AMD 386DX-40 - When AMD had the fastest processor

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[@MrHeem94]

"Remember when AMD had the fastest processor?" Yeah i do. Several times.

[@alexc8992]

Isn't that rn?

[@Mdudeman13]

Alex C Yep m.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

[@mememaster147]

I 'member when DEC had the fastest processor...

[@Microwave414]

@@alexc8992 They pretty much are. The only one caveat that intel BARELY edges out is gaming and I do mean barely and honestly the only way I think it would 'help' is making loading screens go faster which well I'm on a ryzen 2700x and I already don't notice loading screens already so I can't imagine the newer chipset's loading times.

[@TuskForce]

@@Microwave414 they (Intel) do but the power draw is huuge

[@atecep]

Yes, I remember when AMD launched the R9 3900X... What a time...

[@konstantinliebich9427]

Even the Zen2 R7s are faster...

[@Nagizak1]

@Brad Viviviyal ahh yess i also remember when intel making promises to go to 10nm and it never happens what a good time

[@cyancoyote7366]

"When AMD had the fastest processor" You mean now?

[@gremfive4246]

I dont think any of them hit 5+ GHz without LN2

[@JesusMeza3]

@@gremfive4246 I guess the FX-9590 is a beast then

[@sonic344ify]

Again idiot amd fanboys lol.Their new 3000 series which is already maxed out out of the box at 4.3 ghz is still slower than a mildly overclocked 4790k 4th gen proccesor lol.Gluing chiplets together with the infinity fabric allows you to add more cores but those cores are slow.An 8 core 3700x at its max 4.3 is still slower in most games compared to a 4 core 4790k at 4.7 ghz.Amd hasn't even caught up yet.The only rhing that ryzen has many cores.

[@sonic344ify]

@@JesusMeza3 The fx is an 8 core that scores 800 in cinebench r15 multicore at 5ghz while an i5 2500k with 4cores when overclocked scores 700.Lol.

[@sonic344ify]

@@jdgshsjchdjejkd545 Intel's 14nm++++($+#+ is still faster in gaming clock for clock compared to tsmc's 7nm.But the chip amd maxes out at 4.3 while intel goes up to 5.1 on air.

[@matilija]

Ah, the good old days, when 1 MB of ram cost about $95 USD...………….takes me back.

[@UltimateAlgorithm]

Is that 95 old dollar or adjusted for inflation?

[@matilija]

@@UltimateAlgorithm Old dollars, adjusted for inflation it would be closer to 130-140 dollars today.

[@UltimateAlgorithm]

@@matilija wow that is very expensive. Most PC builders including me complained last year when RAM price is high. Knowing this makes you realize how expensive computers back then.

[@matilija]

@@UltimateAlgorithm Indeed, computers have actually become very cheap considering how far they have advanced over the years. Basically a computer that would have cost about 2k back in 1994 is outperformed by a $120 raspberry pi today...……...

[@UltimateAlgorithm]

@@matilija raspberry pi is below 100 usd. They are around 35 usd for the base model of 1 GB of RAM if I'm correct.

[@fullmetaljacket7]

Retro stuff, finally! yay!

[@CristiBucerzan]

About fuckin time :p

[@MrSamadolfo]

😍👍

[@MrSamadolfo]

@@CristiBucerzan 😏 yup

[@deeloc5500]

oh yeee baby ! retro luv

[@GuybrushThriftweed]

Retro luv baby! My daily retro driver is the AMD 386DX-40 :) Back in the days, I had a 386dx-33 and had so much fun with it. Can't remember what sound card,gpu,....was in. Only the brand In remember. I have a soft spot for 386, that's why I have built this dx-40 with gotek, sd card,tseng et4000ax and a sb pro2. Nice review Phil,u tested almost every game I played!

[@edm3184]

Thanks for making me feel old.. haha had one of those at work..!

[@RandomlyDrumming]

I do remember - for example, my Ryzen 9 3900x kicks the sh*t out of pretty much anything Intel has to offer in the same or similar price range... :D In all seriousness, back in a day (90's), I had mostly AMD CPUs (K5, K6, K6-2, K7). I briefly switched to Intel during the Core2 era, but I'm back, supporting the Red Team. :)

[@RandomlyDrumming]

@@timothybilotta8090 And the best part of that story is - I still have most of the hardware I ever used in a working condition (Amstrad CPC 464, C64 and Amiga 500 are all well and running fine). Currently on my desk, right next to the machine I'm typing this on, is a 486DX4 @ 100Mhz and 16MB RAM (yeah, Intel, I know :D). In the next room, sitting by my wife's PC, is a Pentium II 266Mhz, 64MB RAM and Voodoo2 SLI) :) So yeah, I am retro :D

[@MrSamadolfo]

😊 i still mostly pu Core2 laptops & desktops to gift them to my family in latin america

[@LionWithTheLamb]

I like them better when they were team Green. Now that's Nvidia I suppose.

