Intel Pentium
Ranked 8 of 16 processors by recommenders
People recommend the Pentium as a big speed-up over the 486, especially for floating point and PCI systems; critics point to the floating-point division bug.
People recommend the Pentium as a big speed-up over the 486, especially for floating point and PCI systems; critics point to the floating-point division bug.
25 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 60%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Much faster than 486 chip
“Booting up a Pentium after having used a 486 for years was like driving on the high way”
Comment from 26 Mar 2026 in “What Came After the 486?” “the performance gain from proper FPU instruction scheduling on a Pentium was immense”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “The stack circuitry of the Intel 8087 floating point chip, reverse-engineered” “It's way faster than 486, especially on FP it's not even close.”
Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989” Better PCI system architecture
“yes, they were bad processors — but overall system architecture with the very first PCI bus implementation”
Comment from 11 Apr 2026 in “Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989” “From a 486 with VLB to a Pentium with PCI everything became a lot nicer.”
Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989” Ran Linux well despite Windows crashes
“Windows would crash for weird reasons on it, but Linux ran like a champ because it actually had a workaround”
Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989” “chugged along as my personal computer until ~2001 thanks to Linux”
Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Floating-point division bug
“the famous Intel FPU bug could have been avoided had Intel been using the verification methods”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “In Memoriam, Tony Hoare” “It was also quite embarrassing to ship a real CPU with broken floating point math.”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Detecting DOSBox from Within the Box” “Don't forget the Intel floating-point division bug from the 90s.”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “JVM Options Explorer” - Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989”
- Comment from 5 Feb 2026 in “We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler”
- Comment from 31 Oct 2026 in “Some Thing is Happening A note from the AI companies”
Other processors people recommend
The four most recommended other processors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple M5 | 48 | 14 | 77% | 11 | — | Approved |
| AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 | 44 | 14 | 76% | 11 | — | Approved |
| AMD Ryzen | 25 | 12 | 68% | 11 | 1.4 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| Intel N150 | 21 | 1 | 95% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Intel PentiumThis page | 15 | 10 | 60% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 27 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“How about 1 in 9 billion?”
“I "had" to get a Pentium 60, which I was not happy about lol.”
“It wasn't fast but never did the playback stutter”
“apparently 10th gen Pentiums and Celerons don't have avx. The wonders of product segmentation.”
“my Pentium 100 couldn't run it smoothly at all”
“It was also quite embarrassing to ship a real CPU with broken floating point math.”
“Don't forget the Intel floating-point division bug from the 90s.”
“yes, they were bad processors — but overall system architecture with the very first PCI bus implementation”
“From a 486 with VLB to a Pentium with PCI everything became a lot nicer.”
“chugged along as my personal computer until ~2001 thanks to Linux”
“Windows would crash for weird reasons on it, but Linux ran like a champ because it actually had a workaround”
“Idk if the 75 was really that great tho, mostly in that it had a 50Mhz FSB rather than 60 or 66Mhz like most other parts.”
“It didn't help that the earliest P5 Pentiums ran on a 5V rail.”
“it was not ever good value for money”
“Second gen Pentiums, starting with the 75 MHz, were great.”
“had the infamous floating point division bug”
“The Pentium was great, but the 60 and 66MHz versions were not liked, they ran way too hot.”
“It's way faster than 486, especially on FP it's not even close.”
“a Pentium 60 is barely faster than a DX/2 66 at many tasks”
“The Pentium further widened the gap”
“Quake needed March 1994 Pentium 90-100 to deliver ~smooth 25fps”
“These were typically low cost and could be a good value”
“Booting up a Pentium after having used a 486 for years was like driving on the high way”
“built like a piece of military hardware”
“the famous Intel FPU bug could have been avoided had Intel been using the verification methods”
“the legendary Pentium bug”
“the performance gain from proper FPU instruction scheduling on a Pentium was immense”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.