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Is it about time for later Pentiums to be considered vintage?

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computerdude92

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Hi guys,

I was thinking, since it's 2022 and Socket 4, 5, and 7 Pentium systems are now over 20 years old, should the later Pentiums, being the Pentium II and III (And possibly the Pentium 4) finally have a forum section of their own? (Don't forget the Athlons too!)

Just like cars and clothes, I would consider anything in the world that is 20 years and older to be vintage in my opinion.
 
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The DMV would disagree and consider any vehicle over 25 years old "classic/antique". I am all for waiting on the pentium 4's... waiting until they have all been thrown away... because they are so unremarkable. ITs a sad sad time when anyone has any good feelings for a pentium 4.... just mediocre. Thats like saying the same thing about the intel atom processor..
 
I've used Northwood P4's and they really are not bad performers. Prescotts are still in the ballpark, but Willamettes suck. I once used a 1.5GHz Willamette P4 system with SDRAM and it felt sluggish even right after a clean install of XP SP2. No such case with 1GHz PIII XP systems... they run smooth.
 
Depends on your needs. Industrial systems still use it when legacy peripherals are needed (e.g. Show me a Core i7 motherboard with ISA slots and integrated IDE and floppy controller). Runs Debian Bullseye 32 bit just fine. So "obsolescent" perhaps, but also top of the 32-bit CPU line, I'd say.
 
I would go as far as say the top of Intel's 32-bit line was the Pentium M 780 running at 2.27 GHz. I have seen Dell Latitude D610's with this chip and 2GB RAM run Windows 7 with acceptable performance. Faster than the top of the line single-core 32-bit Prescotts.

Core and Core 2 built on Pentium M, which itself built on Pentium III, relegating NetBurst to the circular file. Core2Quad Q6600 at 2.4 whips the pants off a dual socket dual core Dempsey Xeon 5080 at 3.733 GHz. (Been there, benchmarked that).

I don't have enough experience with the 32-bit only Atoms to know if any come close to Pentium M 780.

EDIT: As far as desktop/server 32-bit CPUs go, I am still pleasantly surprised how well my old 1 RU IBM xSeries 330 server with dual Pentium III-S 1.4GHz Tualatins and a full 4GB of RAM performs.
 
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The bigger issue, I'd say (and this would affect, for example, AMD Slot A/Socket A Athlons) would be "when will modern 32-bit OSes/applications no longer be available?"
 
Loving the P4 hate. This P4 3.2GHZ HT runs modern 32-bit Linux sweeeeet!!!!

The lastest version of MS Windows I use on any of my systems these day is Windows for Workgroups 3.11
 
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NetBSD/i386 will run on a 486.

EDIT I use NetBSD as a bit of a benchmark that is old yet modern; the tagline is 'of course it runs NetBSD!' for a reason. Even NetBSD/VAX is at the current version, 9.2, released in 2021. So when NetBSD stops supporting it, it's done for, thus my use of it as a benchmark of sorts
 
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DeltaDon said:
P4 mobile chips were based upon the P3.
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Thanks for that info. I picked up a wee 2oo5ish HP Media Center with a Mobile Celeron 1.6GHz cpu in it. Also an earlier by 4 year Pentium M 1.6GHZ cpu. It'll be interesting to see how they compare. The later Celeron M seems to have more cache than the older Pentium M so I suspect it will be a bit snappier all round though.
 
Caluser2000 said:
They run modern 32-bit Linux just fine as well.

As do early Pentium Pros.
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Well, I don't think that's true for out-of-the-box standard distros. Something about lacking the CMOV instruction. Similarly, they won't run modern browsers, which appear to depend heavily upon SSE2 instructions. I can run FF on Bullseye or Win7 on a P4, but not a P3 or earlier. Of course, the NetBSD claim of "Of course, it runs NetBSD" hasn't really been true for awhile, has it?
 
lowen said:
NetBSD/i386 will run on a 486.
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So I understand. I'm exploring the various BSDs now. OpenBSD xorg didn't like the pci MM II video card on my K6-2 400 rig. though. The NetBSD installation went though ok but just needed a few xorg tweeks. Any FreeBSD variants wouldn't even get to the installation phase.
 
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