Cyrix's 'Joshua' announcement

h0rus writes, "One of the guys from Ars went to Cyrix's unveiling of their new x86 chip, the Cyrix III (codenamed "Joshua"), and wrote up a summary of what was announced. The chip looks like a pretty sweet budget/mobile x86 option: 64K L1, 256K L2, dual-pipelined FPU, Socket 370 compatible, and not clock-locked. Maybe Cyrix can redeem their name with this one. "

Comments

They once had a good reputation?

[gellor]

I NEVER had good experiences with any machine running a Cyrix processor. Period.

It would take an AMAZING product on their part to even possibly convince me to spend money on it.

--
Gellor

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[Alpha_Geek]

I wouldn't buy a Cyrix chip either, but it is always a good thing to have another competitor against Chipzilla.
-

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[cloudmaster]

I've got a cyrix chip in my car's mp3 player (soon to be radar detector monitor and engine status recorder) because it was the sheapest chip I could buy and I wondered if they suck as bad as everyone says. My MX/2-300 or whatever the heck it is sucks as much as everyone says they do. It's super hot all the time, and not nearly as fast as other socket-7 chips at the same clock speed. I had to underclock it just to get the system running stably (and to keep the outrageous power consumption down). I really hope cyrix gets their next chip working better, 'cause choices are always a Good Thing.

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[gellor]

Well, that is true to an extent I guess. At some point though a "Bad" competitor is actually GOOD for Intel. An example of this is how good Cyrix chips made the competing products from Intel look.

--
Gellor

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[whammo]

I've had decent experiences with Cyrix chips running business apps. In fact, gaming aside, I think that the previous Cyrix lines have been ideal for the email/web browsing/word processing set. Adding a good FPU can only make these cheap...er, inexpensive chips a viable contender in other markets as well.

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[Anonymous Coward]

The interesting part about the Joshua chip is
that it may have some real overclocking potential.. And it has a decent sized full speed speed L2 cache.. If
they chips run at a reasonable temperature at the posted clock speeds, this could be a really fun chip for overclockers.
BTW, I had 2 cyrix chips and I didn't have 1 compatibility problem. But boy were those suckers hot!

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[Anonymous Coward]

test .

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[Anonymous Coward]

believe it or not, 4 machines-2AMD K6-2 266MHZ and 2Cyrix 150+, all in one computer lab. Everyone thinks the old Cyrix's in the new cases are the fastest machine's in there and flock to use them.

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Buying the fastest CPU you can so you can play quake faster than your friends is nothing short of idiotic. Nothing looses its value in your box faster than your cpu. Your super fast 800mhz insane CPU is going to be worth a fraction of the price you paid in just a few months. If you want games, get a dreamcast. If you really need a cpu that can really push the flops (and you aren't playing games) than you are probably at work and can therefore make your company fit the bill for your pentium ten million. But if you are at home, and already have a video game console, than you don't need to waste your money on a pentium. Even cheap cpus are over kill for surfing the net, writing papers and runing linux. Don't be stupid, for your home machine get a cyrix. Sure it won't hold it's value, but what do you care? You can probably get it free when you buy the mobo. Don't listen to the people who claim that cyrix chips don't work or start small fires. Some people can't stand not having a super fast computer in order to brag to their friends. If you get the right sized cooling fan than your cyrix chip won't over heat and will run just fine. Don't listen to anyone. Buy an M2 and an S3. You can laugh about it all the way to the bank.

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[SoftwareJanitor]

Whether or not Intel looks good doesn't matter as much as whether or not some other company is taking away some of Intel's market share.

Cyrix's chips may be lousy for gamers or people doing heavy scientific computing due to lackluster FPU performance, but for the low-end market Cyrix is aiming at, that isn't such a big deal. If you just want to do web browsing, email and a little word processing, the Cyrix M-II's provide an excellent value. While that may not include a lot of geeks, there are a lot of people like my wife who the M-II is perfect for. I bought an M-II/300 for my wife, and she is more than happy with it. Personally, for me I prefer AMD processors (specifically my main box is K6 based), but I really don't think that Cyrix deserves the harsh treatment they get from a lot of people. Other than the very early Cyrix 6x86 chips that had serious overheating problems, they generally have built a reliable if uninspiring product. Given their excellent price/performance, I think they can be forgiven for a lot, especially since IDT (WinChip), their main competitor for that low-end market has basically given up entirely.

