Discussion
Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989
fabiensanglard: The 486 killer app was DOOM. It was butter-smooth at 20 fps if you also had a VLB graphic card.The 486 DX2 66MHz was the target platform for gaming during almost two years (1992-1994). That was an huge achievement back in the days to be at the top that long.
roody15: I remember getting my first 486 33mhz computer and being able to play Ultima 7 the black gate, and later Ultima 7 part 2. This was a turning point for me as the game was way ahead of others on the console side of things. DOS 6 !
einr: The DX/2 66 is a true legend of a chip. It was so good. The final nail in the coffin for the Amiga and for 68k. I love the Amiga, but it just didn’t Doom.Before it, you could claim that a 68040 was kinda-sorta keeping up with the 486 and that the nicer design and better operating systems of other computers made up for the delta in raw performance, but the DX/2 66 running Doom was the final piece of proof that the worse-is-better approach of using raw CPU grunt to blast pixels at screen memory instead of relying on clever custom circuitry was winning.Faced with overwhelming evidence, everyone sold their Amiga 1200s and jumped ship to that hated Wintel platform.
darkwater: At that point in time I would not have called it Wintel yet. That started after Windows 95, IIRC.
blitzar: They need to bring back the turbo button.
einr: You’re in luck!https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chas...
blitzar: How could I possibly forget the lock!
icedchai: Yep. 486DX/2 was when I started seriously looking at moving on from the Amiga. I wound up with a DX/4 100 sometime in 1994.
throwaway_20357: Doom was released end of '93. In 1992 most of us were in the 286 -> 386 upgrade wave and a 486-33 was easily at $2.5k+ ($5.5k in today's terms). The 486 DX2 66 was a good choice even 1994-1996.
simmons: Yes, the latest chips were very expensive back then, and out of reach for most people who would continue buying new computers with older chips. (As opposed to how most people today buy an iPhone or a Mac or whatever with the latest semiconductor technology.) I got my 25MHz 386 in 1991, over two years after the 486 was announced, and I had one of the fastest computers of anybody in school... for a short time.
whizzter: As I noted in my other comment (1), in 1985 Amiga OCS bitplane graphics (separate each bits of a pixel index into separate areas) was a huge boon in 2d capability since it lowered bandwidth to 6/8ths but made 3d rendering a major pain in the ass.The Aga chipset of the 1200/4000 stupidly only added 2 more bitplanes. The CD32 chip actually had byte-per-pixel (chunky) graphics modes but the omission from the 1200 was fatal.Reading in hindsight there was probably too many structural issues for Commodore to remain competitive anyhow, but an alt-history where they would've seen the needs for 3d rendering is tantalizing.1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717334
feintruled: > The Aga chipset of the 1200/4000 stupidly only added 2 more bitplanes. The CD32 chip actually had byte-per-pixel (chunky) graphics modes but the omission from the 1200 was fatal.The intention was good, but the Akiko chip was functionally almost useless. It was soon surpassed by CPU chunky to planar algorithms. I don't think it was ever even used in any serious way by any released games (though it might have been used to help with FMV).
esafak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Local_Bus for the younger crowd.
markbnj: I've got one sitting on the shelf above my desk, a 33 Mhz dx, I don't even remember what machine it came out of.
TMWNN: Commodore so slowly and ineffectually improving on the OCS didn't help, but the original sin of the Amiga was committed in the beginning, with planar graphics (i.e., slow and hard to work with, even setting aside HAM) and TV-oriented resolutions/refresh rates (i.e., users needing to buy a "flicker fixer"). It's like they looked at one of the most important reasons for the PC and Mac's success—a gorgeous, rock-solid monochrome display—and said "Let's do exactly the opposite!"
bombcar: I remember arguments (and benchmarks) around all the variations of the 486 since the bus speed/clock speed was uncoupled (the /2 is clock doubling). For some applications, a 50Mhz 486 with a 50Mhz bus would beat a DX/2 66Mhz with a 33Mhz bus.And sometimes the DX/4 100Mhz would be slowest of all those at 25Mhz bus.
gattr: My classmate kept his Amiga 1200 a bit longer! ...eventually he got a PC with Pentium 60 MHz.
einr: Yeah, there were holdouts of course but the DX/2 really seems like the breaking point.(Also, a Pentium 60 is barely faster than a DX/2 66 at many tasks — it is a Bad Processor — but that’s another conversation ;)
Synaesthesia: Pentium is a bad processor? It's way faster than 486, especially on FP it's not even close.
theodorethomas: The 486 and https://www.delorie.com/djgpp/history.html changed everything.Suddenly, it was possible to imagine running advanced software on a PC, and not have to spend 25,000 USD on a workstation.
Sheeplator: Nearly correct. The DX/4 100MHz had a 33MHz bus. The DX/4 75MHz had the 25MHz bus. I remember well because I had both.
bombcar: Now I remember being annoyed that it wasn't the DX/3 as it should have been!
whizzter: Iirc interlaced display and 6 bitplanes were a compromise to allow color graphics in 1985 with the memory bandwidths available at the time.If it's a sin or feature can of course be debated but I remember playing games on an Amiga in the early 90s and until Doom the graphics capabilities didn't look outdated.By 1992 with AGA however I agree, flicker and planar graphics(with 8 bitplanes any total memory bandwidth gains were gone) was a downside/sin that should've been fixed to stay relevant.