[@howaboutsomesoyfood]

3 years later, I'm still team red. have always had AMD cpus except in a couple laptops

[@Felix-ve9hs]

AMD Athlon 64 - When AMD had the fastest processor *again*

[@rallyscoot]

Sure before that the AMD Thunderbird processors where also the fastest.. They where much faster then the Pentium III`s.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

I think the original K6-200 may have been the fastest for a few weeks, if you ignored the Pentium Pro, which was a workstation/server platform. The Pro was also arguably slower at 16-bit tasks than the regular Pentium. The Pentium II came out a month or so after the K6 and ended the performance comparison issue for two years until the original Athlon came along.

[@Reloaded2111]

Ryzen Zen 2 series processors - AMD *AGAIN* surpasses Intel in terms of both speed and core count.

[@wishusknight3009]

@@dycedargselderbrother5353 K6 didn't beat the MMX. Its FPU was just too slow.

[@wishusknight3009]

The AMD DX 40 came out after the intel 486 33, which blows it out of the water. AMD had the fastest 386, but by no means the fastest at the time.

[@travisbeamon5356]

a 386 build is my ultimate nostalgia build. Thank you for the video!

[@obsoletegeek]

Hey, stranger!

[@alexpadillayt]

It's funny that AMD is now beating Intel today 🙌

[@TheRealCatof]

It's funny how the 9900k overclocked gets 30% more fps in games than the 3900x overclocked lol

[@woodiemarv]

@@TheRealCatof only in games everything else in gets a beat down.

[@Dr.WhetFarts]

@@woodiemarv nope, tons of applications run better on 9900k. stop looking at synthetics, like cinebench, please.

[@konstantinliebich9427]

@@TheRealCatof How come even the R7 3700X is beating the i9 9900k as soon as you start streaming the games.,..? Well the i9 can boost up to 4,9Ghz... which makes it the better Dual-Core. Once you use it as the 8Core 16Thread prozessor it is sold as both have an base clock of 3,6 Ghz and Zen 2 has the higher IPC.

[@TheRealCatof]

@@konstantinliebich9427 streaming is gay, who cares?

[@ytfanlingeric]

It is amazing that those components have been kept in such perfect conditions.

[@szpynda]

Ach, greate video! It was beautiful time. My first comp AMD486DX4/100MHz/4MB RAM and 40MB HDD. Wonderfull time.

[@Felix-ve9hs]

Today the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X has 8MB of L2 and 64MB of L3 Cache 😂 Imagine running DOS just off your L3 Cache ...

[@AndreiNeacsu]

@@Felix-ve9hs The Ryzen L3 cache is an exclusion cache, also called victim cache. Thus, it can never work as RAM. You could, in principle, do this with an FX 8xxx CPU that had an L2+L3 config. of 8+8 MB; however, the motherbord and BIOS need to feature 8 MB of RAM too and be especially configured for this purpose. While this second option is possible in principle, it is unrealistic.

[@fullmetaljacket7]

@@Felix-ve9hs dos? I was running windows 95 with 8 megs of ram back in the day lol

[@CMOS4081]

I miss my AMD K6-2 and K6-3. I remember the AMD i386 being used in different networking gear we had at work.

[@keenhauberk]

No, i had an AMD K6-II 400 MHz, that was crap. After that i had an AMD Thunderbird C 1000 MHz, that was really amazing at this time. This was the fastest processor on market. Intel had as fastest model a 866 MHz Pentium III in the same time.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

Hey Phill, i'm happy you still offer real old retro-stuff from time to time. You offer a good mix from previous-gen multicore budget builts to real old stuff like this. Thank you!

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks, that means a lot!

