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.

 

[ipown1337]

P3 slot @ 500 MHz (pre-built)

All these were assembled by me

Athlon XP 1800+
Athlon XP 2100+ (Upgrade)
Athlon 64 4400 (Toledo), first time I experienced stuck threads that did’nt bring the system to a halt, awesome!
Pentium D something (Intel retail edge)
Core2 e6300 @ 3.2 Ghz for years one of my fav CPU’s of all time
Q6600 (recently got it back)
Phenom II 940
FX 8320

Planning on building with x570 and Ryzen 3000, looking for low/mid tier, and will then upgrade to high end when Ryzen 4000 launches. Will then sit and wait for AM5 to arrive and mature, will jump in during second gen (maybe)

 

[Saylick]

2004(?) - 2009 = AMD Sempron 2600+ @ Stock (don't even know what socket it was; this was when I was absolutely clueless about hardware)
2009 - Present = Intel i5 750 @ 3.5 GHz all core, 4.0 GHz ST turbo

 

[VirtualLarry]

and installing a new HD with a fresh copy of Windows 10

I hope that you just simply mis-spelled "SSD".

 

[OriAr]

2001-2007 P3@1.3Ghz (Was high end at its time)
2007-2011 Core 2 duo e6600, roughly 60% better in ST performance, around x3.2 times better in MT performance.
2011-? Core i7 2600K, roughly x2 better in ST performance, around x4.5 better in MT performance.

Next upgrade is either desktop ICL or if I really hold my temptation might hold out all the way to Intel 7nm in 2021.

 

[bigboxes]

2001-2007 P3@1.3Ghz (Was high end at its time)
2007-2011 Core 2 duo e6600, roughly 60% better in ST performance, around x3.2 times better in MT performance.
2011-? Core i7 2600K, roughly x2 better in ST performance, around x4.5 better in MT performance.

Next upgrade is either desktop ICL or if I really hold my temptation might hold out all the way to Intel 7nm in 2021.

Nice first post!

 

[Ventanni]

I hope that you just simply mis-spelled "SSD".

Yes, yes! I have a Samsung 850 EVO in this PC now. Once you got SSD, you never go back. I should pay more attention to my grammar!

 

[mikeymikec]

1986-1999*: 68000, 68020, 68040 (Amiga 500, 1200, CPU upgrade)
1996*: P133 (first PC)
1997*: P166MMX
2000*: Celeron 300A@450, P3-550, P3-866
2002*: AthlonXP 1800+
2003*: AthlonXP 2500+
2005*: AthlonXP 3200+
2010: Athlon II X4 630
2011-ish: Phenom II X6 960T
2015: Core i5-4690K

* - approx

 

[JRzoid]

I had Bulldozer and X58 for Longest time...Then yeah upgraded Got Z270 and Ryzen...Having Trouble with Ryzen...but I think will Eventually get Sorted out.

Just get some upgraded and a few System's how I always Did it.

 

[rvborgh]

Apple ][ plus (6502 w/48K RAM)
Apple ][ plus (upgraded to 64K, and added Zilog Z80 card and Videx VideoTerm to run CP/M)
Harris 286-20
<rather large gap here>
Cyrix 5x86
Cyrix 6x86
Cyrix 6x86MX PR233
AMD K6-3
AMD Athlon XP2100+
dual AMD Opteron 8439SE (2 x 6 K10 cores)
quad AMD Opteron 61xx (8 x 6 K10 cores - current machine)

 

[Oyeve]

Atari 400 - 1979

every single thing in between since

Core i7-8700k - 2018

 

[Dravic]

Personal computers and Gamers

ADAM computer (tape driven coleco vision based computer) from grand parents at 11.
dx 486 100mhz (~94)
p133
p166
Celeron 333 @ 500 !!!!!
pII300
PII450
k2-350
k2-500
duron 650mhz (@ 900mhz) !!!!
tbird 1400+
tbrid 1700+
palamino 2100+ (@2.3ghz)
3200+
3800+
4800+ x2 @ 2.9ghz

All of the above maybe 6 months to 1.5 years between builds..

