Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989

Intel announced the 486 CPU at Comdex on April 10, 1989. It was an expensive chip, priced at $950 each in quantities of 1,000. I thought it would be fun to look back at what the magazines at the time had to say about Intel’s then-new CPU.

Infoworld: Don’t get used to the speed increase

Writing in the May 8, 1989 issue of Infoworld, Michael Slater warned that the sixfold speed increase seen from 1981 to 1989, going from 5 MHz to 33 MHz, would not be repeated. Of course, that prediction ended up being incorrect. Eight years after the 486, in 1997, we got the Pentium II, which initially topped out at 300 MHz. That was a ninefold increase. And eight years after that, we had the Prescott Pentium 4, which ran at up to 3.8 GHz, more than a twelvefold increase from that 300 MHz Pentium II.

Slater also questioned the need for the chip in desktops. But then he noted people made the same comments about the 386 when it was introduced. He then said that while Wordstar ran fine on an 8088-based PC, Microsoft Word with its graphical display needed a 286 and was much better on a 386. Slater then predicted, correctly, that increased use of graphics and multitasking would increase demand for the 486. He also said that competition should drive the price of 486 systems targeting end users to within $1,000 of the cost of a comparably equipped 386.

Infoworld: What will you do with the Intel 486’s power?

Writing in the April 17, 1989 issue of Infoworld, published about a week after the Intel 486’s introduction, Michael J. Miller seemed to have mixed feelings on it. He said it proved that Moore’s Law is alive and well, as the chip had 1.2 million transistors and integrated all the performance of a 386, 387 math coprocessor, cache controller, and 8K cache and more on the die. But he also called it more of an evolution than a revolution. He said it looks just like a super fast 386, approximately two or three times faster at the same clock rate, but he wondered what we would do with the chip. Intel had promised speeds of 100 MIPS or more, and we don’t really need 100 MIPS machines if all they do is run Lotus 1-2-3, he closed by saying.

The same day, Douglas Barney writing in Computerworld said the 486 wouldn’t revolutionize computing, but would make it a heck of a lot faster. The article also noted initial 486 prices would range from $10,000 to $15,000. That’s not a typo, these computers were going to cost five figures. It also contained an interesting quote from Intel marketing manager Claud Leglise, who said speeds would reach 50 or 60 MHz within two years.

The April 10, 1989 issue of Infoworld said the 486 was likely to first appear in systems for sale toward the end of 1989. This proved correct.

All That Power With No Place to Go: PC Magazine

PC Magazine‘s May 30, 1989 issue ran an article titled The 486: All that Power With No Place to Go. While explaining why Intel’s 486 would be faster than a 386, including being three times as efficient and running at clock speeds up to 60 megahertz, it warned that the systems would be very expensive. That wasn’t just because the CPU was expensive, but also all of the support chips would also be expensive. It argued the chip would be very interesting, but that most users probably will not need one for a long, long while.

Another article in the same issue said the 486 was months away from large scale production. This proved correct. The 486 reached production in June. Apricot announced the first 486 PC in June, and shipped it by September.

The 486’s killer app

Once Windows 3.0 hit the market, demand for faster computers heated up. It gave the power of faster CPUs someplace to go. At first the 386 was the CPU of choice. But Intel’s price cuts made the 486 reasonably affordable by 1992, which was good because that was the year Windows 3.1 came out with its slightly higher requirements. The 486 remained a viable processor for several years, surviving into the Windows 95 era.

Microsoft Word is an example of what we ultimately ended up doing with that power, and what left us wanting more. Versions up to and including Word 95 ran fine on a 486. But when Word 97 arrived with real-time spelling and grammar checking and Clippy, the 486 couldn’t keep up. You really needed a Pentium or equivalent to do all three at once without noticeable lag as you typed.

Of course I think there was one other app that probably drove 486 sales at least as much as Windows, at least when it came to home use. That was Doom. I knew people who tried to play Doom on a 386, but to get good frame rates, you needed a fast 486 and fast local bus video.

It did turn out that Intel would need clock doubling to reach speeds over 50 MHz, which they did in 1992 with the 486DX2 variant. And while 66 MHz was a sweet spot for speed for a couple of years, it turned out we did need (and get) further speed increases.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.