Discussion CPU Power through the Years

[jnjnilson6]

The Core i9-12900K harbors the same performance a Pentium 4 HT clocked at 241.3 GHz would produce.

*Core i9-12900K Score - 2956 points
Pentium 4 HT @ 3.06 GHz Score - 37.5 points
Pentium 4 HT @ 1.0 GHz Score - 12.25 points
*Pentium 4 HT @ 241.3 GHz Score - 2956 points

Dividing 2956 by 12.25 gives us 241.3. And keeping in mind 1 GHz proves to be 12.25 points, we'd need a Pentium 4 HT clocked at 241.3 GHz to reach the score of the Core i9-12900K, namely, 2956 points.

We have witnessed a beautiful increase of between 78 and 79 times in the performance of the best microprocessors available in the last 20 years. Going further back in time and dividing 3060 MHz by 33 MHz would produce a difference of 93 times. And lntel released the first 386DX processors which could hit the latter frequency apparently in 1985. The Pentium 4 HT @ 3.06 GHz was the fastest Pentium 4 in 2002, 17 years later. So, judging by the aforesaid, we are going ahead steadily and nicely, especially considering the following which very well minimizes the gap in performance increase between 1985-2002 and 2002-2022, respectively. That 1 MHz of Pentium 4 HT power should prove much faster than 1 MHz of 386DX performance due to Hyper Threading and an assortment of newer technologies for innumerable advanced calculations in innumerable spheres integrated in the Pentium 4 HT which the 386DX, at its time, obviously lacked. (Keeping in mind, of course, that the software being run utilizes aforementioned technologies). But I do believe that running any piece of software would prove, for the Pentium, an ostensible defeat over the 386DX at the same clock speed; and an even bigger defeat on more advanced software supporting more advanced technologies.

Referral of Performance Points
(64-Core
Avg. Multi Core Mixed Speed) - https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-4-306GHz-vs-Intel-Core-i9-12900K/m614vs4118

You are free to compare CPU performance in the past and future and post notable and intriguing facts about architecture, power consumption, pricing and any other particulars within those in the regarded sphere. Benchmarks and fun facts are things open for debate. What was the processor of your first PC? What CPU would you like to get and what do you think the best architectures in times gone by prove to be? These and many more questions remain open for discussion. Feel free to write about general things as well as little details which'd caught your attention and backed up your intrigue; anything in the CPU world which would make for a good discussion.

And I hope you'll have a good time!

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I would say Sandy Bridge was where multithreaded performance started getting better. However I also feel that when Ryzen first came out it brought a good level of performance to common people. Before that if you had a quad core you were pretty well good to go. But with ryzen 6 cores, 8 cores and higher seemed to become more mainstream instead of being more enthusiast level parts.

 

[Tac 25]

voted for Sandy Bridge. Biased because my backup pc is i7-2600k (lol). This cpu is still kicking 10 years after it's release. Together with it's partner 1050ti and 32GB ddr3 ram, handles most playstation 4 games, and even a few playstation 5 games without lag at 1080p.

 

[LeviTech]

Sandy Bridge for sure, that were the ones that made the big difference in terms of MT.

 

[Eximo]

I think historically Sandy Bridge is going to win out. It was inexpensive compared to gulftown and bloomfield, DDR3, still had soldered heatspreaders, had good overclocking and lasted a very long time in the era of quad cores.

Haswell and Devil's Canyon had more of an impact then Broadwell, simply because they were much better than Ivy Bridge. Still, broadwell was barely a foot note on the way to Skylake, and Kabylake wasn't much different. What you are missing is Coffeelake when they actually started competing with AMD for core count when Ryzen launched.

If it were on the list, Zen might be the biggest impactor since it challenged Intel to actually break out of the quad core mold.

 

[CountMike]

True breakthroughs were achieved before those on the list.
intel, pentium 200 pro
AMD 64 Bit, instead of intel compatible All are known as AMD64
Also dual/multi core processors
From that list. hyperthreading by Intel.
From latest gens, Intel's P-cores and E-cores

 

[hotaru.hino]

I'll put Sandy Bridge down because it did have enough significant changes over Westmere. I would say Alder Lake, but it's too soon to tell whether or not its design will have a significant impact on the x86 world.

Although I would caution on assessing anything against the Pentium 4, because it had a horrible IPC rating even for its time. For instance, an AMD Athlon XP clocked at around 2.0GHz could easily keep up with a Pentium 4 clocked 2.6GHz.