Imitation To Innovation: AMD's Best CPUs

[crockdaddy]

My Processor history (call me a loser) ... this is accurate more or less and does not ofc include laptops.

486SX2/50
486DX2/66
486DX4/100
P75
P90
P133
PII Celeron 366PPGA (OCed to 550, ran this one for 5 years)
AMD KII 350
AMD KIII 450
AMD K7-700
AMD XP1400
AMD XP1700
AMD XP2500
AMD Athlon 3000 x64
AMD 5600 X2
Intel C2D 6420

 

[ravenware]

The year is 1981, and Intel(see our history of Intel processors from a few months back)

That history of Intel article was from 08/04.

 

[DjEaZy]

... my memory lane... first i started off with P133, then C433, then P700... but then i heard about Athlon @ 900Mhz and it tried out... and from that time only AMD... A900, then A1400, then A2500 with Barton... with the Barton core was a interesting thing... it work's til this day and its overclock't sins we got it... just putted on ABIT nForce 2 Ultra and thats all... work's fine... bit hot, but that is solved with a good cooler... and then i got the A3000, then A3500, then A3700 with 1Mb kaš... then Ax2 4400, Ax2 5200, then 5600 and now... drumroll please!?!?!? ........ tha Phenom 9600 Black Edition @ 2600 stable... and there was some temptation to go to the dark side, but i newer needed so much tha performance, i like when all iz seamless...

 

[nukemaster]

[citation][nom]wh3resmycar[/nom]the processor rubber feet! once they burn away say good bye to your cpu, why did they put it in there in the first place?[/citation]
You could run without them, it was just there to stop the die from crushing/cracking when users where careless with there heatsink.

 

[Guest]

*yawn*
... Always fell asleep in history class

On a personal note, I'd have to say the K6 was AMD's best idea as it extended my socket 7's life until the P3 533MHz for slot 2 came out. Which of course I was ecstatic to be rid of that old SIMM memory for some SDR!

BTW, the rubber feet on the socket 462's were to prevent the heat sink from rocking and breaking off the corners of your CPU die.

 

[harrycat88]

Nice article except for a little small error.
On the AMD K62+, not only did they make a 550MHz but they even made a 570MHz and a 600MHz which worked flawless on certain Super Socket 7 motherboards. I still have my K62+ 570MHz processor and Gigabyte 5AX F4 motherboard today. For some reason I can't compel myself to throw it away.

 

[Guest]

started with 8086 first new pc i286 12.5MhZ 40mb HD don't remeber final memory capacity>>>>>>>>>>>> now runnning quad core 2.83GhZ phase changed with SLI 8800 GT's 8GB ddr2@1066 7 Tb storage 3x300gb working HD capacity in raid>>>>>>>>> wow ...things have changed

 

[Guest]

they seem to be better historically in imitating than innovating...

 

[Guest]

They could also make an article about cyrix, and other minor cpus at that time.. refresh my memory!! 😀

 

[frozenlead]

Man, some people really go through CPU's fast..boy, here's my processor lineup..

386sx
486
Pentium 133
Penitum II 400mhz
K7 550MHz
Athlon XP 2800+
(insert poor streak)
Intel T8100

 

[anarchy4sale]

My first computer was when I was 5, I Apple 2GS, but my first PC was a 486 DX4 100 (not sure what this was!), 2nd was a Pentium 133, and next was an AMD K6 400. I played EQ 1 on it with a VooDoo 3 PCI. MAN I could go on but it would fill up pages.

 

[anarchy4sale]

[citation][nom]anarchy4sale[/nom]My first computer was when I was 5, I Apple 2GS, but my first PC was a 486 DX4 100 (not sure what this was!), 2nd was a Pentium 133, and next was an AMD K6 400. I played EQ 1 on it with a VooDoo 3 PCI. MAN I could go on but it would fill up pages.[/citation]

I have to fix this my AMD K6 400 was actually a K6II 400. LoL

 

[Guest]

I got a overclocked Duron @ 900MHZ for the last 4-6 years stills runs good with 512MB and plays Half life 2 and farcry at around 28-42 FPS with the Geforce 6200. AMD ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[atragorn]

A correction on the 286 portion. Amd actually made a am286x25mhz part as the top speed not a 20mhz as stated.
Pretty accurate overall though. Brings back memories

 

[Guest]

Nice and interesting article.

I remember my AMD Duron with 128mb ram and good performance compared with intel processors (pentium 4 willamette)

 

[Rod4Tech]

Here is my brief history of upgrading.
486 DX2 66 MHz
486 DX4 100 MHz (Trinity Overdriver)

 

[Rod4Tech]

Here is my brief history of upgrading.
486 DX2 66 MHz
486 DX4 100 MHz (Trinity Overdriver)

 

[Rod4Tech]

Here is my brief history of upgrading.
486 DX2 66 MHz
486 DX4 100 MHz
(Trinity Overdriver)

 

[Guest]

I remember in my old office, there was a rendering program in PROE, it used to take around 3 hours using an old 500 Mhz Intel proc, by upgrading the machine with a Thunderbird, it did it in exactly 15 mins, gosh.. that was awesome.

 

[ZootyGray]

My first rig was a Cyrix 6x86 - and the mobo was setup for an intel chip - it took me most of a year of hourly crashes to figure out how to reset jumpers. Then I bought a fat HSF and oclocked it w 83mhz bus.
That led me into becoming a tekky, and collecting old junk PC's, including a IBM PS2 than ran with 1 meg of ram and you could hear every clock tick!

First real pc was AMD T'Bird 1400 w a GF3 for Q3A and RtCW - had it up to 1600 but decided to use the stove for frying eggs instead.

I am now a serious AMD fan and am planning a rig w AMD 790GX/SB750 chipset. What I notice throughout this article is AMD's innovation. I am waiting for spintel's AMD-knockoff 'nihi.lame' to fall on it's face, as AMD releases Deneb with superior DDR3 specs. (o yes!) The bang for the buck is going to be interesting for those in the know.

If you are an AMD fan, you can get the real story at amdzone - based on truth rather than bias and spin. Some amazing info there, and some very knowledgeable people. Without the idiot flamewars, it's a quiet, but intense discussion, plus all the latest news.

 

[Guest]

Just a correction: all processors with 32 bits address bus are rated with max memory to 4 MG. The correct is 4 GB (2^32).

 

[Guest]

Wait, wasn't the 386/40 the processor that Intel sued AMD over the appropriated microcode? Wasn't AMD forced to reverse-engineer the microcode for subsequent 386/40's?

 

[Guest]

Nice review. Well well written - yes. Accurate... are you sure?
It says that original AMD64 was single channel... not quite. Socket 939 was released especially for dual channel DDR with single core. I can see in the chart here that only X2s were supposed to support dual channel. But please check the following: AMD 3700+ San Diego Core running @ 2.2 with 1Mb L2 on a s.939 (and yes, its a dual channel).
About the correction that K6-2 had even faster models - agree. This was the case. I've had for a while a k6-3 @ 600 Mhz, but back then I cannot say that the CPU was not OCed since I didn't know what the heck that was.