[@jerrywatson1958]

I was 33 years old back then. My personal computer at the time was the Commodore Amiga 500+ with 40MB scis HD. That year I bought a Amiga 2000 with a PC card (386). I upgraded that to a Motorola 68020 for the main cpu, I ran Apple, and MS DOS, all in windows on the Amiga workbench desktop. I swore at the time it was the future of home computing. No matter which environment you worked in you could do it on an Amiga. I loved Deluxe Paint and that NewTek capture card from back in the day. I did a lot of work on that baby back then. Love your work Phil, stay passionate about what you do. I for one will continue to support your choices in topics to cover. To me it's all good! Thanks again for all you do.

[@mbe102]

Lower Framerate Doom makes it feel like Doom 3, where as high frame rate makes it feel like Doom 2016

[@MrTomas7777]

Ironically, Doom 3 is older (graphically less demanding) so it runs at an higher framerate than Doom 2016

[@ThePsychoticWombat]

@@MrTomas7777 Doom 3 does have a 60FPS cap though

[@fungo6631]

@Shrug More like an ATI tech demo. When it wa first unveiled it ran on a Radeon 9700.

[@TheBigupz]

watchin almost 30 year old machines, in 4k 60fps, what a time to be a live, i was still to young to understand machines like this, so i love watching this videos

[@mattyclad9185]

A processor that didn't need cooling? What kind of witchcraft is this? 😱😵

[@carsonGoodwin16]

A lot of processors don’t need active cooling

[@bdhale34]

@@carsonGoodwin16 I can run my Athlon II x4 635 overclocked to 3.85GHz passively not even anything exotic heatsink wise Zalman CNPS5X Performa tower cooler runs at about 60c max with the fan unplugged (56 with the fan and shroud removed) and around 45 with the fan running.

[@warrax111]

passive cooler is already cooling.

[@warrax111]

raspberry pi also don't need cooling, and it outperform 386 :)

[@michaeleriksson644]

Really nice to see. Mine was fully kitted with 8MB RAM and additional CO-processor.

[@futurepastnow]

Retro content videos are how I found your channel so they're what I visit to see. I find reviews of new stuff interesting, too, but everyone does those.

[@realRichHunting]

Wow... this brings back memories from when I was a kid. My first PC was a Tandy 386sx with 4MB of RAM, 85MB HDD, 4bit color video, and a 14.4k modem. I built it when I was 12 years old so I could get on AOL 2.0. lol Crazy how much has changed in 25 years.

[@flecom5309]

used a 386DX-33 for many years, remember adding a creative labs multimedia kit, came with a sound blaster pro and a 1x caddy loading cd-rom drive, many great memories on that thing (still have most of it)... enjoy all your videos, even the newer xeon stuff (I am still rocking a 1366 xeon setup at home, and a dual 1366 workstation at work)

[@Jwalker76]

This brings back memories. My grand father had a 286 back in the day and we eventually got a 386 sx 16mhz computer from my uncle who had just upgraded to a 486. My brother started working as a computer tech in the 90s and got hold of a cheap amd 586. I had alot of the games you showed in this video and it makes me want to play them again. Hmm may have to look into a retro gaming system. :)

[@philscomputerlab]

It's a fun hobby, but gets addictive :D

[@CiroAMD]

You have one of the best hardware channels! I love you retro videos, I can't wait to see a Season 3 of AMD vs intel! Greetings from Brazil!

[@ziaglw]

I love such retro videos! I finally built a 486 after searching months for working parts and an authentic case.

[@barowt]

Makes me happy they're back on top with the new Ryzen stuff, proud to be a shareholder!

[@hansoak3664]

The AMD 386DX-40... My absolute favorite board and CPU of all time. I miss mine. Thank you for the wonderful memories.

[@emperorSbraz]

you can properly do the corkscrew in stunt.exe you have my respect. :D

[@rhyzon]

I was there, 3000 years ago...

[@xDownSetx]

And now we're there and back again

[@barbunicolae2711]

Amazing retro video! Thank you very much! Keep doing what you love!

[@raulrrodriguez7552]

I first learned computing on a 386, it was a lot of fun back then. So many software and hardware options to try out. Kind of like the wild, wild west : )

[@frshunter]

I had one of these upgrading from a 286 and really brought back the memories. Those games especially Lemmings and Stunt Driver I forgot all about!

[@LutzHeidbrink]

The 386/40 was my first PC and of course I had all the games shown in the video. Stunts aka 4D Sports Driving was one of my favorite, same with 4D Sports Tennis. Coming from a C64 before that were insane real 3d graphics. ahh the good times.

