Got given a 486-100 today, what's the speed like compared to a p90?

[invictius]

Would be interesting to underclock it to a 1994-era speed just to remember how slow doom was back in the day. Oh, and to try some doom2.exe wads, just to see if there are any contemporary ones that will actually run ok in it. I think I recall even a pentium 66 being able to outpace a 486-100?

[Csonicgo]

The P90 blows the doors off the 486 DX2 in my experience - especially one with additional L2 Cache. You can get similar performance if you have at least 64 KB L2. I recommend 256K at the least, that way there will be no doubt concerning performance.

[Linguica]

Take a look for yourself: https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/misc/doombench.html

A 486-100 appears to run Doom about 20% slower than a Pentium-90. Looks like it was around the same level as a Pentium-75.

A 486 DX2-66 is about the slowest CPU that could maybe run Doom at full speed, which sounds about right.

[Linguica]

Also, I'd be interested in hearing of the experience of running BTSX- I bet it takes ages for the game to load at all.

[invictius]

Linguica said:

Also, I'd be interested in hearing of the experience of running BTSX- I bet it takes ages for the game to load at all.

I tried it a while ago on a p166 and it was pretty bad. It did load and I was able to move around the level without crashing though.

[Remilia Scarlet]

My first computer that didn't hook into a TV had a AMD 486 DX4-100 with... 48MB RAM I think? I can't remember the exact amount of RAM, but it definitely had that 486 - it's sitting on a shelf in front of me.

From what I remember, it was (slowly) able to play Quake. Doom, Duke3d, ROTT, and the like all went full-speed or close to it. Boom ran mostly well, with a few hiccups on some more complex maps.

[Linguica]

invictius said:

I tried it a while ago on a p166 and it was pretty bad. It did load and I was able to move around the level without crashing though.

Yeah, once it's loaded I'm sure it's fine, but the majority of the initial load time on old computers (you know, the Init Refresh Daemon or whatever with the crawling dots) is from going through and flattening all the textures, and BTSX has approximately a billion of them.

[Clonehunter]

The P90 excels at close to mid range combat. I dropped about thirty tangos with one before my 360 no-scoping days in the US Navy Seals Corp. Took one mag. Their crummy AKs couldn't keep up with how fast I was spitting bullets. They also looked cool in Stargate SG-1.