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[Keeper ofthe Keys]

I had exactly opposite experience with cyrix chips. We sold about 50 systems based on cyrix PR-233 chips, no issues except for 3 or 4 DOA chips (slightly higher than normal, but both Intel and AMD have been 2-3 DOA for every 50 we get).

In fact, our main DNS server runs on an MII/300 processor right now. Never had a problem with it. The only problem I have with cyrix is they don't rate by clock speed, which confuses customers: the MII/300 only runs at 233Mhz!

Oh well, what do you expect for $50 CDN per chip?

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[shepd]

>Buy an M2 and an S3. You can laugh about it all the way to the bank.

Best advice of the week! The S3 based cards rock for thier performance, considering they cost so very little.

And the M2 is a very good processor, and the price (when I bought one, a while ago) is amazing! 1/2 the price of a similar intel chip, 7/10 the price of a similar AMD chip!

And what can beat a processor fabbed by IBM?

If only more people thought like this, then the $400 computer would be within grasp...

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[LoneTech]

> It's super hot all the time
Then you failed to use set6x86 to enable suspend-on-HLT. It's the one most important thing to do with Cyrix processors.
I have myself used 5x86, 6x86 and MediaGXm processors, and they were quite efficient; while they did have slower FPUs than Intel or AMD, the 5x86 at 90mhz actually ran most applications faster than the Pentium II (a brand new one at the time). The best point about Cyrix CPUs imho is that they're all optimized for 486 code. The 6x86 (a 4x25mhz version) was sensitive to overclocking, but ran fine at 4x30 - not at 4x33 though.

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[AjR]

I must disagree.

They were always at the cheap end. COmparing them to celerons et al isn't a truly fair comparison.

I built my home server on the cheap, with a Cyrix 300mmx two years ago and the only problem I ever had was with a Creative Labs Blaster Exxtreme not being well supported in SVGALib. The whole server was built on cheap components.

In fact its still running today, sweet as a nut, waiting to be upgraded to a 2xpII solution.

Point is: The Cyrix was only ever meant as a cheap processor - not some quake-hot 3d graphics master

Re:They once had a good reputation?

[andrewj7]

I can understand some peoples concern for the new cyrix chip. I've had on running in my dial-up gateway for a while now. Although they may not give such good performance as and Intel they are designed using modern design methods. Intel are still designing around a 20+ year old core.

Looks cool!

[JediLuke]

Saw stuff on this back on VIA's site a while ago...i think they absorbed Cyrix, but is going to continue to market them as Cyrix chips. Overclocking is a plus! The should be decent but hopefully the fight by Untel will no go through against VIA, seeing as how they own Cyrix
JediLuke

Re:Looks cool!

[anotherone]

i think they absorbed Cyrix
yes they did.

Make Seven

Yippee, Cyrix is back

[anotherone]

Sounds good... I'd like to see more companies in the processor market. Prices have been artificially high due to lack of competition lately.

ps: has /. always required 70 seconds between posts?

Make Seven

Re:Yippee, Cyrix is back

[ubertroll]

has /. always required 70 seconds between posts?

Doesn't /. usually take 70 seconds to load a single page?

Re:Yippee, Cyrix is back

[Cuthalion]

Prices have been artificially high due to lack of competition lately.

What are you talking about? Stuff is so amazingly cheap these days, chip prices included. Neither intel nor AMD are making huge profit margins - they're both despearately trying to undercut each other. Sure, cyrix making chips too isn't a bad thing - more options and all that, but I don't think they're going to be able to drive prices down all that much farther.