[@slashtiger1]

I LOVE the memory test sound on this BIOS. Back in the 80386 era, I had a computer with a strikingly similar BIOS which also had the same sound during the memory test. And when I maxed the memory out, I remember it going on forever and thinking: oh wow, now I do have an absolute tonne of memory...! And this type of BIOS must have been popular, because at a certain point in time I had to have the mainboard replaced. The computer's supplier went ahead and upgraded me to a 80486DX(!) at no additional charge (i.e. just the factored cost of repair, but the plan was to just replace the mainboard like-for-like). And that mainboard _also_ had this kind of BIOS, just with a feature set tailored to the 80486. I can remember being totally blown away by the MASSIVE speed difference from an 80386SX to an 80486DX. The former also ran at 33MHz, whereas the latter ran at 66MHz (I believe), which I did eventually upgrade to 100MHz.

[@envoycdx]

Loved it. My first PC was a AMD 386 DX40 with 8meg of ram and a 120mb HDD back in 1995. Broke it, replaced the board with a SX25 and didn't half notice the difference. Spent months saving to afford a 486 DX33 setup after that and progressed from there. Always enjoy playing with older hardware even now.

[@2007tantrum]

Happy to see retro video on this channel. Watched it all. Like

[@EternalxFrost]

I miss my old 386... the same exact CPU (DXL-40) and a pretty similar motherboard, came in with 4 MB of RAM, that I upgraded later to 32 MB, for fun.. Been given to me back then by a computer teacher, back in high school. It had everything to it: keyboard, mouse, joystick, printer, CRT monitor, a fuckton of 5.25 and 3.5 inches disks filled of games and progs. Had a Seagate 130.7 MB in it, with a 2 MB video card and an Adlib sound card, with the knob in the I/O panel of the card. Had DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.10 (single-user) installed, with already loads of stuff installed, like Automenu, Lotus 1-2-3, Quattro Pro, Reflex, etc. Good ole' times

[@3800S1]

I have fond memories of this era AMD CPUs. I just started high school and got into building PCs. I used to scrounge for old hardware from the local computer stores and my school. The AMD stuff was really rare in my area and one store chucked a whole skip bin full of boards with CPUs still in them. It was like gold finding the only AMD cpu out of the 100s of intel stuff which all were 386 and 486s. I found an AMD 586 133 that worked in 486 boards.

[@dangoldbach6570]

Digging the turbo 3800 logo

[@3800S1]

@@dangoldbach6570 Thanks! I love a good buick 6.

[@Nine-Signs]

My secondary school (1993 to 1998) had a computer repair store across the street from it, they kept a skip out front. I was a very happy child. My mother not so much given the boxes of "junk" I would come home with :) So much of it I should have kept but you never think to do so at the time.

[@kami4542]

Nice 386 video !! Even though prices are out of control now it's really cool to see you talking about it again :D (especially for those who can't afford this stuff like me xD)

[@jasejj]

My first PC clone was built around a DX40... I used it because it gave 486-like performance at a much lower price. I never felt short-changed by it as a Computer Science student in the early 1990s, eventually replacing it with an SGS 486DX2-80 when the price of those processors fell through the floor and it made sense to upgrade as a poor student :)

[@UpLateGeek]

We had an Intel 386DX-33 clone when I was growing up. Definitely played a lot of Wolfenstein and that stunt game back in the day, not to mention Monkey Island 2. We got a "multimedia" upgrade package that included an AdLib card and a CD-ROM drive that used a proprietary interface with two ribbon cables to the sound card. The AdLib card was relatively easy to use, since a lot of games supported it without drivers, but the CD drive took ages to figure out how to get it working! Now I've got a collection of vintage machines, I'm really missing that old 386. It's a massive gap in my collection, so I'm really sad we didn't keep it around. On the other hand, my parents are packing up to move house, so you never know what they might find in the loft. Great video as always, always love the retro stuff!

[@ceejay2k2]

Great video! My first PC was powered by the 386-DX40 which I got back in late 93. I remember it wasn't great for gaming, about 1½ year later it got upgraded with a new motherboard and a 486-DX4-100, that thing was a beast compared to the 386 lol and gaming actually turned into a good experience.

[@saintuk70]

Great video, right at the cusp I was moving from Amiga to PC back in the day.

[@bleachwolf6936]

We need more vids like these. These parts are iconic

[@sebretrocave4588]

Hi Phil, your retro videos are the best, i think also you have a perfect voice even for singing :)

[@michaelturpen5159]

The Am386DX-40/Cx387DX-40 combo holds so much nostalgia for me. That 286-to-386 leap was amazing; it seems like it is the most important development in x86 computing to date.

