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.

 

[zrav]

ZX Spectrum Clone
386DX 25MHz
486DX4 100MHz
Pentium MMX 166MHz
Pentium II 266MHz
Pentium III 800MHz
AthlonXP 1.6GHz
Pentium-M Dothan 1.6GHz (Laptop)
Core2Duo E4500
Core i5 2500K
Core i7 3770K.

Next will very likely be a Zen2.

 

[Raduque]

386 25mhz
486 66mhz
Pentium 100mhz
Celeron 333mhz
Pentium II 450
AMD Duron 600
AMD Duron 800
AMD Duron 1ghz
AMD Athlon XP 1.2ghz
AMD Athlon XP 1.4ghz
AMD x2 4400
Intel Core2Duo E6300
Intel Core i5 4200u (laptop)
Core i7 4710hq (x2) (laptop)
AM Ryzen 5 1400

The biggest performance bump imo, was going from the AMD x2 to the C2D. Then I overclocked the C2D to 2.8ghz. Second biggest jump was from the mobile i7 to the Ryzen. The Durons and Athlon XPs weren't much an improvement over the slightly older ones, but back then I was chasing overclocks so I was going for steppings.

 

[Gt403cyl]

386 DX 66
486 or Pentium with MMX
Pentium II 400MHz
Prntium III 700MHz
Acer laptop (can’t remember the CPU but AMD pretty sure?)
Q6600
i7-2630QM
i7-4770k
i7-6700k

My biggest jump was from the i7 laptop back to desktop i7’s.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Family PC
80286 (late 80s)
AM386-DX 40
Pentium 133

Personal
Pentium 233mmx
Pentium 2 350
Pentium 3 650
AMD XP 1800 (?)
AMD Athlon x 2 3200 (?)
Q6600
2500k
4790k
8700k

I think the Q6600 was my favorite.

 

[Topweasel]

My primary personal home computers
Celeron A 366 @550
Athlon Socket A 700MHz @950
Athlon 1200
Athlon 1800+
Athlon 2500+
Athlon64 X2 4400+
Phenom 9950 BE
Core i7 3930K
Ryzen 7 1700

Other assorted CPU Coonfigurations for secondary machines.
Duron 700
Athlon 2500+
Sempron 2400+
Turion64 X2
Celeron D 2.1GHz
Core 2 Duo E8600
Core i7 4770k
Ryzen 7 1700 (in a laptop)
(not counting Atom or Surface purchases), but did count a couple laptops.

 

[EXCellR8]

I think I might have one of the biggest jumps, just from reading all these. Went from a single core Athlon XP to the Intel Q6600 as my first multi-core CPU. Don't ask me why but I think the reasoning was because I loved my old Abit board so much; I tried my best to keep it running but applications finally forced me to upgrade. I actually tried running Crysis on that old beast

Q6600 was a fantastic pick (mine did ~3.2Ghz stable) but I believe I went through a few boards before finally settling on a Intel X48 chipset ASUS Rampage Formula. I tried 2 or 3 nForce boards but I seemed to have nothing but issues with them. This was back when 4GB of DDR2 memory was considered enthusiast lol

 

[Flayed]

Hmm lets see if I can remember lol
comodore 64
486dx2
some kind of pentium?
amd 2500+
amd 64 3200
core 2 duo E8600
i5 3570k

 

[ericlp]

Actually I think the biggest jump was i7 to ThreadRipper 32 threads. Always wanted a high core count cpu... I was hoping intel would have come out with something 10 years ago... One day all these huge core monsters will be cheap and plentiful and everyone will be saying...Yeah, I remember Back when we only had 4 cores! Even in the early 90's all the talk was high core count ... Maximum PC kept touting it was the future... and sadly it didn't materialize until 2018!

 

[mopardude87]

I think I might have one of the biggest jumps, just from reading all these. Went from a single core Athlon XP to the Intel Q6600 as my first multi-core CPU. Don't ask me why but I think the reasoning was because I loved my old Abit board so much; l

I had a Abit IP35 Pro with my Q6600,i loved that motherboard and sitting in my Antec 900 with a Zalman CNPS9700 led cooler nothing looked as good back then i think Besides the added in led strips.

 

[Timmah!]