Re:Yippee, Cyrix is back

[Anonymous Coward]

> Excuse me! You call these prices high? Come on! Anyone want to remind me what the average selling price on an intel processor (or computer for that matter) was before AMD brought out the K6? Prices a LOW due specficly to COMPETITION (in the form of AMD)

Re:Yippee, Cyrix is back

[anotherone]

Only for you. You see, no one wants to hear from you so as a service to everyone, Slash includes code to limit your connection speed. For everyone else, it flys.

Make Seven

Re:Yippee, Cyrix is back

[anotherone]

True, but I'm poor. would you give me a job? please?

Make Seven

Same experience here.

[pythas]

I've never seen a cyrix machine seem to work properly. I don't know if it's just been the configuration there, or what. My friends cyrix p200 (supposedly as fast as a pentium 200) ran as fast as my pentium 133 when playing games, etc.

Don't know if things have changed recently though.

Re:Same experience here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, Slashdot seems to be attracting some real winners of late. Read the docs and benchmarks. I hope you boys weren't so dim as to buy without doing research on what you were looking at. Cyrix M? cpus are different than pentiums--the integer performance is higher for a given clock value, and the floating point performance is _explicitly_ de-emphasized with only one FP unit. IOW: They are not supposed to play games like a PII, there's never been any secret about that, but they offered strong integer performance/$ for office apps. The official part names of the MII cpus include "PR-" before the number. Wonder why? That means they are equivalent (Pentium Rating) to a Pentium of that clock value.
Many people who bought PR233's 266's, 300's, 333's with their eyes open about what they were buying have been pleased.
A booster of Cyrix cpus whom people 'round here may remember: Alan Cox. Yeah.

Re:Same experience here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, games aren't the sort of benchmark that tells you much about anything other than, well, games. I had two Cyrix systems, both with SCSI, and both were great dev machines for me at the time. I didn't have any problems. I wasn't running a Microsoft OS, I was running Linux, and I was quite happy. I think that it is a matter of perspective -- I remember being really, really impressed when I could actually walk into a store and get a 66MHz 486 (mainly because the better mainframes were 15ns machines and a 3090 was where it was at when I was a grub). tcsh, MH, emacs, trn, and similar things were fast as hell, and the money that I saved with a Cyrix CPU allowed me to go SCSI. I still cannot argue with that.

And, if I recall correctly, Cyrix was always the best in passing all of the Intel compatibility suite tests, only failing when Intel changed things and didn't tell anyone -- Cyrix would hit the standard and the app (like 95) that had been tuned for undocumented Intel features with Intel compilers would break, so Cyrix was in the news for that quite a lot.

You did need a decent heat sink. Big deal. For the price (like the Winchip C2s later, which were a fantastic drop-in for machines with P133s that would clock 200), you shouldn't really argue.

Re:Same experience here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have 2 Cyrix machines working away at home. My FW machine is a Cyrix 6x86 PR150 and my Fileserver is a Cyrix 6x86L PR200. Both haven poroven very dependable. In fact, I used to play Quake quite comfortable on both machines (when they were new, of course).

I have

[ArchieBunker]

I had a Cyrix p133 (110mhz) for a while and it ran great. No problems with dos/win95/os2/linux/nt whatsoever. Other than the sucky FPU performance in games it was great. For the average person to check email and browse the web I don't see anything wrong with them. At the time it has a LOT cheaper than the equivelent pentium.

Re:I have

[Judg3]

I to had a Cyrix, 2 of em actually. I had an old Cyrix 100 then upgraded to a Cyrix PR200 and NEVER had a single problem with it. And I played games with the thing too, Quake2 ran without a problem. Yes, the FPU isnt so hot but I didnt do anything CPU intensive (well, except for RC5) with it and the price was right. Hell, how much CPU power does it take to do a lil perl or html work as it is. Which reminds me, didnt the Cyrix division get sold off to someone else? As far as I can remember they WERE testing a 1Ghz chip called the Jalapeno at the time it was dropped.

----------------------------------

About Cyrix. . .

[WD]

Don't get me wrong here. . . I'm very glad Cyrix is here. As we've learned from AMD, more competition = better products at better prices!

BUT, Cyrix has a habit of over-hyping products that seem to fall flat in the end. I was a 6x86 owner, since it was all I could afford at the time. The Cyrix name has been tarnished by chips with incompatibility and performance issues from the beginning.