[@jeremygeorgia4943]

Overclocking was so easy, during the Socket 7 days. You just flipped a DIP switch & asked your 500Mhz K6III, if it could give you 50 more MHZ, and it complied. You didn't even need a cooling fan, but you could use one if you wanted to.

[@melvinrobinson4700]

I went from an Intel 386SX-20 MHz no cache my 1st motherboard. Next one was AMD Am486DX-120MHz clock tripled 40MHz bus. I loved how AMD kept extending CPU performance when Intel would jump to another architecture altogether. Nowadays, I am building a PC from scratch using the fastest 80286 known to exist: A 25MHz Harris Semiconductor 80286.

[@erazorCTF]

I had an AMD 368-DX 40, exactly the model you showed here, the ceramic one. And I even also had a Tseng ET4000 running with it. The soundcard was an Adlib-Card though, so only music. Effects came from the internal speaker of the PC.

[@LordAlacorn]

Good to see real Phil is back, I hope you took care of that imposter. ;)

[@briangleeson1528]

What a great video! My first PC was a 386sx-40 with 4MB of RAM. I remember playing Doom shareware and Wolfenstein. We upgraded that machine with a sound card and 4x CD-ROM. I am currently working on building a 386dx-40. I am jealous of your motherboard, good affordable ones are hard to find. I would be interested in seeing a math co-processor video or a 486 comparison would be cool. Keep up the good work, Phil.

[@RCjesus.David.2581]

You get me with Retro stuff like this. 10year old or newer just doesn't get me when i'm not in computer mood, like it is in Summer. You do it right if you say you do what you want to do!

[@AndrewTubbiolo]

I loved this processor. I rant a Linux machine for email and web service for years. A AMD 386 DX 40 and a Weitek match co-pro and 8 meg ram make this a Sun class work station. I even ran Openlook as the window manager. It ran like a Sun Sparc 5. This processor and the AMD 5x86 DX 133 (overclocked to 140) were my favorite PC processors of the era. Fun days.

[@robervaldo4633]

My first x86 was an AMD 386DX40, I remember paying about U$40 per megabyte of RAM for adding 4Mb extra (8Mb total), and also about U$40 for a 487DLC, my motherboard wasn't as good as this one, though. At the time it was fun, but I don't miss a lot of those times. So much time figuring things out and configuring and working around problems... the HDs of the time didn't even come with readahead enabled, after enabling that you'd get a big performance boost from the HD, but such information was nowhere, you had to fiddle endlessly to learn it... configuring IRQs and IO addresses, resolving hardware conflicts, freeing high/extended memory, failing floppy disks, etc., etc. everything set up by hand and case by case... a lot of time spent fiddling just to run a piece of software... Up until last year I actually even had the board, a Soundblaster Pro 2, a few videoboards, some modems, collecting dust, but finally took them to an electronics recycling/disposal center. 🙂 Anyway, I'm glad there are people like you who got the space and will to store all this parts in good condition, put it together and record such a nice video and publish computer history for everyone. Great work! Thanks!

[@lemontangs]

Loving your testing board Phil. Gold!

[@user-js4qu5ck4o]

That was my second CPU!

[@deeloc5500]

It was my first cpu :D

[@JT-ko2ib]

Great upgrade from the aging Nehalem.

[@Viking8888]

What a walk down memory lane! Nice video Phil.

[@dougjohnson4266]

I had a ZEOS 386SX and it worked well. Thanks for your web site and this video.

[@cookieboy5300]

I remember these and the history, thanks as always for the walk down memory lane :)

[@danielberrett2179]

Great Video again. Thank you. I enjoy both retro and modern (all) of your videos!

[@lucasesilva3294]

I from Brazil and My fist Computer in 1994 was Intel 486 dx 2 - 66Mhz with 4MB of RAM, GPu was Trident with 1MB, I was 13 years old. Later 1996 I did my fist upgrade to AMD 586 133Mhz with 8MB of RAm and Sound Creative labs 16bits. I remember old games ... Prince of Persia, Stunts, The Dig, Day of tentacles, Fulltrottle, Wolfstein 3D and Doom.

[@lucaspam]

The 386 was the platform that really made people consider the IBM PC as a gaming platform, after many years of subpar pc gaming software.