Best overclocks were definately the Duran 650 and the Celeron 333

Linux security /project stuff
2x opteron 275 + 8GB (socket 940) (linux workstation)..
Phenom II 1055T, MSI 790FX, Nvidia GTX 460, PC Power & Cooling 610W, 16 gig DDR3 @ 1600, Antec Titan 550
Upgraded to an openstack private cluster of low power Zeons x8 with 72GB each.


Currently (ITS SO OLD...)
FX 8150 @ 4.55Ghz, Crosshair V 990FX, H100 , Radeon 270 (after my 7970 SLI fun died), 120GB SSD, 16 gig DDR3 @ 1600, Haf 932

~10 year build still going strong.. next build will be new Ryzen3 8-16 core 32GB w best ~$400 vcard available, prob last
5-8 years. Was going to rebuild with original Ryzen but life (moving, kids, startups, etc..). My computer is still the preferred desktop everyone uses.

The video card list is probably almost as long and goes from Riva TNT 128 and the voodoo extreme 3000 to 7970's in SLI that were replaced when they died.

 

[Streydog7783]

When I first got into computers a friend built me one with a Cyrix , think it was a 75 hrtz or so. Along the way I had a Celeron 266, then 300a the went Tbird for a while. Somewhere along the way was an 8400. The last CPU I bought was a 2500K. It has been serving me well ever since. I don't game much anymore, never was much of a gamer, and haven't seen a need to upgrade lately.

I remember spending $90 on 4MB sticks of ram and $200 on 8Gig HD's along the way as long as $200 on 3d add-on video cards

 

[piasabird]

Started with a Tandy 1000A Maybe a 8086 or 8088 Had a floppy drive and later a 20 mb hard disk card and ran off of DOS and used deskmate.
Then purchased an IBM 133 computer with one of those combo Modem/sound card. It had a hard drive and could connect to the internet.
Then I had some kind of an AMD system with a 166 for 2 - 3 years.
Then AMD K-300 I think.
Then a pentium about 400 edge connected CPU.
Then I had some kind of AMD XP CPU system which I learned to hate. The MB was an ECS and was unstable as hell. Back then the VIA chipsets were horrible.
Then I was upset and purchased one of the next to last PIII based Celerons. It had a slightly larger cache then previous Celerons and ran great on the Asus Motherboard. I ran it over 5 years and later kept it like a backup computer.
Then my memory kind of gets fuzzy.
Eventually I purchased a CPU that was newer it was a 2500K I still have that computer and it runs good to watch Videos on the Internet. However, I am not using it. I purchased it because at the time it had better integrated graphics. I upgraded it from Win 7 to Win 10.
Then built an ITX system i3 6100 Used a couple years and still runs.
Then built an ITX system i3 7100 am using it now. I put an Nvidia 1050TI in it and use it with a 4k TV.about 2 years after the i3 6100.
Lately 2019 I had some extra money and built a new ATX system with the 8th generation Intel Hex core 8400. I think this CPU runs great on the gigabyte MB with 16 Gigs of Ram and a 500 GB M.2 SSD. This is a great CPU and I just use the Integrated Graphics.

I did not like the overly large case I used and am thinking of putting that CPU in an ASROCK Desk Mini 310. STX Motherboard.

 

[mopardude87]

Pretty excited to see what eventually replaces my i7 8700.It is going to have to be something pretty huge as BF4/BF5 barely strain this chip with maybe 7 threads pushing past 40% usage.Other games just have no idea what to do with all these threads.

Q6600 was the last cpu that just felt like i could do anything with it during that time.UT3 back in 2007 loved the threads The i5 2000 series seriously held up for a long time.5 and a half years between release and a game that being BF1 for me before the cpu got murdered.I got a feeling unless IPC drastically improves,i will prob be sitting with this i7 8700 at least 5 years.Someone should quote this in case that one game comes out and murders a 12 chip before then.Any chance of that?

 

[IntelUser2000]

-286 from a garage sale. Ran DOS. Snake! Command lines!

-Pentium 150, with Windows 95 Plus! It was awesome haha. Had some really nice games like Simcity 2000 and Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure. The Plus! version of Windows was neat too. Supported HDD compression. Took 6 hours to compress 1.5GB to 2GB.

