Probably more importantly, the idea of landing a rocket was basically impossible until computer control got good enough to handle the descent and landing.
DC-XA set a height record of 10,000 feet, and pretty much goes straight up and down. So it proved out most of what Blue Origin's suborbital rocket does, and the last part of what SpaceX's first stage does, but not the re-entry burn and flying a cylinder stuff.
Soviet space shuttle Buran landed automatically from space in 1988 using Soviet-made hardware and software. So I very much doubt that using recent computer chips were essential to land the rocket.