[@soylentgreenb]

Yea; and the games. A fast 286; maybe a 16 - 25 MHz harris with a decent cirrus logic card (no PC so slow an driving an OAK stake through the heart of it can’t slow it down further); was graphically capable of being quite impressive; but most games still only supported PC speaker. Around 386DX-40 is when good games like wolfenstein 3D and ultima underworld came out; sound blasters became standard; diskette swapping on Amiga became unbearable and PCs became affordable.

[@classic_jam]

Yes! Retro! Love the new content as well, but so many other channels have similar stuff so it's nice to see the retro again!

[@dervsoh2468]

OMG, just this was my first self built PC in 1995 :) 386DX-40 from AMD, 4 MB RAM, no math copro, 120 MB HDD, and even a 2x CD-ROM drive. No idea what video card, but i had a beast of sound card: a gravis ultrasound max. Playing DOS-Games was pure fun.

[@johnspeaks7841]

love the retro computing, more of them please!!

[@MrSnapy1]

Amd has had the fastest cpu a couple of times. Like currently the 3900x is not only faster but much cheaper.

[@magburner]

Faster than what?? My 9900K runs at 5ghz.

[@Dr.WhetFarts]

3900x cheap? lol, no and it's barely in stock anywhere. also, the 9900k beats 3900x in tons of stuff. games and emulation for example. tons of real world applications too.

[@MrSnapy1]

The AMD Flagship is yet to be released...

[@bdhale34]

@@Dr.WhetFarts Games and emulating game consoles, PC and other types of Emulations not so much.. tons of real world apps.. like photoshop... and any workload that doesn't exceed a 30-45 second load on the CPU. Anything at all that has a sustained load on the chip the 9900k gets roflstomped hard. It's not even close even the 3700x is beating it at everything except the gaming and the short workloads and photo editing..

[@MrSamadolfo]

😱 omgawd! now thats a real throwback on the outback 😍 my first desktop that my parents gifted me was a 286 😇 i dont remember how it looked inside but i imagine it looks like a 386, but im not sure 🍭😊

[@GodOfGamingBG]

You might be forgetting something, its true that Intel 386 was not going up to 40mhz, but when the AMD 386DX-40 came out, Intel already had 486DX-33 and maybe even 486DX-50 out, so the AMD may have been the fastest 386, but it certainly wasnt the fastest processor available, I think that didn't happen till Athlon 1000

[@munxcorp]

It was the fastest x86 that people could actually afford tho :)

[@dadgamer6717]

Wow just like my amiga!

[@SudosFTW]

how interesting timing this is, I just bought a TI 486-50 386 CPU for 7 bucks off eBay. gonna solder it into a Fedex Powership 2 machine made by NEC for FedEx in 92.

[@LiveFreeOrDieDH]

My first computer was very similar to this build, with an AMD 386DX-40 and 4MB RAM. I later installed a Sound Blaster card, CD-ROM drive, and modem myself when I was maybe 12 or 13. Also upgraded the CPU to a Cyrix 486DLC for a marginal speed improvement. Learned a lot back in those days.

[@freefalcon23]

Oh hey, glad to see some more retro videos after the modern ones. Keep up the great work!

[@conyo985]

This is like an LGR episode! It's so retro!

[@edm3184]

I also got one of the first 486DX 50- I had to upgrade the mother board because they discovered this new concept of "video bottleneck" - lol.. and Vesa Local Bus was needed!

[@georgemaragos2378]

Good to see real old hardware, i have never owned a combo board like that 386/486 The closes was the 386/486 with the 2 different types of memory sticks SIMM ( 30 pin or 70 pin ) / SIP / Dim and they all had varying speeds as well. HA HA , i remember that distinctly between 386/486/Pentium 1 , every 6 months i would upgrade the video card due to being to slow and the frame rate being jerky, not even 16 / 20 fps. My first monitor was monocrome ( green ) , then i got CGA, but the old original card created "snow". Upgrade 2 cards, then went the full upgrade to EGA I stayed on EGA for about 5 years until this new game that required VGA was put out - Wolfstein 3d, Yes the biggest reason most people bought VGA was to play this game. Many wifes complained that this free shareware game required pricey new hardware ( and they call cal it run crysis a benchmark ??? ) So once i have wolfstein 3d, i was experience jerky motion and screen tearing, also with 4meg ram and a slow 40Meg IDE hard drive, as you walk up to a corner on new unexplored area the machine paused for a moment while the hardrive fetched the new floor and wall data. So, yes at one stage i kept the 14" VGA monitior for about 6 years, but every 4 to 6 month i would buy a new video card, each model had twice the memory, and faster onboard memory. then Doom 1 was released, back to square 1, this required a faster PC and the 386 SX could not really cope, as phil showed , it was a $$$ machine that ran full screen and high details, i recall for about 12 - 15 months i ran mine on 2 clicks down from max screen size. You could also tell the difference between 386sx and DX, and also 486 SX and DX in playback. These were the day you could pop in floppys and install on machines at work, as i was in a semi government job there was a entire floor of PC's of different specs and age and you quickly worked out which machine to use after hours. We had dos and co-axial lan so running multi player game was possible, i recall the network admin would complain the after hours back up was getting slow on Novell ( from 1 hours to 4 hours ) and eventually found the network traffic was caused by doom, there was a small tool for "sniffing out" doom network packets. Plus all the external modems that would come out and plug into the phone socket for land line dial up gaming Good to see real old hardware, i have never owned a combo board like that 386/486

