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

Page 5 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

unseengundam101

Senior member
Oct 26, 2005
252
2
81
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.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Thrashard

StrangerGuy

Diamond Member
May 9, 2004
8,443
124
106
Dirt-poor-kid with hand-me-downs-era:
  • Pentium 60 (1995)
  • Pentium 133 (1999)
  • Pentium MMX 233 (2001)
  • K6-2 350 (2001-2003)
  • K6-2 500 (2001-2003)
  • Celeron-A 433 (2003)
Still poor but at least period correct CPU era:
  • Athlon XP 1700+ Tbred-B @ 1833MHz (2003-2005)
  • Pentium 4 3.0E (2005)
  • Athlon 64 3500+ (2005)
  • Core 2 Duo E6300 2MB @ 3GHz (2006-2009)
  • Phenom II X2 555 BE @ 3.6GHz (2009-2011)
Finally able to afford nice things era:
  • 2500K @ 4.3GHz (2011-2014)
  • 4790K (2014-2017)
  • 8700K (2017-present)
 

topmysteries5

Member
Jan 31, 2019
179
17
61
Desktop
* Pentium Dual Core E2140 - 1.6Ghz 2C-2T (2006)
* Core 2 Duo E7200 - 3.16Ghz 2C-2T (2009)
* Core 2 Quad Q9400 - 3Ghz 4C-4T (2011)
* Core i7 6800K - 4.2Ghz 6C-12T (2016)
* Xeon E5 2686v3 - 3.6Ghz 18C-36T (2019)


Laptop:-
* Pentium Dual Core B950 - 2.1Ghz 2C-2T (2013)
* Core i3 3120M-2.5Ghz 2C-4T (2014)
 

spacejamz

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
10,781
1,386
126
I sorely miss the Fry's motherboard/CPU combo deals...I don't even remember all of the ones I bought over the years. starting with the AMD T-breds, the Athlon's, Pentiums , Core 2 Duos and the first quadcores...

My last few though have been 2600K, 4790K and a 8700k...
 

mopardude87

Diamond Member
Oct 22, 2018
3,348
1,575
96
I sorely miss the Fry's motherboard/CPU combo deals....

Same i loved the G33 ECS i got with a Q6600 G0. Doing the standard 3Ghz stock voltage oc somehow popped all the usb ports then eventually my ps/2 as well. Getting a mobo+cpu for the price of the cpu alone back then who cared what board it had as long as it was compatible right?
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
10,785
136
Dude I was one of the lucky ones that had a K7S5A that wasn't a problematic piece of junk. That board was so hit-and-miss. I didn't even have any IDE problems.

Hell of a board though. And that SiS735 really performed well for its time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: William Gaatjes

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
25,478
14,434
136
Dude I was one of the lucky ones that had a K7S5A that wasn't a problematic piece of junk. That board was so hit-and-miss. I didn't even have any IDE problems.

Hell of a board though. And that SiS735 really performed well for its time.
I still have one sitting under a couple of computers. I have not tried to power it on, in a while, but it has a 1700 in it I think.
 

mopardude87

Diamond Member
Oct 22, 2018
3,348
1,575
96
My favorite board is still the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe. My least favorite was the MSI P35 Platinum that replaced the G33 ECS. For such a insane looking motherboard the MSI certainly wasn't all that gamer friendly. The southbound chipset heatsink was so tall i had issues putting the EVGA 8800GTS 512mb on the board. Out of frustration i ended up hacking off a bit of the overally tall heatsink just so i could sit the card in right. Cool looking board but dang who overlooked such a major flaw?
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
17,575
9,265
136
Dude I was one of the lucky ones that had a K7S5A that wasn't a problematic piece of junk. That board was so hit-and-miss. I didn't even have any IDE problems.

Yup, I hated that board. The CPU had SSE support, but board said nope. The final straw for me was when the PS/2 keyboard interface started acting intermittently.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
10,785
136
Yup, I hated that board. The CPU had SSE support, but board said nope. The final straw for me was when the PS/2 keyboard interface started acting intermittently.

