2.3. Looking at Popular Intel Processors
In this section, I provide an overview of the Pentium-class processors and their characteristics, including data bus, address bus, registers, and the amount of cache memory supported on these processors. You will also be introduced to any new or unique processor features that each processor offers.
2.3.1. Pentium
The original Pentium processor, released in 1993, was developed at speeds of 60 MHz and 66 MHz. The Pentium processor was a PGA chip that was placed in Socket 5 or Socket 7. Soon after its release, Intel marketed Pentium processors in 75, 90, 100, 120, 133, 150, 166, and 200 MHz flavors, which were really just clock multipliers of the original 60 MHz or 66 MHz systems.
Clock multiplying is the concept that the processor will run faster than the motherboard that the processor sits in. For example, the original Pentium processor ran on 60 or 66 MHz motherboards. Say that the computer is marketed as a Pentium 90. Because you know that the motherboard runs at 60 or 66 MHz, you can determine that the 90 comes from 60 × 1.5 — meaning that the processor runs 1.5 times the speed of the motherboard. This is important because as a consumer, when you purchase a computer, you want to make sure you know what the motherboard speed is, too — not just the advertised speed of the processor.
From a consumer's point of view, clock multipliers become important when you take a look at computers such as the Pentium 133 and the Pentium 150. Which is ...
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