[@MarkHyde]

Really love this return to the retro format. Great video.

[@TrevorLentz]

Love your channel Phil. I have been watching your videos regularly for a while. Even though I subscribe to way too many tech channels, I have to press that sub button. :)

[@savirien4266]

My AMD systems through the years have always been the more memorable ones. Like when you could unlock the multiplier on the athlons with a pencil.

[@philscomputerlab]

I had a go with this pencil trick, it never worked for me LOL But luckily Athlon and XP CPUs are quite cheap these days :)

[@ugzz]

YES! Another Phils on old hardware, and a gem at that! Man i could watch this stuff all day, i started on a B&W mac, moved to a 16mhz Apple (i think IIc or something), then switched to PC with a 33mhz Pentium, stuck with pentium for a dx66, but then switch to AMD around the 100mhz barrier and rocked that up until a cyrix 300, but i had to get back on the AMD train in the ~500mhz range for that 3DNOW Tech! lol

[@datasoftinc]

Great vid, man!

[@canuck21]

My first PC ever had an AMD 386DX-40 and it was a good performer.

[@deano023]

Back in the day I had an Amstrad 386 with an AMD sx25 processor and 4mb of RAM. It was a tiny little thing with a 40mb HDD. I have many fond memories of that which was my first PC compatible. I remember the old amstrad VGA monitor which handled resolutions up to 800 by 600 and had a very sharp picture for the time. Of course the computer at that resolution could only display 16 colours but it was still pretty impressive. My friend had an old 486 motherboard which we desoldered 4 of the 30 pin SIMM slots and soldered them onto the amstrad motherboard, which only had 4 slots populated and this was obviously done as a cost-cutting measure. Once the extra slots were installed I installed an additional 4mb old memory. You can imagine the look on my parents face when they came home to find the computer that they had bought 8 months before and was still paying off on finance in pieces on my bedroom floor with me and my friend taking a soldering iron to it! At the same time was when I installed an original Sound Blaster. Prior to that I was just using the PC beeper and a parallel port DAC to play some of the old MOD files which I got from my friend who owned an Amiga. I still remember how amazed I was and how good it sounded. Much great nostalgia from those days..

[@joannaatkins822]

I have no idea if it was intel or AMD, but I used to have a 386 desktop when I was eight (23 years ago or perhaps slightly later, maybe two years). Indiana jones, lemmings, and monkey island were the best games! I just had a full on flashback from the sequence you filmed!

[@johnnyxp64]

damn that bios Post sound... Holly crap... you took my back to my 10ylos little me or so... damn.

[@BoomBox02]

Good to see some retro content. I was surprised to see that the way you overclock the cpu on this board is the same as you would overclock many Amiga CPU expansion boards. My Apollo 040 card that is in my Amiga 1200 came standard at 25Mhz. I replaced the 50Mhz crystal and put in an 80Mhz one and have ran the cpu at 40Mhz since the late 90's.

[@DKJones96]

First PC was a 386SX-25 with 2MB of ram. Simpler times then. I have an AMD 386SX-33 and an AMD DX-40 motherboard sitting at home waiting for me to find a case or something to use them. Even have a 486DLC upgrade for the DX!

[@retropcscotland4645]

Do a pentium 90mhz. That was some cpu. I also like the newer tech you have been covering. Good video mate.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

I bought one very soon after it came out. It was also my first overclock: I discovered that it ran at 100 MHz when switching a motherboard jumper. For a few months at least, that was the fastest on the market.