-Pentium III 733. This was about the time I started DIYing, with me replacing the wrongly flashed board. Added a Creative Geforce 2 MX at one point. The box, and the graphics looked so awesome at the store. Windows 98 to XP. XP was a much more stable OS that didn't throw out bluescreens every day.

-Pentium 4 Northwood 2.4GHz "C". Upgraded the HDD to a WD 36GB Raptor because I became obsessed with responsiveness.

-Celeron D 325 2.53GHz. This was in purpose. Was looking at a Core 2 upgrade.

-Core 2 Duo E6600. Big upgrade. Sometime here I also got the Intel X25-M 80GB drive. Cost nearly $900 Cdn.

-Core i5 661. Honestly I felt greater responsiveness gain with this upgrade than with the X25-M. I feel this CPU probably unleashed the SSD. I probably got Windows 7 here. Usability and another stability improvements. At this point I started feeling bored with computers because number of errors dropped drastically.

-Core i7 2600K. Not much for responsiveness, but its a legendary CPU. Still have parts of this system, and the X25-M in another system.

-Core i3 7100. My current one. This was more of a mining-focused but still good, usable system.

 

[yhelothar]

PCs my mom bought for the family:
1994 486 33Mhz
1997 Cyrix 6x86 PR200+, 166MHz
2000 P3 700MHz

Self built
2001 Athlon T-Bird 900MHz @ 1GHz
2002 Athlon T-Bird 1.33GHz @ 1.53GHz
2003 Athlon XP-M 2500+ 1.8GHz @ 2.53GHz
2004 Athlon 64 3000+ 2GHz @ 2.53GHz
2006 Core2Duo E6300 1.86GHz @ 3GHz
2010 Core2Quad Q6600 2.4GHz @ 3.4GHz
2012 Core2Quad Q9550 2.8GHz @ 3.6GHz
2014 Xeon X5660 2.66GHz @ 4GHz

Laptops
2008 Thinkpad X41 Tablet Pentium-M ULV 1.3GHz, $250
2012 Thinkpad X61 Tablet Core2Duo ULV 1.6GHz, $300
2013 Dell Latitude Tablet Core2Duo ULV 1.8GHz, $200
2014 Thinkpad T420s i5, $180


Work
2014 800x assorted Xeons in a HPC cluster for dynamical simulations
2019 Threadripper WX2970 @4ghz for machine learning

I stopped upgrading much after Core2Duo came out. CPUs gotten so fast that the software hasn't kept up.
I've only needed fast CPUs for professional applications.

For my laptops, I always got ones around 3 years old for around $200 and I would remote into my desktop at home when I needed power.

 

[jpiniero]

Current machine is a 520M. The laptop is dying, which is kind of funny because nearly everything is broken in it:
- The battery died with a couple of years.
- The hard drive was dying when it was replaced with an SSD.
- Most of the USB ports don't work
- The power brick's wire is exposed in one part now more recently it is sometimes giving errors on boot about not being able to recognize the power delivery and will throttle the clockspeed.

Haven't been assed to upgrade for various reasons, most importantly because I am not going to use Windows 10. Going to switch to Linux, and just haven't gotten around to it. But I think I will need to buy new soon because it is getting to the breaking point.

Before that I had a 2500+. Mostly game on consoles these days. I have a PS4 Pro.

 

[mohit9206]

AMD Athlon 64X2 4600
Intel Pentium G630
AMD FX6300

 

[lixlax]

The history of my CPU's in personal/self built PCs:
2004: Athlon XP 2500+; 1,83GHz; soc A
2005: Sempron 3000+; 1,8GHz; soc 754
2006: Athlon64 3500+; 2,2GHz; soc 939
2007: Athlon64 X2 4000+; 2,1GHz; soc AM2
2011: Athlon II X3 450; 3,2GHz; soc AM3
2012: Phenom II X4 965; 3,4GHz; soc AM3
2013: FX 8320; 3,5GHz; soc AM3+
2014: Athlon X4 860K; 3,7GHz; soc FM2+
2015: FX 8350; 4,0GHz; soc AM3+
2017: Ryzen 7 1700; 3,0GHz; soc AM4.

The biggest jumps in perfomance were X2 4000 to X3 450 and FX 8350 to R7 1700. The Ryzen is also the only processor that I've kept under OC for everyday use.