Re:About Cyrix. . .

[Zurk]

hmm..ive never had any problems with my MII chips which runs GREAT. its running on a low load 24/7 fileserver with sleep mode on and autowakeup running linux (RH5.2)...ive never had any problems with it and it doesnt require a cpu fan like those intel monsters.

Re:About Cyrix. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!! when i read this i almost fell out of my seat! hahaha!!! you rock d00d

Re:About Cyrix. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

this is brillant, I must now go study these teachings.

Bye

Not negative Karma, Anti-Karma

[Trollmastah]

This Anti-Karma HOWTO document explains how to impress your fellow slashdotters by getting LOW Karma. Although Anti- Karma HOWTO documents are targeted towards use with the Windows operating system, this one is not dependent on the OS used to access Slashdot.

This Anti- Karma HOWTO is a joke.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Tips
2.1 Comment Length
2.2 When to Post
2.3 Where to Post
2.4 What to Post - Avoiding Positive Karma
3. Maintenance Information
__________________________________________________ ____________________
1. Introduction

Your Karma rating on Slashdot lies in the hands of the moderators. This is your target, and as you'll soon find out it's quite easy to manipulate and fool them into moderating you down. By following a few simple guidelines you can soon surpass all the regulars, and eventually get down there with the best of the first post and off-topic whores.

2. Tips

2.1. Comment Length

Perhaps the best tip in getting moderators to moderate you down deals with the length of your posts. It's quite simple, always post very SHORT comments and when possible, MAKE IT IN ALL CAPS. Many moderators equate this with "Troll" and "Off-Topic", regardless of what you say. Furthermore, moderators are MUCH less likely to moderate you up or leave you at 1 if your post is short enough.
Also, use those invalid HTML tags! Nothing makes your post seem like a wanna be karma whore than lack of whitespace. A really stupid signature can also help out here. It is also very important to gain all the credit you can for your trollish behaivor. Please use your account. The mail only needs to be used once
to gain the password and if you only "FIRST POST" as AC, your negative karma will never add up. Be careful however, If you get marked down more than 5 times in one day, your account is toast.

2.2. When to Post

Timing is everything. Go for the gusto, spend most of your slashdot time refreshing the main page. If you wait too long to post, almost no moderator is going to have a chance to moderate it down -- no matter how bad your post is! As a general rule of thumb, any comment posted more than 15 minutes after a story is submitted will not be moderated one way or the other (Trolls: this is your chance!) Open a text editor and have your first post, rant or other completely off-topic comments PRE-WRITTEN and copied to the clipboard. This will save valuable seconds while you race for the prize! Be creative! Dont just tag a line that says "First Post Dude!" or something lame like that. Look at the true first post leaders. Mick the First Post Mastah, McDougal the Llama, MEEEPT, Natalie Portman Guy, Hot Grits, Open Source Guy and the other regulars. They seem to have style and are generally much more likely to be moderated down because of it.

2.3. Where to Post

After no extensive lab research in Slashdot moderation, some key information was made up. Make sure all your posts are not top-level posts! I cannot stress this enough. Anything posted more than all the way down, won't get seen, and you'll waste all your effort. The only exception is replying to the first batch of comments, since they're sometimes moderated more thoroughly. A bottom-level post is 16 times more likely to be moderated down than a reply!
Under current moderation practice, the first two comments are often marked as "Redundant" if they're not first-posters. Yes, I know this defies the very meaning of the word redundant, but many (not all) moderators don't seem to understand what redundant means. Leave this area alone. People will just ignore it and your post will not be noticed. This happens so often that one begins to think it's automated. Thus, strive to post first or second -- all true Anti-Karma whores know that First post is prime real estate.

