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PC Hacks
book

PC Hacks

by Jim Aspinwall
October 2004
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
304 pages
7h 44m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from PC Hacks

Chapter 3. CPU Hacks

Hacks #19-29

"How fast can I make it run?" is likely the first question from any PC hacker. In the good old days of the original IBM PC, the answer was a breathtaking 8 MHz, up from 4.77 MHz—but only if you replaced the system's processor, an Intel i8088 CPU, with an NEC V20 chip. (Intel eventually beefed up the i8088 to run at 8 MHz.)

The PC has gone through numerous and tremendous performance improvements, starting with the CPU. At one time, 12 and 16 MHz were the top speeds; then 25 and 33 MHz; then 50 and 66 MHz; then 100, 150, 200, 266, 500 MHz, 1 GHz, and 2 GHz. After 24 years of technological advances, now 3 GHz, nearly 630 times faster than the first PCs, is an everyday, ho-hum, state-of-the-art PC standard.

At every step of CPU performance improvement, the system I/O bus and peripherals have had to catch up. We want the Internet to flash before us, its content challenging the CPU to keep up with the network. There was a time when application programs strained to crunch numbers and print documents; we are now waiting for applications to take advantage of what desktop super-computing capabilities have to offer. Once AMD got the rights to manufacture an Intel i80286 CPU, the horses, cows, pigs, and rocket-fuel powered CPUs were out of the barn, seldom to be corralled again. The functions of the x86 chip were well known and easily replicated: the race was on. The winners are millions of PC users around the globe.

The basic question may be, "Why do I want my ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596007485Errata Page