Wow some of u had more computers in last 5 years than me in my entire life
I am however not complaining, i was happy with every single one of my rigs...Which were:

December 2000 - AMD Duron 700
November 2005 - AMD Athlon 64 3200+ s.939 “venice” core
February 2008 - Core2Duo E8400 @ 3,2GHz
August 2010 - Core i7 980x @ 3,8GHz
November 2016 - Core i7 6850k @ 4,2GHz
January 2018 - Core i9 7940x @ 4,1GHz multi / 4,6GHz single

First 2 were whole rig builds, third one was just change of mobo, cpu and ram. 980x was once again entirely new build, so was 2016 broadwell one, except keeping some drives from 2020 build ... current one was then cpu and mobo replacement, but now i swapped gpus as well, so apart of drives its more or less completely different machine...

As far as performance increases go, its obviously difficult to tell, because of lack of consistent benchmark across all the generations. I only tried CPUmark99 and cinebench to certain extent and results were as following:

Cpumark99 score in points from duron to i9: 60 -> 250 -> 500 -> 600 -> ~650/700 -> 770
Obviously single core only and god knows how meaningful it is for post core2 cpus, i certainly do not

Cinebench r15 multicore in CB points from athlon 64 to i9: ~50 -> ~170 -> 890 -> 1310 -> 3170

Subjectively speaking, i saw the major performance jump between the first 2 of my machines, as the older one was unable to play some newer games i wanted to play at the time, like NHL 05....but that one might have been down to lacking gpu power... when i got core2duo though, i recall one of the reasons was the fact athlon64 could not run supreme commander with its single core... then i popped in that E8400 and boom - it worked like charm with the same 6600gt card (which was nothing to write home about in early 2008)...

 

[frozentundra123456]

First one goes all the way back to a Pentium, 233 mhz I believe it was, Windows 95.
Maybe one or two that I dont remember.
Then: Celeron 800 mhz with Windows ME (real POS, both the cpu and OS)
Pentium IV 1.5 ghz (much slower than I expected)
Athlon 2600+ (great cpu, very good upgrade from the Pentium)
Core 2 Duo, 4500
i5 2300 (More than enough for everything but gaming) Hard drive died, and my wife said I should just replace it. Who am I to argue?
i7 8700k @ 4.7 (could easily go more, but I only have an evo 212 air cooler) Uses about 130 watts under prime 95, but less that its TDP in gaming.

 

[Ash1983]

286 DX16
Intel Pentium 100
AMD K6 400
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
AMD Athlon 64 3800+
AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE
Intel Core i7-2920XM
AMD FX 6300
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X

 

[Insomniator]

Pentium 4 3.0
Athlon 3500+
Athlon x2 5000 BE
Core i5 2500k
Core i7 6850k
Ryzen 2700x

Could probably still run my 2500k just fine... the 6850 and 2700 were just purchased due to suddenly living near a Microcenter and Intel chips selling well used. Think I got back what I paid for the 6850k after 1 year, and the 2500k+board fetched $150 7 years after purchase which is insane because they were only $310 in 2011...

 

[GodisanAtheist]

It gets pretty murky the further back I go, but from most recent to oldest:

Core i5 6600k
C2Q Q9550
C2D E7200
Athlon 64 x2 3800
Athlon 64 3500
Athlon XP... Something? It was a Duron processor I think...

Prior to that it was all family computers with Intel procs. Still remember the ancient computers you'd boot off a 5.25" floppy disk...

It's weird to think that after all this time... My next upgrade is very likely going to be a return to AMD.

 

[JTaylor2005]

1 - Intel Pentium 3 something or other.
2 - AMD Athlon XP 3200
3 - Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz
4 - AMD Athlon 64 x2 5600
5 - Intel Core i5-6200U
6 - Looks like the next one is due to be an AMD. Perfect timing!

 

[Indus]

Pentium 166mhz
Pentium II 300mhz
Pentium 3 800mhz
AMD 64 3200+
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
Intel Core i5 3470
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (planning on dropping a 3rd gen in there and retiring my Core 2 Duo)

 

[bigboxes]

200 MMX
Athlon 1.2 Ghz (Thunderbird)
Athlon XP 1600+ (Palomino)
Athlon XP 1800+ (Thoroughbred)
Athlon XP 2800+ (Barton)
Athlon 64 3200+ (Winchester)
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (Toledo)
i7 920 (Bloomfield)
i7 4790K (Devil's Canyon)

Those were (are) all in my main rig. I still have all of them. I have a smattering of Celerons, Durons and Pentiums that did light duty. Bought a dual core Pentium to do file server duty last year. I have an A10-7850K in the wife's puter. The i7 920 currently does duty in the HTPC in the living room.