2.4. What to Post - Avoiding Positive Karma

While the contents of your post aren't quite as important as comment length, it does play a large role in the fate of your post. There are a number of rules to follow when submitting posts to earn that coveted low Karma:

1) Always take sides. Nothing will get you marked as "Flamebait" faster than a controversial comment (ESPECIALLY very short to short length comments, one liner posts are generally OK regardless). Always think you can take the popular side and get moderated down. For example, it used to be possible to take a side against Windows, or take sides against Microsoft. This is no longer the case - there are too many slashdotters now who have moderator access and use Windows. Posting an anti-Windows comment will even get marked as "Flamebait" faster than a anti-Linux post these days! Go for it! Slam both sides! a good link for this is Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator You should keep the drivel down to 2 paragraphs of less though.

2) Never Stay neutral. A good way to get moderated down in almost any thread is to never summarize both sides of the issue in one post. Not only are these posts generally shorter, but they can even be moderated down as "Flamebait"! Similarly, posts with subjects like "it's all about choice!" seem to play well with the moderators, avoid these. Make yours creative. Use subjects like "OH YOU SUCK" or "I THOUGHT SLASHDOT WAS FOR X" These will help you on your ride to the bottom.

3) Never come across as insightful. Nothing will make you appear more insightful than going against the trend of the first 25 posts or so (this doesn't conflict with #1, read on). This does mean you have to take sides. A good subject example of this faked-insight post is "Missing the point", in which you explain all the previous posts are overlooking the big picture. Avoid this at all costs. Also keep you comments as negative as possible. "I agree" should never appear in your posts.

4) Use a Flamebait comment subject. Unless you're Natalie Portman Guy (Anti-Karma God) and can get low Karma using "xxx Natalie" as your subject, you'd better follow some guidelines. Subjects like "This is a crock of shit (TM)" are generally good if your post is fairly short. Others that are moderated down included subjects with some type of quote or cliche (e.g, "Linux Sux", "Bill Gates Rocks!", or anything cheesy like that)

Another tactic that has recently become useful is starting your commentary or subject with "News For Nerds? Stuff that Matters?..". Don't worry - you will not have to post anything controversial, moderators will reward your trollish subject regardless of what you say!

5) Find related sites to the issue at hand and post broken links as soon as possible (remember, if you don't, someone else will!). You don't have to go all out, they can be general links that dont relate to the article. Links to AOL, Pron or to your own company really work well, especially if you make the "Spammish" in their appearance. Things like "Surf the net and make money! Come to my site at HTTP://Site.com". Also only embed your links some of the time. Inconsistancy really gets their panties in a wad. Most moderators will mark it as "Redundant". Remember, always have your comments pre-packaged! without even checking the URLs!

Also, if someone beats you to the first post with a list of URLs, all is not lost. There's still a wonderful opportunity for some Anti-Karma. An excellent strategy is to reply with "you idiot, here are the corrected urls", in which you lie and say the links they gave were wrong, and you have the correct ones.

6) Allways paste a portion of the sniglet of the article with a little commentary such as "You Suck" or "KEWL". This will always show that you didn't even click the real link to the article and shows all that you just copied and pasted from the top of the thread.

3. Maintenance Information
If you have any other ideas or tips for this Anti- Karma HOWTO, feel free to share them and they may be added to this document.

3.1 Contributors

Thanks to the creative first posters and all the trolls for their suggestions to this "Slashdot Anti-Karma HOWTO".

They Still Make Chips?

[JAZ]

Maybe someone can correct me, but I thought Cyrix stopped making x86 chips about a year ago. As memory serves, they sold their x86 division and dedicated to embeded chips for appliances.

or am i just crazy??

Re:They Still Make Chips?

[milquetoast]

Cyrix has always made chips. They used to be independent and had to get their chips made by the likes by ibm but then they were bought out by National Semiconductor.. they introduced the M2 at around this time, I believe, and dropped ibm and moved to the national Semi fabs. The M2's flopped (sort of) and National Semi lost a lot of money and decided to get out of the business. The only thing they made money on was the MediaGX processor, which was a really cheap chip that combined graphics and audio with the processor and National Semi used these as part of their WebPad reference designs. When Natinal jumped ship from the chips business, they sold Cyrix and all of its patents, trademarks, etc. to Via except for the MediaGX chip. So Cyrix still makes x86 chips, as part of Via, but National Semiconductor no longer makes x86 chips unless you count the MediaGX.. National are now dedicated to the embedded chips market..

