Hi, I woundn't know what to search under for this question. What is the deal wtih i386, i686(etc), and x86? I bekieve ix86 is any cpu that is intel compatitble and now is usually above i386 - which is refering to the old 386's right? I really just don't get why some OSes say i386 or i586, i686... I assume if it says i386 the os will work on a 386 or better? Can someone please clarify. Thanks in advance.

Yes you're absolutely right. Binaries (the executable programs) can be optimized for 686, so they will only work on a 686 (pentium pro and pentium 2 or higher). The ones compiled for 386 will work on all intel compatible. The ones compiled for 586 will work on pentium and higher. You can even optimize (by compiling from source) binaries to run specifically on Athlons and pentium 4s - to make use of the SSE2/3Dnow instruction sets introduced in these processors. On open source systems, you have the code available to you so you can compile (if you want to) the programs yourself to run faster on your cpu. There are 10 kinds of people, those who count in binary and those who don't.

"Hi, I woundn't know what to search under for this question. What is the deal wtih i386, i686(etc), and x86? I bekieve ix86 is any cpu that is intel compatitble and now is usually above i386" x86 refers to a processor architecture (a processor family). In 1978 Intel released a new 16 bit processor the 8086 wich was the first of this family of processors it was followed by the 80186 and the 80286 16 bit processors and the 80386, 80486, Pentium (80586) and Pentium Pro (80686) processors, Intel stop to use numbers to name their processors because they cannot be 'trademarks' and other manufacturers sell processors with the same 'number names'. A little history: (from my memory) - 1978, 8086 first Intel 16 bit processor. There is a version with 8 bit data bus named 8088. It can address 1MB of memory. - 80186 small improvements over the original, there is a 80188 one with 8 bit data bus too. Not much use in PCs at that time, but they are still manufactured for embedded systems. - 1982?, 80286 advanced 16 bit processor two working moded "real" and "protected". In 'real' model they act just as a fast 8086. In 'protected' mode they can address up to 16MB of physical memory and up to 4GB of virtual memory. - 1987?, 80386 first 32 bit Intel processor, it supports both 80286 work modes and adds a new one 'virtual 86'. In "protected" mode it can now address up to 4GB of physical and 64GB of virtual memory. A cheap version named 386SX with the data and address bus of a 80286 was introduced later due to the success of AMD 80286 @ 25 Mhz. processors. - 1989?, 80486 advanced 32 bit 'pipelined' processor 5 stages capable of execute 1 instruction per cycle (theoretically), the first with an integrated floating point unit (FPU) they have 8/16KB of L1 cache and the 486DX/2 one was the first to use multipliers. - 1993?, Pentium (80586) 'superscalar' processor, issues more than 1 instruction per cycle but it can not yield 2, it has a couple of 80486 pipelines and an improved floating point unit. - 1995?, Pentium Pro (80686) 'hyperscalar' processor capable of execute 2 instructions per clock cycle, new CMOV instructions, L2 cache on the CPU package, support for PAE (increases the memory addresable range). base of the Pentium II and III processors. - 2003, AMD 64 bit x86 compatible processors Athlon 64, Athlon FX and Opteron. Seems that this venerable processor architecture has still a long life!! "i386 the os will work on a 386 or better?" Of course all x86 processors are upward complatible, so a 80686 can run code written for a 8086 processor (the oposite isn't true) and of course they can run 80386 32 bit code. Hope this clarifies all your dudes.

I was just wondering, cause I was trying to figure out why the ix86 namimg system has stopped @ i686 cause it seems from these posts an 650mhz pIII is the same catagory as 2.6ghzHT pIV.