 

[EXCellR8]

^920 to 4790K is a pretty decent bump; I've also got both those chips that I currently use--along with two (D0 step) 920's that are just in a drawer. I'd probably have one in a HTPC too if they weren't so darn fun to OC haha

I also ran a i7 970 six-core processor for a few months but it didn't OC much at all.

 

[bigboxes]

^920 to 4790K is a pretty decent bump; I've also got both those chips that I currently use--along with two (D0 step) 920's that are just in a drawer. I'd probably have one in a HTPC too if they weren't so darn fun to OC haha

I also ran a i7 970 six-core processor for a few months but it didn't OC much at all.

Yeah, it is a D0. It was a mild 3.2Ghz oc, but when it started having issues I backed it off. I tired of OCing it a long time ago. I oc my machines when they are new just to see what they can do. I make charts and compare with previous build.

I always thought my jump from 200 MMX to Athlon 1.2Ghz was my biggest jump in performance. It was night and day. I had 3 sticks of 256MB of ram for a total of 768MB. Man, that was a fun computer. It was my first build and it would boot up (Win98) quickly and web pages would load in seconds. I wish I had that in original condition. I still have the processor, the (dead) mobo (Abit KT7A-RAID), original Thermaltake aluminum hsf, 2 sticks of 256 pc 133 sdram, CoolerMaster ATC 200 case, I'm sure I have some 3.5" loppy drives, Radeon 64 VIVO (dead). It would be fun to put together an old Win98/WinXP for an old gaming box. I have agp cards, a working socket A mobo and even some working pata optical drives and HDDs. Heck, I still got my copper braided rounded pata cables if I wanted to go gangster. Fun memories!

 

[EXCellR8]

Oh I've got plenty of older tech that still works fine... and yea I just can't seem to part with those fugly round PATA cables. I know at some point I'll throw something together just to see it all work again.

 

[Charlie22911]

Excluding laptops, my primary desktop CPU path was as follows:

Intel 486 DX2 66MHz
Intel Pentium 133MHz (non MMX)
AMD K6-2 400MHz
AMD K6-III+ (OC 600MHz)
AMD Athlon XP-M 2500+ (OC 2.5GHz)
AMD Opteron 165 (OC 2.8GHz)
AMD Phenom II x4 945
AMD Phenom II x6 1100T
AMD FX 8350
Intel i7 6900k

Largest noticeable jump to me was around the K6-III+ > XP-M > Opteron 165 era.

 

[rancherlee]

Ones I've built over the years for my use.
K6-2 400 @ 475
Athlon Slot A 700 @ 950 (only time I've spent over 300$ on a processor)
Athlon XP 1600@1.8ghz
Athlon XP 2500 Mobile @ 2.4ghz (same system as XP1600)
Phenom II x4 925 @ 3.7ghz
Phenom II x4 960T @ 6x3.9ghz (same system as x4 925)
FX8320 @ 4.4ghz stock voltage, still running!
???? Zen 2 8c/16t @ whatever, next rig for sure!

Biggest jump for me was the 2500 mobile to the X4 925, I also went from a X800XT to a 5770 video card at the same time.

 

[Eddward]

Pentium 133Mhz
Pentium 4 630
Core 2 Duo E4500
Core 2 Quad Q8300
Core i5 2500K
Core i5 3570K
Core i5 4670K
Core i7 6700K
Core i7 8700K

 

[rchunter]

I can't remember everything but I can try...

C64
C128
Apple 2c
Mac plus
various imacs
Toshiba T100
Pentium 4
C2Q Q6600
i7 950
X5660
X5690
i7 4770k
E3 1246v3
E5 1650v4
i7 7700k

 

[Ventanni]

Oh man...nostalgia.

Pentium 100mhz
K6-2 333mhz
K7 700mhz
P3 1GHZ
Thunderbird 1.2ghz
P4 2.4ghz
Athlon XP 3200 (2.2ghz)
Core2 Duo 6700 @ 3.2ghz I think
Core i7 3770k

The first few upgrades up until the K7 700mhz were huge upgrades, but between that and the XP3200, the upgrades were more marginal. I was young, overly excited, and eager to spend. I haven't had any need to upgrade my 3770k yet, but I was thinking of upgrading the GPU, doubling the RAM, and installing a new HD with a fresh copy of Windows 10 (been using the same W7 upgrade install since 2012). The dream of upgrading to a Core i9 or R9 3850x is there, but can't justify it given the current games I play.