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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

I had exactly that 386SX as my first CPU ever, and I recall the incredible speed boost you'd get each time you upgraded. It was like magic, each time you or a friend got a new machine, everything would be so much faster.

Something similar happened with graphics cards, each new generation made stuff look that much better.

These days I can still use a 2013 Macbook to play MineCraft, doesn't feel any different. Compiling code probably is different, but most everyday things would not be much different.

Oh and of course an obvious question to go along with the whole 90s CPU story:

https://www.maketecheasier.com/why-cpu-clock-speed-isnt-incr...

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Speaking as someone who just upgraded from an early 2014 MBA 11" to a Air with the M1 chip, while the old machine always felt adequate to my uses, having used the M1 for a while now, I could never ever go back.

Programs start much faster, quit much faster, web pages load much, much, much faster. Compiling is anywhere from 4x to 10x faster, as is interpreter startup time for scripts.

Now, granted, it's a jump from one architecture to another and a time span of 7 years, but this upgrade felt magical the way the mid-90s hardware upgrades felt.

You can still use a 286 to play King’s Quest, too. A 2013 Mac is in no way an adequate gaming machine in any sense of the idea. You couldn’t still use a 286 to play Falcon 3 or Comanche back when they were new, and you can’t use a 2013-gen tech stack to realize full potential of today’s games. The benchmark of playable Minecraft is not a suitable measure for capability, only a reflection of unchanging demands since 2013.

You can run King's Quest I-VII (and countless other classic adventure games) via SCUMMVM [1]. Falcon 3 and Comanche can be run via DOSBox [2]. That 2013 Mac can easily play almost any game from the DOS era using one of these two fantastic open source projects.

[1] https://www.scummvm.org

[2] https://www.dosbox.com

The point is that old hardware sucks if trying to facilitate modern software. Not the other way around. A 2013 anything (mac or pc) will be a poor performer with today's games.

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