Tom's Hardware is marking 30 years since founder Dr. Thomas Pabst published his first articles, beginning as Tom's Roadrunner Page in 1996 before becoming Tom's Hardware Guide later that year. To celebrate, the outlet is launching a series of anniversary articles tracing the evolution of PC hardware, starting with a look back at CPUs. Pabst, a practicing doctor and surgeon at the time, began by testing motherboards and CPUs before expanding into graphics cards, testing the Nvidia Riva 128 and 3Dfx Voodoo, and even writing what was billed as the world's first real-world 3D benchmark.
The site's early fame grew from conflict with Intel. Pabst published an unsanctioned pre-release review of the Intel Pentium II in March 1997, obtained from contacts at two German magazines, C'T Magazin fur Computertechnik and PC Professionell. Intel responded by threatening to pull advertising from the two magazines, sparking a public dispute that drew coverage from the New York Times. Intel eventually apologized for using its advertising contracts to threaten the publications. A few years later, Pabst uncovered persistent bugs in the Intel Pentium III, tested partly through Linux, and refused to hand Intel his sample chip, calling it his only proof. The bugs led Intel to pull the affected processors until a new chip stepping was developed, and Intel subsequently excluded Pabst from Pentium 4 coverage, which he viewed as retaliation.
Since then, the company evolved from Tom's Hardware Guide into Tom's Hardware, expanding into networking and news coverage while keeping its founding categories of CPUs, motherboards, and graphics cards. Pabst sold the site in 2007 to Best of Media Group, remaining Chairman until 2008; sister site Tom's Guide launched the same year, and Future plc acquired Tom's Hardware in 2018. The outlet says it still delivers unbiased, benchmark-backed coverage today, including through its Tom's Hardware Premium subscription service and Bench database, even as it faces challenges such as AI systems using its content without compensation or attribution.
As part of the anniversary series, Tom's Hardware also published a detailed 30-year history of CPU competition. It traces the back-and-forth between Intel and AMD from the Pentium II and AMD K6 in 1997, through the Pentium III recall, the gigahertz race between Pentium 4 and Athlon, and AMD's introduction of dual-core Athlon 64 X2 chips ahead of Intel's Pentium D. The piece also covers the shift to Intel's Core microarchitecture, the Nehalem and Sandy Bridge eras, AMD's troubled Bulldozer architecture, and the disruptive 2019 introduction of AMD's Zen 2 and 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, which Tom's Hardware said outperformed Intel's expensive HEDT chips at a fraction of the price.
The retrospective continues into the recent past, describing AMD's Zen 3 and Zen 4 chips, the introduction of 3D V-Cache gaming CPUs like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and Intel's Alder Lake and Raptor Lake responses. It also covers Intel's more recent Arrow Lake architecture, which outsourced manufacturing to TSMC and dropped Hyper-Threading, and AMD's Zen 5 lineup, including the dual-CCD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2. The article notes that both companies are now dealing with rising DRAM prices and increased demand for AI-related chips, which is reportedly pushing back the expected arrival of AMD's Zen 6 and Intel's Nova Lake into 2027.
Tom's Hardware frames both retrospectives as part of its 30th anniversary celebration, with the company saying its mission of unbiased, benchmark-driven reporting has remained consistent even as the PC hardware landscape has transformed dramatically over three decades.