Talk:Pentium compatible processor

So why is Pentium compatibility of interest?
So why is Pentium compatibility of any more interest than, say, general IA-32 compatibility, or Intel P6 compatibility? Guy Harris 02:18, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Also Carrots
Indeed 82.4.232.240 20:49, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Err, umm, what? Guy Harris 19:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

i586 vs i686
The article says Pentium compatible processors are also known as i586s. But would anyone call a Core 2 an i586? It's an i686, right? --Allen 01:30, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * No, it's a Core 2 - it has SSE, SSE2, SSE3, and SSSE3 support, as well as x86-64 support, VT support for most chips, etc., etc., none of which the P6's had.


 * I'll just slap a "citation needed" on that claim; if no citation shows up, out it goes. Guy Harris 03:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Based on your answer, I'll take "Core 2" out of the list of i686 processors on i686.  You might want to check the list for others that should be removed.  --Allen 03:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Why does i586 redirect here?
Just curious. Shouldn't it redirect to a page specifically for the 5th generation of IA-32 CPUs, sorta like i686 (although Intel P6 is a far better page), i787, and i886? Suigi 04:04, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * As a test run, I'm redirecting i586 to the page for the Pentium, to follow the scheme of i386 and i486 redirecting to their respective pages. Suigi 23:32, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It now redirects to P5 (microarchitecture), which is where it should redirect. Guy Harris (talk) 08:28, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

64-bit
Update this page - 64 bit is 4 years late! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.131.99.179 (talk) 09:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The page now has a section on 64-bit processors, noting that all x86-64 processors are "Pentium compatible" but that no 64-bit software is "Pentium compatible", as the original P5 Pentium was a 32-bit processor and couldn't run 64-bit software. Guy Harris (talk) 08:28, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Really?
Really? Is this page of any notability? Why would anyone care what chips are compatible with Pentium? Does it mean socket-compatible, electronically compatible, or software compatible? Do we really have to spend effort to 'define' it? And to put it in an more extreme way, should we create an article called "CPU-compatible devices" or something like that? I think we should remove this article. Dannyniu (talk) 02:14, 14 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, as I said back in 2006. Why is "Pentium compatibility" worthy of more note than 80386 compatibility, 80486 compatibility, Pentium Pro/Pentium II compatibility, etc., etc.? Guy Harris (talk) 05:41, 14 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Sorry for my bit of complaining tone. But I need to slow down a bit. Am I getting you correctly? That you think "Pentium compatible" is not of much notability? Dannyniu (talk) 15:02, 9 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes. Guy Harris (talk) 20:03, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

It seems that you're bit of busy, so I'll do some writing here in the mean time. It is common knowledge that the entire x86 family chips are backwards-compatible,like VERY backwards-compatible. So when it comes to this, Pentium compatible really means just all of the post-1993 x86 chips. And how can anyone possibly write a reasonable article out of this topic? So I'd like to propose here to delete this article, and the Polski language version of it. Dannyniu (talk) 15:19, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

A Worse Article, Fix or Re-write!
What is Pentium compatible processor? Or, in other words, at which level the compatibility a processor needs retaining?

Pentium was first the name of 80586 processor, superscalar but without discrete microarchitecture. Pentium Pro/II/III still retained the name Pentium, but their underlying design had been changed from the scratch, front-end CISC, mid-end RISC-like and back-end CISC, a discrete microarchitecture. For Pentium 4, Intel experimented reaching the ultimate of hyper pipelining rather than superscalar, but still a discrete architecture. After Intel Core 2 released, the name Pentium has been reused for value segments of products. Today's Pentium is much like yesterday's Pentium Pro/II/III, one extension or direct successor of P6 Microarchitecture, but can we say Pentium G3220 is compatible with Pentium III 450? No, compatible is NaT for the relation between them both. Processors could not be compatible with each other, only the platform could be compatible. Such as we could say Pentium Platform compatible processor, rather than Pentium compatible processor.

For Pentium platform compatible processor: all those kind of processors should retain one thing, they could be plugged onto the same mobo and work well, such as Cyrix 6x86, AMD K5/K6, IDT WinChip and so on. For Pentium II/III platform compatible processor: Celeron. Besides Cyrix III, VIA Cyrix III, VIA Cyrix C3, only those processors could be plugged onto the SLOT1 or Socket 370 mobo, and work with very limited chipsets.

For Pentium 4 platform compatible processor: Intel Core 2, Celeron and Pentium, all of them cold work well with Intel 865PE chipsets which was initially designed for Yamhill or Prescott processors, even though Pin-out might be different. Besides VIA C7, VIA Nano, even though could not be plugged onto Pentium 4 mobo, and not work with their chipsets, but essentially a VIA in-house version.

Processors could not be compatible, only the aspects of processors could be compatible, such as ISA (whether they might have the same or similar instruction sets?) and Pinout ( like mentioned above, could they share the same or similar platform?). Or else we talk about nothing! Janagewen (talk) 13:57, 10 November 2014 (UTC)


 * For God's sake, the product code wasn't even '80586', it was 80501, 80502 etc. if I interpreted it correctly. So this literally means 80586 is a nonsense number. Dannyniu (talk) 12:49, 20 November 2014 (UTC)