Re:They Still Make Chips?

[Anonymous Coward]

National Semiconductor sold Cyrix to Via. NatSemi kept the MediaGX IP, or something.

Cyrix III

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they'll catch up with Intel soon.. oh wait, does catching up with intel include the first part of the name in addition to the roman numerals in front of it?

One thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

About Ars Technica that has always bothered me - I feel like I am reading a damned book every time I read an article there. I'm not an idiot, and I don't really care about the 'feelings' you had before you attended their press conference. i also know that Cyrix is not known as a powerful alternative to bleeding edge Pentiums, so get on with the show already. Blech.

Otherwise, good article, heh.

Damn... I was kind of hoping

[PsychoSpunk]

Did anyone really expect the Bible name references? Or were you secretly hoping that the codename was a nod to the cult classic starring Matthew Broderick, "WarGames". Of course, I don't remember if there was a character || actor by the name of Samuel in that movie cause then maybe the guys at Ars just weren't thinking of WOPR. I know that everytime I hear the name Joshua, I think of Professor Falken.

Oh well. It would have been cool though.

Re:Damn... I was kind of hoping

[Scrymarch]

Hmm, depends how obscure the reference is ... could be a cyborg reference to Angus Thermopyle in the Gap series by Stephen Donalson ...

Re:Damn... I was kind of hoping

[dyslexia]

Actually, it is named after me. Ph34r my n4m3.

FPU performance

[MinaInerz]

Cyrix's typical problem, just like AMD had until the Athlon, was its dismal floating point unit. Intel's fully pipelined FPU made the AMD/Cyrix/Winchips, etc, look really bad, and as such, since the Pentium, they've always been "value" CPUs, and not "performance" CPUs. Now I've yet to see official benchmarks on the VIA Joshua processor, but from people who have seen some of the pre-production chips, it doesn't look too promising.

I'm guessing that this chip will be a decent competitor to the K6 series of CPUs, but maybe that's just wishful thinking - Cyrix CPUs have traditionally had some unusual defects in them, that even later steppings didn't fix.

"Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill."

Re:FPU performance

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I hope that they don't become and AMD competitor... the K6 is priced below cost as it is.. I would not want to see the company that makes the FASTEST PC PROCESSOR IN THE WORLD. Hurt.. but socket 370 is nice.. Are these going to be SMP?

Re:FPU performance

[Esperandi]

If they're competing with the K6 series, they better be selling these things for a pittance. I know my K6-2 350 chip can be had on pricewatch.com for under $35 right now. Unless they're going to sell these Cyrix setups for even less than that or maybe right around there, they'll fail miserably.

As for the floating point, if it was so all-important, why aren't people bad-mouthing Intel like they bad-mouthed AMD back then? The difference between a Pentium 2 FPU and a K6-2 FPU is LESS than the difference between an Athlon and a Pentium 3, this time the slacking done by Intel.

Esperandi
Just looking for equality in the mud-slinging ;)

Re:FPU performance

[dan the person]

http://www.viatech.com/products/cyr3faq.htm
. Will the VIA Cyrix® III work in a multi-processor motherboard?
A. The VIA Cyrix® III will not work in a multi-processor motherbaord unless it is the only
processor installed. If the motherboard supports the 2.2V core voltage and FSB, then it will
work in a stand alone configuration.

Re:FPU performance

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, i have both a AMD-k6-2-450mhz (damn a big ID#) and a P233 socket7.

Now whats the benchmark? the P233 is 20% faster than the AMDin FPU.

Conclusion: the AMDs FPU was 60% worse.

Re:FPU performance

[Coniagas]

But will your K6 series run on a ATX Mobo with a 370 socket?