[@blendded6248]

Funny you mention that, I myself have put together a Pentium 90MHz PC a couple months ago. Reason I went for this processor is because I found a really cheap Motherboard-CPU-RAM combo for about 18 dollars ( it contained the CPU, an Intel motherboard with ISA and PCI slots and last but not least, no soldered CMOS batteries or Dallas abominations, just a normal coin battery and finally 16MB of RAM), I went further from there buying a sound card, graphics card, PC case, power supply, IDE controller and of course, a functional set of DOS 6.22 diskettes. I'm only really missing an SD to IDE (or CF to IDE) converter to really take advantage of this beast. I don't have any physical media to use it on and it can be a pain the ass to track down diskettes and CDs of DOS games in a post-eastern block country but I WILL return to it one day. And yeah, I would love to see Phil's take on the Socket 5 Pentiums even if there were only like two of them before Socket 7 replaced it full time.

[@Wushu-viking]

Its great that you do retro and modern hardware. One of the best tech channels

[@soylentgreenb]

I find ~100 MHz a tricky speed grade. Too fast for many games made for DX2-66 and too slow for them many games made for P166.

[@retropcscotland4645]

@@blendded6248 That's awesomee man let me know how you get on with it.

[@MrBreadoflife]

My first IBM Comp. PC had this processor!! ;)

[@johnmijo]

"It just works!" -Phil I wonder what Jensen thinks ;)

[@mauricevde]

Love your working machine phill , awesome !, I have a partly working am386dx40 + math co proc but the bord needs resolder on the memory slots, some pins and plastic broke off.

[@playswithblades]

I felt young again, I was fresh learning hardware system implementation when these systems were brand new tech, we used to say, how can they make this better... and now look at the modern systems. It's a stupid question and a stupid guessing game, computer designers can do just about anthing. Alien tech anyone?

[@billthecat2410]

This sure brings back memories. I was seeing the end of my Atari 520ST and the AMD 40 was my first X86 build. I also got a TSENG video card. Those where a really kick ass video card of the time. I paired it up with a 3DFX daughter card so I got pretty good game speeds. For the games that used it that is. I guess I preferred AMD cpus because I stuck with them for a long long time. Heck, they were cheaper and faster in some builds. Back then you really had to have a hands on approach setting computers up. Finding IRQ's for all the add on cards and it could get pretty tricky if you added a lot and then there are the jumpers... Oh boy the jumpers... Fun days.. These days windows does it all for you, takes some of the fun out of it.

[@francescomengoli6994]

There's some gourgeous pixel art in some of those games

[@jasongooden917]

That's some real old school overclocking. Swapping the crystal on the motherboard...wow.

[@rallyscoot]

Thats no overclocking, thats setting the cpu speed right.

[@blazer666del]

Athlons were faster than Intel many times over the years....

[@TheLassenman]

I had the amd 386, 486 and 586 back in the days. Worked like an charm back then

[@pierregrobbelaar9116]

Back in 1987/88 but dads company upgraded and he got me loads off pc's.There was one that i built up(my first pc ever built)It had 2x386sx 33mhz i added a rizer card for memory.Installed it with 32mb although it could only read 24mb it ran with my friends 486dx2.Man i miss those days where it was still fun to build a pc.Now everything is so simple.It's hard to mess up a build :D

[@DigitalViscosity]

Great accent, I hear german mixed with Aussie very interesting to listen to and great subject matter well explained

[@philscomputerlab]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@GeorgesChannel]

The 386DX40 was my first PC. I loved it...

[@j7m7f]

That was my first PC. More than 30 years ago... It was great back then. Few years later I got AMD 586-133. Then I switched for some Intel but I was back to AMD again later. I remember there was a very good Duron that could be overclocked a lot with a pencil... There were chips a bit more green and other more violet. A guy in a computer store let me choose the most violet out of 4 :) Wonderfull years :)

[@craigkarsten6719]

I had a Intel 386 DX33 setup back around '92 which was the first computer I put to together. I went out and bought a Tseng Labs ET4000 a bit later not just for the speed but for the extra graphical features the drivers enabled for Microsoft Flight Simulator 4. You got a higher resolution and a 747 glass cockpit.

[@phanominon]

My first PC I purchased was a 386 DX40. I had several Trident video cards, sound blaster cards etc. A 256MB WD hard drive. So on. I loved doom though it didn't run well I played it anyways. I still love the 386/486 hardware and still build systems of that era.