If you ever have the need to compare a couple of old CPU’s to see which one is “faster”, a good resource is PassMark’s CPU Benchmarks chart.
This chart lists almost any older CPU you can think of and is compiled based on actual scores submitted by users. While certainly not definitive, this gives you a quick comparison of the relative processing power between the CPU’s in question.
Note: I put faster in quotes above because these scores are based on a particular program’s benchmark score.
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“almost any older CPU you can think of ” isn’t quite accurate. The PassMark site only covers x86 and x86-64 CPUs, which means there are TONS of older CPUs I can think of which aren’t on there.
In the past, there were so many factors in benchmarking (OS, toolchain, background use) that made comparisons difficult. Nowadays, not only are previously highly expensive systems available on eBay for next to nothing, but we can run the same OS with the same toolchain on most of them (NetBSD, and in some instances, GNU/Linux) and compare in a more consistent way.
For instance, a 66 MHz m68060 Amiga blows away a 133 MHz SH3 Jornada 690… Hmmm… not too surprising. How about a 55 MHz KA46 VAXstation 4000/60 versus a 40 MHz m68040 Mac Quadra?
Comparing an AMD Athlon to a Pentium III? Been there, done that. But SPARC versus PowerPC versus VAX versus MIPS versus StrongARM versus m68k versus SH3 / SH4 versus Alpha versus x86 of the time… interesting…