 

[coercitiv]

Z80-A 3.5Mhz
AMD 386
Pentium 75Mhz
Pentium III 500 Mhz
Pentium III 933 Mhz
Athlon 64 2Ghz
Athon X2 2Ghz
C2D Mobile - various models between 1.8 - 2.6Ghz
Haswell Mobile - both 2C4T ULV and 4C/8T around 3Ghz
Skylake 6600K - 4Ghz
AMD 1600X - 3.7Ghz
Coffee Lake 8700 - 4.3Ghz

The biggest jump in performance by far was the Athlon X2. It wasn't about the double theoretical throughput as much as it was about fixing a fundamental software problem through raw hardware muscle.

Looking forward for Ryzen 3000, although I still can't tell wether my next CPU will be Zen 2 or Icelake. Fun times.

 

[skaertus]

Here is the evolution of my systems (some of the dates and even the exact specifications are approximate, especially the older ones):

AMD 386 DX 40 MHz (1993)
Intel 486 DX4 100 MHz (1995)
Intel Pentium 133 MHz (1996)
Intel Pentium II 400 MHz (1998)
Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (2003)
AMD Athlon 64 2800+ 1.6 GHz (mobile) (2004)
Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 2.4 GHz (mobile) (2008)
Intel Core i7 870 2.93 GHz (2010)
Intel Core i7-2630QM 2 GHz (mobile) (2012)
Intel Core i7-3635QM 2.3 GHz (mobile) (2013)
Intel Atom x7-Z8700 1.6 GHz (mobile) (2015)
Intel Core i7-6700HQ 2.6 GHz (mobile) (2016)
Intel Core i7-6567U 3.3 GHz (mobile) (2017)
Intel Core i5-7500T 2.7 GHz (2017)
Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz (2019)

This counts only my personal computers, not including any of those of my family.

 

[maddie]

Why not.

Comodore 64
Atari ST512 upgraded mem to 1024
Pentium ?
Celeron 500
Duron 700
Athlon 2200+
Athlon X2 7750
phenom2 X4 820
FX 8300

And for some future history. Soon?

Ryzen2 8 core

 

[skaertus]

Z80-A 3.5Mhz
AMD 386
Pentium 75Mhz
Pentium III 500 Mhz
Pentium III 933 Mhz
Athlon 64 2Ghz
Athon X2 2Ghz
C2D Mobile - various models between 1.8 - 2.6Ghz
Haswell Mobile - both 2C4T ULV and 4C/8T around 3Ghz
Skylake 6600K - 4Ghz
AMD 1600X - 3.7Ghz
Coffee Lake 8700 - 4.3Ghz

The biggest jump in performance by far was the Athlon X2. It wasn't about the double theoretical throughput as much as it was about fixing a fundamental software problem through raw hardware muscle.

Looking forward for Ryzen 3000, although I still can't tell wether my next CPU will be Zen 2 or Icelake. Fun times.

My next CPU upgrade will be in about two years, at the same time of my expected GPU upgrade. I hope the environment will be very different from what it is today after the release of 3rd gen Ryzen.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

P4 423 socket 1.3GHz
P4 423 Socket 1.5GHz
P4 478 Socket 2.8Ghz
P4 478 Socket 3.06GHz
Went to AMD around 90nm tech
Can't remember exactly but I had a couple of Opterons and other 939 socket chips..
Went back to Intel after the Q6600
Core 2 E8400
Yorkfield Q9300
Yorkfield Q9550
Yorkfield 9650
Since then I've had various 1366 chips, 920, 970, X5660, X5690, W3690

 

[kondziowy]

Intel Pentium 60MHz 1995
Intel Celeron 366MHz 1999 5x?
Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz 2002 5x?
AMD Turion x2 RM-70 2GHz (mobile) 2008 2x
Intel i5-3210m (mobile) 2012 3x
Intel i7-3612qm (mobile) 2013 +50%
Intel i5-4460 2014 +10% and downgrade in threads
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 2017 +50%
AMD Ryzen 5 2600 2019 +10%

Pretty much all of them were for gaming My cycle is super not regular.
Next up: Ryzen 3000 if it works on B350 board, or Ryzen 4000 if not.