person shooters and then later I went on to love quake, UT, COD, BF, etc.

 

[thigobr]

Here it go!

Intel 486SX 33MHz
Intel Pentium 100MHz (PC-Chips M598 - SiS530)
AMD K6-2 500MHz (Gigabyte GA-5AX + Voodoo 3 3000 AGP)
AMD Duron 750MHz (Asus A7V133 + Prolink GF2 MX400 64MB)
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ T-Bred B (Shuttle MN31/N + generic Radeon 9550 128MB)
AMD Duron 1800MHz Applebred unlocked to XP 2200+ (Shuttle MN31/N + generic Radeon 9550 128MB)
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (DFI nF4-Ultra D + amazing Winbond BH5 RAM + MSI 6600GT PCIE 128MB)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (Asus M3A + Jetway 8800GT 512MB)
Phenom X3 720 BE (didn't unlock Asus M3A + Jetway 8800GT 512MB)
Phenom X2 555 BE (this one unlocked to X4 Asus M4A89GTD + Jetway 8800GT 512MB)
Intel i5 3570K (Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H + amazing 4x4GB Samsung DDR3 30nm RAM + R9 290X 4GB)
Ryzen 1700 (Asus Prime X370-PRO + Samsung B-Die 3200/CL14 + R9 290X 4GB)
Ryzen 1700 (Asus Strix B450-I + Samsung B-Die 3200/CL14 + Zotac GTX1080) - > Current one

 

[hayhayhayday]

386? 25mhz > 486? 75mhz >pentium 100mhz > pentium 166mhz > pentium 2 266mhz > p2 333mhz >p3 400mhz >athlon 1400 > sempron 2200 > sempron 2600> athlon 2600+> athlon 3200+>athlon 2 5600+> phenom x3 450 > a10 apu> i5-4690k> i5-4770k

~50% improvement each time

Didnt want new board got 4770 for $108 and sold the 4690 for 100 seemed like good deal

 

[Timorous]

486 DX 66
Pentium 100
Pentium MMX 166
K6 - 2 , I wanna say 300 but I cannot remember
Athlon T-Bred B 2600+
A64 - socket 939
Pentium e5200
sandy i7 quad core laptop
2200G

 

[warzeta]

Amd ruron 800+
Amd athlon xp 2600+
Amd sempron 2800+
Pentium 4 presscott 3.0
Amd athlon 64 3200+
Amd athlon 64 4000+
Core 2 quad q6600
Core i7 950
Core i7 980
Core i7 3930k
Xeon 2690 v1
Xeon 2690v2
Core i9 7900x
Core i9 7980xe

I think my biggest jump was from my 4000+ to my core 2 quad q6600!

 

[Zor Prime]

386sx
P60
K6-2 266@300
K6-3+ 450@550
Tbird 1GHz@1.4GHz
Duron
Athlon XP (Barton) upgraded primarily because I couldn't run SSE programs
Phenom X6
Ryzen 1700

Had a little Atom box at one point for fun.

The majority of my performance increases have been vast. I make-do with what I can until I get a good cost/performance ratio in my head that I justify.