I loved my K7S5A because I didn't have those problems. I didn't know the board could prevent SSE from working, though. That's weird. Sorry about the PS/2 connector though (bleh).

We are writing our testaments.
A dying breed of dinosaurs.

We'll just grow wings and fly. Fear not.

Weep for the smartphone addicts. Their time will come.
 

Rayman30

Member
Mar 7, 2019
115
38
101
Desktop:

Intel Celeron 566 MHz "Coppermine"
Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz (@2.6GHz) with Vantec HSF and AS3 "Northwood A"
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ "Venice"
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 "Conroe"
Intel i7 960 "Bloomfield"
Intel i7 4790K "Devil's Canyon" @4.6 GHz with Corsair H80i
Intel i7 7700K "Kabylake" @4.8 GHz with Corsair H115i
Intel i7 8700K "Cofeelake" @5.0GHz with Corsair H115i
Intel i9 9900K "Cofeelake" @5.0GHz with Corsair H115i Pro
 
Last edited:
May 11, 2008
19,300
1,129
126
486 DX2 66MHz.
Cyrix 686 166MHz.
Pentium MMX 233 MHz.
During this time, the nintendo N64 was far superior in games/price. I used the pc only for browsing and everything non gaming.
I can remember that at the time converting an MP3 would take at least 5 minutes. Now with the ryzen system and using the same archiac codec, it takes about 2 or 3 seconds for a 4 minute song.

I think i had an Athlon at 850 MHz but i am not sure if it was a duron instead. ( something with a via chipset) This one had issues with power saving while idle because the fractional divider caused the cpu phase lock loop to overshoot and crash the cpu while coming out of sleep. The solution was to disable the deep power saving with ACPI support during the installation of windows 98SE.

An Athlon XP Palomino. (ECS K7S5A SIS735 chipset, never had an issue. Ran perfectly smooth)
Later an Athlon XP Barton. (Nforce 2 chipset with 128bit wide dual DDR memory access.)
Then a AMD Piledriver = A10-6700 (see signature)
And currently an Ryzen 5 2600. (see signature)
 
Last edited:

mopardude87

Diamond Member
Oct 22, 2018
3,348
1,575
96
When my PC case matched my phone...what the heck was I thinking back then? :)

View attachment 5082

What year was that build from? I remember cases like that at Frys back in like 2006 especially the ones that mimic the alienware look. Then the clear acrylic cases had me thinking who the heck wants to see a rats nest in their pc. I remember right up to this year in fact running most of my builds in a Antec 900 and just not giving any what of a damn how bad my cable management or noise was as long as there was enough cfm to blow your pants off!. This Fractal Meshify mini though has changed that approach and this latest build is something of beauty. :)
 

Gikaseixas

Platinum Member
Jul 1, 2004
2,836
218
106
Intel Pentium 75mhz
Cirix 100mhz
Intel Pentium III 450mhz
AMD Duron 1.0ghz
Intel Pentium 4 1.4ghz
Intel Pentium 4 1.8ghz
AMD Athlon XP1900
AMD Athlon XP2500
AMD Athlon XP3000
AMD A64 3700+
AMD A64 3800+
AMD A64 X2 4400+
AMD A64 X2 6400+
AMD Phenom 9850
Intel Q9550
AMD Phenom II 940
Intel Core i7 860
etc
etc
etc

Also several laptops all but one Intel powered
 
  • Like
Reactions: lightmanek

spacejamz

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
10,781
1,386
126
What year was that build from? I remember cases like that at Frys back in like 2006 especially the ones that mimic the alienware look. Then the clear acrylic cases had me thinking who the heck wants to see a rats nest in their pc. I remember right up to this year in fact running most of my builds in a Antec 900 and just not giving any what of a damn how bad my cable management or noise was as long as there was enough cfm to blow your pants off!. This Fractal Meshify mini though has changed that approach and this latest build is something of beauty. :)

Pic was from 2003....damn I feel old now...

bonus pic I found with the lights off...LOL
DSC01379.JPG
 
  • Like
Reactions: lightmanek