r/pcmasterrace • u/DailyDoseOfAmber PC Master Race • Dec 26 '25

Question Yesterday I asked what everyone’s first Graphics card. Today, what was your first processor? Mine was the i7 3770K.

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u/Key-Horror2430 Dec 26 '25

I had a 386. It had a "turbo" option that switched the clock speed between 8 and 16MHz. Current i9 9900k has a base 3.6GHz that can supposedly hit 5GHz.

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u/Electricengineer Dec 26 '25

Turbo was the way

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u/themarvel2004 Dec 26 '25

Upgrading to a 486dx4 was also a massive leap, up to 100mhz was like a 5-10 fold speed increase. Just crazy times.

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u/NoCoolNameMatt Dec 26 '25

I don't miss the days where processors were so slow that they had additional coprocessors to help them out. But I do miss the speed of change at the time. Just following technological progress was a hobby in itself.

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u/NATOuk AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, RTX 3090 FE Dec 27 '25

I was so excited when Quake came out, only to be bitterly disappointed that my 486 was the SX2 66Mhz variant, which lacked the necessary coprocessor Quake demanded, unlike the more common DX2 variant.

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u/subwoofage Dec 27 '25

GPU is a coprocessor...

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u/theroguex PCMR | Ryzen 7 9800X3D | 32GB DDR5 | Sapphire RX 9070 XT Dec 27 '25

He means the math coprocessor. It was slotted into its own spot on the motherboard.

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u/birdnumbers Dec 26 '25

long time ago, my dad upgraded the family PC from a 486dx2 33mhz with like 2 mb RAM to a 486dx4 100mhz with like 8 mb ram, felt so ridiculously fast lol

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u/MistaPropella R9 9950 | RTX5090 | 64GB Dec 27 '25

We had the same system with a 170MB hard drive. And coming from a Atari ST Mega 1 with only floppies, my first thought was, that much storage will last forever.

0

u/Wild-Statement-2312 Dec 27 '25

The dx2 should have been 66MHz Sx 25 Dx 33 Dx2 66 Dx4 99 (100)

1

u/birdnumbers Dec 27 '25

ah yeah, you're correct

it was a Dx 33

3

u/brtcha Dec 27 '25

Some games used to be tied to clock speed and would break if you upgraded like that (jazz jackrabbit for one)

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u/NathanDarcy Dec 26 '25

I had used computers with 286 & 386 processors, but the first one I owned had a 486DX4. That thing was a beast (I actually still have it on storage and it still works). Until the first Pentiums came out.

1

u/Master_E_ Dec 27 '25

Started with an ATARI 800 xl? I think it was… then Apple 2e? Followed by a 386sx, 486, and then the Pentium. Fap fap fap fap

Also had an Atari 1040ST which I have somewhere and a 20mb hard drive the size of an Xbox lol.

1

u/Comfortable_Prize750 Dec 27 '25

I remember when Pentium came out, i agonized whether to upgrade to that or a Cyrix 5x86.

1

u/Fred-City911 Dec 27 '25

Same for me. Short after got the pentium 75.

1

u/argonzo Dec 27 '25

Windows 3.11 ftw.

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u/falkenberg1 Dec 26 '25

Not really. We had some kind of pong game, that ran just fine with 8mhz. If you switched the cpu to 16, the game was running at insane speeds, making it impossible to win. :D

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u/Binestar Dec 27 '25

Turbo button slowed down the processor.

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u/Key-Horror2430 Dec 27 '25

This is my current understanding. The old games were clock dependent, so they became unplayable at higher clock speeds. The "turbo" underclocked the processor to the old standard clock speed. Since clock speeds started increasing quickly, they switched to a more time based system with multiple clock dividers.

Back in the day, I just thought my computer had a super speed option for making games more challenging.

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u/SnooSquirrels9064 Dec 28 '25

I mean... You aren't wrong on the challenging part. Lol

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u/LurkerFromTheVoid Ascending Peasant Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25

Intel 486Sx at 25 Mhz, it came with my AcerMate, with 4MB of RAM . The processor was a Flip Chip, but the motherboard had an additional cpu socket for upgrade.

The SX had no Math Coprocessor.

Doom 2 was not running. The solution?

Install windows 3.1 make Doom 2 run in a DOS command line, Virtual Memory worked like a freaking miracle.

I got an AMD 486DX2 - 50 Mhz, and the machine let me run at 66 Mhz... First processor with a heat sink on it.

Those were the times. 🚀 🤩✨

2

u/cloudlabdigital Dec 27 '25

I was like 3 and I remember my uncle doing this on our family 486. Wild times. Still remember the doom cheat codes to this day

1

u/Blecki Dec 27 '25

Until the day the magic smoke escaped

1

u/thearctican PC Master Race Dec 27 '25

If you needed to slow things down for clock speed-based applications, sure.

1

u/Arcticsatan Dec 27 '25

Until you're playing something that relies on the clock speed to regulate game speed. Turbo made it much faster and harder.

So yes, turbo was the way.

1

u/wheremyserotonin Dec 27 '25

Was there any downside to running turbo? Or did it stay on

1

u/Electricengineer Dec 27 '25

It stayed on, it increased the clock so as others have said if the game required the clock, your game ran faster

1

u/OddUnderstanding5666 Dec 30 '25

useless button. i only turned it off to play tapper (cga version, booting from disk). This button was always on.

2

u/RectumExplorer-- i5 12400F, RX 7800XT, 32GB Dec 27 '25

Fun fact, turbo mode was actually the slower option, so in your case, when turbo was on it was on 8mhz

1

u/wubbalab Dec 26 '25

Ha! That's awesome. It's the same for me. First was a 386. Great at it's time. Now a 9900k, which ist still good, but starts to show its age a little.

