Was Socket 4 ever practical?

Having recently upgraded my Pentium to 66MHz I started to wonder, was Socket 4 ever really a good idea? Socket 4 is known to have been costly and sometimes problematic. These days they are rare and often expensive while the 66MHz models are almost never seen, so we can assume the 60MHz model and the more abundant 486 platform outsold them significantly, but did the people making these purchases in the 1990s make the right choice?

Another point to consider is that later in the lifespan of Socket 4, applications were being optimized for Pentium chips as opposed to the 486. This is part of the reason Quake does so well on this system.

Also, the power consumption may seem a little high, but at the time the Hard Drive would have probably used a large chunk of the power and the other components in the system would have added up to make this rather negligible.

Here are the InfoWorld articles I mentioned in the video. Firstly, the ZEOS Pantera system I used as a reference for the prices;

And also, the Intel Price Drop article from earlier that year;

Outside of what I say in this video, there are more reasons for and against each platform.

As a last note... Kiiiiiiiillllll Frenzy!!!!!!!
I once played this sound, along with the theme from the original GTA, Da Shootaz - Joyride, when playing GTA IV... Nobody recognized it. This made me very sad, then it made me feel old.

[WaybackTECH]

First off, I know what that board is... you lucky son of a.... I hate you now! I hope you have your typical luck and it blows up! j/k :) That is a very nice score my friend. Looking forward to your overview of it!

I think the perception of the first Pentium was they were garbage ( fdiv bug and the "quirks" you mentioned ) and better off with a 486/66. From a benchmark standpoint, the Pentium looks better than a 486, in some cases. I think your Socket 4 is performing slightly better than mine, but I will need to look at that again but I need to look at that again with a better video card.

Personally if someone asked me what a good 95/98 video card was, and we were talking about a PCI bus card, I would recommend the TNT because overall it is a great kick ass card. If someone was looking to run a Voodoo, then Cirrus / Trio / Mach64 would be my recommendation.

I have done tests with the M919 boards that I have, those are rare here in the US for whatever reason now days, but anyway the CACHE module make little to no real improvement, at least when paired with an AMD 5x86-133. I don't know if that is true with all UMC 8886 boards, but it is like UMC optimized the chipset for cacheless setups. Further testing will need to be done to see if that holds true or if it is just the M919. The one thing I love about the M919 is the Cyrix 586 cache option in the bios.

Didn't know you had dogs and a bird! I never knew those birds lived that long either.

[MrKillswitch]

Subbed, I like your style unlike the other guy shoving sata drives on a 486 ect. Got two batman boards that both have ps2 ports and both work (haven't gotten around to using anything with that shitty onboard ide). Just need the crap to use them in modern atx cases because there are simply no AT cases that I can buy for them. :/

Going to dump a voodoo rush in one just for kicks and one of the boards has an interesting pcb color that kinda goes well with modern crap anyway.

[RetroSwim]

Of course, it's not a 6 MHz increase, it's so an increase. More inline with the results you're seeing. This is a great video though, totally my jam. :D

[Ascyltos]

First PC I ever had was a Pentium 60.

Fast compared to a 486, but ran super hot and unstable.

[Gnrlvulcan]

i 100% agree with you on TDP. Has always been a garbage metric.

[Oliver-----Realnotfake]

I've installed XP on it as an experiment in an 86box emulator lmao 🤣

Though I do acknowledge the system requirements, any P5 with 64 megs is getting the xp torture by me (in emulation, I don't have the boards)