Category: 1990
-
End-user Pentium and SIMM prices in the 1990s
People buy a computer today because they have a problem that needs to be solved today, or in the near future. If today’s computer is good enough to solve today’s problem, then any expectation of the next generation being substantially faster is irrelevant. If a cpu manufacturer (e.g., Intel) knows that the next generation, available…
-
Advertised prices of desktop computers during the 1990s
The 1990s was a decade of dramatic improvements in desktop computer capacity and performance. The difference in performance between the newest and current systems was clearly visible from the rate at which compiler messages zipped up the screen. How did the price of these desktop systems change during this period? Magazine adverts are sometimes the…
-
Relative performance of computers since the 1990s
What was the range of performance of desktop’ish computers introduced since the 1990s, and what was the annual rate of performance increase (answers for earlier computers)? Microcomputers based on Intel’s x86 family was decimating most non-niche cpu families by the early 1990s. During this cpu transition a shift to a new benchmark suite followed a…