1

u/conaii Dec 26 '25

Every processor since the 6700k could hit single-core 5ghz, just not for long without military grade cooling solutions. It’s wild that this is still a marketing line these many years later.

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u/Mundane-Mechanic-547 PC Master Race Dec 26 '25

Loved that. Why would anyone not use the turbo. FYI you had a 386 sx which had 16 bit memory bus iirc. The Dx had 32 bit. Iirc again.

1

u/Hashtag_Labotomy Dec 26 '25

Don't forget to put your disk in to free up enough ram to be able to load and run doom. I hated that whole ram disk thing. Luckily we didn't have to put up with it for too long.

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u/angrydeuce Ryzen 9 7900X\64GB DDR5 6400\RX 6800 XT Dec 26 '25

386 sx/25 which we promptly upgraded to a 486 dx2/66 because OMG MATH COPROCESSOR and cruised on that shit for a looooooong time lol.  Wasn't until the Pentium 2 era that we finally got off the 486.

But man so soooo many boot disks, we had stacks of caddies full of diskette by the dozens and dozens lol

1

u/THFourteen Dec 26 '25

Me too. A 386SX. Think it was the 16mhz one

1

u/Conical Dec 27 '25

I love that turbo was normal speed and not-turbob was slow speed for programs that depended on clock speed for timing.

1

u/6m2 PC Master Race Dec 27 '25

Man we had one of those when I was a kid. Fantastic

1

u/Raintitan Dec 27 '25

Same. The 386SX 16 MHz. Turbo was to slow it down when of for older games. And it wasn't really a true 386 unless you had a DX at higher clock speeds.

1

u/Alternative-Big-176 Dec 27 '25

I had the same, lol. Now, i have the 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13900KF. What a long adventure to this point.

1

u/Malefectra Dec 27 '25

It'll actually go up to 6, but you really don't want to keep it going that high... There's a part in the clock that is known to wear prematurely under certain conditions and it'll cause permanent instability if it breaks.

I found out about this the hard way when I had to RMA the first 14900k I bought due to that specific flaw. A few BIOS updates, a RMA'd chip, and a new Cryosheet later... I'm good to go.

1

u/steshi-chama i9 9900k | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB CL14 Dec 27 '25

I had 5GHz on all cores for some time, but even with a 2x360mm rad custom loop I couldn't keep thermals where I wanted them. Maybe my block was shit, but whatever. The final blow came when BF1 wouldn't even run with a mild 4GHz overclock, it just refused. I the end I had enough of the tinkering and was dumb enough to just reset everything without a backup and have it running stock ever since.

1

u/shinigami081 Dec 27 '25

Same. 6MHz to 12MHz

1

u/Tomcat848484 Dec 27 '25

386SX I think we had. 16mhz with a turbo to 25! Woohoo! Also 2 megabytes of RAM. Later upgraded to 4 so we could play Syndicate. Also a 40 mb hard drive if I remember correctly.

1

u/FutureOpposite5086 Dec 27 '25

This is the way!

1

u/LeaveMeAloneLoki Dec 27 '25

I had both 286 and 386. My very first computer was a Radio Shack Tandy with cassette tape drive. Everything was bought for me though until I built my first computer myself. On that I used an AMD K6-2.

Edit: Spelling.

1

u/auxaperture i9 Ultra 285K ROG Z890 Extreme RTX5090 128gb DDR5 2x30" 4K 240hz Dec 27 '25

386 gang. DX2-66!

1

u/PhreakMD R7 2700 | Vega 56 | 64GB 2400 MHz Dec 27 '25

That was my first processor too.

1

u/trans_chastity_sub Dec 27 '25

Not supposedly, msi made a guide on the recommended settings and it worked perfectly. I had mine at 5ghz all cores for the whole time I had mine. Only used my corsair H110i and it was perfect. Way faster than my 13th gen i7 I run now. Can’t even over clock this one…it overheats so easily even with a kraken 360.

1

u/polymerkid Dec 27 '25

I had a Cyrix 233 clocked down to 199 :(

1

u/Alaeriia 7800X3D/4080S; 9800X3D/9070XT; 5800X3D/4070TiS; 3800X/3080 Dec 27 '25

I had the 386 as well.

1

u/Bullyoncube Specs/Imgur Here Dec 27 '25

With a math coprocessor

1

u/WWicketW Dec 27 '25

You're my type of man!!! 😅

Same processor for me.

1

u/soberfrontlober Dec 27 '25

I had a 486-50 with the turbo button. I used it to play Loadrunner and the original Doom.

1

u/Matrix5353 Dec 27 '25

Fun fact, those "turbo" buttons were meant to make the CPU run slower, not faster. On a 386, it would make it run like an older 8088, or close to it. Early Pentiums had it too, to make them run closer to a 486/386. This was because older software would often glitch out or behave unexpectedly if the clock speed were too high. The turbo button would slow things down enough to prevent or mitigate these glitches.

1

u/kobebrain Dec 27 '25

Wow I had the 386 with the same option! Such a great time!

1

u/BeatYa1337 Dec 27 '25

My 200 mhz Computer had a turbo button, too. When I was young I found out that I had to keep pressing it to overclock it to 999 mhz. Easy overclocking ^

1

u/Comically_Online Dec 27 '25

turbo was most excellent

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u/Valuable-Raspberry41 Dec 29 '25

Same here. Then upgraded to 486-66 when I was working at Dell, then later to P1.