alt Hacker NewsThe original Pentiums (socket 4, 60 or 66 MHz) had the infamous floating point division bug, had underwhelming perf for anything not FP bound (most things), ran hot, and were too expensive for what you got. A DX/4 100 was nearly always a more rational choice.
Second gen Pentiums, starting with the 75 MHz, were great.
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whaleofatw2022 • yesterday at 3:12 PM
Idk if the 75 was really that great tho, mostly in that it had a 50Mhz FSB rather than 60 or 66Mhz like most other parts.
Another factor for the later P1s being better IIRC was improved chipsets.
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TheAmazingRace • yesterday at 3:09 PM
It didn't help that the earliest P5 Pentiums ran on a 5V rail. Newer revisions starting with the P54 core used 3.3V and helped with keeping the chips cool.
I had a P60 that had the F0 0F bug; Windows would crash for weird reasons on it, but Linux ran like a champ because it actually had a workaround. Luckily my chip was already recalled for the FDIV bug so it wasn't a total boat anchor. Loved that machine. I had BeOS, QNX, and one time I made Linux look like Solaris with all the Open Look stuff - really enjoyed that aesthetic.
Now we have these amazing displays and graphics cards and there's literally no way to make my Mac have different window titlebars or anything. So boring