UMC’s Green CPU was a unique and impressive feat of engineering. Although it was late to the party, it could run circles around other 486s when it came to clockforclock performance. Despite its very promising efficiency, it met an untimely demise due to legal troubles in 1994 and 1995. Join me today as I take an indepth look at the UMC Green and compare it to a number of CPUs from Intel, AMD and Cyrix. I also push the green well beyond its rated frequency to get a glimpse of what “could have been”.

Big thanks to Andrew (BrassicGamer) from the UK for sending me this CPU. Be sure to check out his blog and YouTube channel:
https://x.com/brassicGamer
http://www.brassicgamer.com/
   / @brassicgamer  

Some interesting articles and posts about the UMC legal battle with Intel in the 90s:
https://www.cpushack.com/2012/09/06/i...
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?...

An article in InfoWorld from October of 1993 about UMC's plans for the CPU:
https://books.google.ca/books?id=zoE...

My repair and modification of the Pentium Overdrive:
   • The Intel Pentium Overdrive CPU for 4...  

A big comparison of latemodel 486 and 486 “upgrade” chips:
   • The 486 Upgrade CPU Showdown!  

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00:00 Introduction
01:15 About the UMC Green
02:55 It’s All About Efficiency
03:29 Legal Troubles
04:37 Shout Out!
04:56 The Competition and Setup
06:17 Benchmark Results
10:01 Pentium Overdrive Comparison
12:07 Overclocking
13:35 Overclocking Benchmark Results
14:28 Conclusion