Re:FPU performance

[Forrestina]

i've got a k6-3 400, and it works great. i get similar frame rates in quake 2 and half life than my friends with p2 450s (because of video drivers with 3dnow stuff in them). i've not yet figured out what people's complaint with AMDs are. i mean, yes, pentiums get better performance. but, i got this chip for $109, at the time, a p2 400 would have set me back about $250.

the price/performace betweent the two chips is a joke. for the extra money that i would have spent on a pentium, i got a TNT video card and a SBLive soundcard. and i get mabye 5 fps less than my friends with pentiums of 50mhz more.

since, i never buy the newest, fastest chips anyhow, there is no reason to buy pentiums, when i can get comparable performance from AMDs, or even a faster AMD chip for the same amount as a slower one from intel (for instance, a 550 mhz AMD instead of the 400 intel for the same price). and now that doesn't apply since the K7s are making the p3s look very silly right now if more people knew anything about chips, and not just, "Intel has commercials!", they would be laughing at the p3. not to say that p3s are bad, they are fine chips, however... i've seen them selling for $200 more than the k7 of the same Mhz. uh, somehow, that just doesn't add up in my mind. a worse chip for more?

anyhow, basicaly. i love my k6-3, i'm not sure how you came up with those numbers unless you starved that poor AMD of it's RAM.

-------

Re:FPU performance

[dyslexia]

Yes, and no.

There are atx mobos, I think Asus makes one. No socket 370, K6's use socket 7.

Cyrix user

[Pike]

My current computer is a "PR" 166 Cyrix chip. This (non-mediaGX) system is very trusty and reliable, but not incredibly fast. I did build a mediaGX system once, and man that thing was not only slow and ugly, it gave me all kinds of stupid problems besides the fact that the first motherboard they sent was defective.

My next machine, after I have worn this one out plenty, will be a Crusoe-powered laptop. I have seen the light: the days of big, ugly tower cases for workstation users are numbered. Traditional cases make sense for servers, but hey! who needs expansion slots or serial ports anymore? Most of the technology has plateued and doesn't need to be upgraded often anymore (cpu speed, sound cards, video cards, ethernet, etc.) So why not by a small, fast mobile laptop??

This chip is mildly interesting but it doesn't look like it will be able to compete anywhere. It's main use will probably be as an upgrade to old PGA machines at some point. Quite a narrow market.

JD

Re:Cyrix user

[Anonymous Coward]

once again I am at work and have been to lazy since the last post to look at my pswd... now on to relevant info as far as performance is concerned does anyone else remember the days that spawned cyrix's first power.....I owned one of the 686's and of course in the beginning ran into a few problems....but just like LinuX.....afer you get it workin ....buddy it flies.... I always loved cyrix stuff and when they began to die out.....I started watching the athlons and such.....but began running pentiums...being not too impressed with the competition.... Unlike the most of you it seems.....I am Xstatic about the new Joshua and can't wait to see what that puppie can do ......cyrix always did make chips that could overclock like a motherf&**)r ps : ....has ne one else run into some problems with apg slot recognition in X or is it just me? your loving master 69th Element

Re:Cyrix user

[JatTDB]

Why not buy a small, fast laptop? Well, price first of all...while you can get low to mid range laptops pretty cheap nowadays, the sort of laptop I'd want as a desktop replacement will still fall in the $3000-$4000 range.

The main thing for me about laptops has always been the fact that if something blows up, I can't just run down to the local computer shop and pick up a replacement part. I have the same issue with integrated-in-the-mobo stuff...if my motherboard's built-in sound blows, I don't want to have to buy another motherboard; I want to buy another sound card and be done with it. I own a p166 laptop, and I'm extremely careful with it because I don't want to have to send it off to "my nearest authorized Fujitsu repair center" to get it fixed.

Hardware modularity is good. Integration is bad.

Re:Cyrix user

[Esperandi]

I'm just wondering if you know that calling it a PR 166 was a PR move by Cyrix? It's a 133MHz chip. yet another reason to gag at the mention of the name Cyrix, if you needed one.

Esperandi
MediaGX boards most certinaly have their uses though, for in-car MP3 players they sing. Like $2 for a mobo and processor and you don't have to worry about incompaitiblity because you're using it like Cyrix wanted you to - no extra hardware to mess things up!

Re:Cyrix user

[Deflatamouse!]

Most of the technology has plateaued? Don't be so pessimistic dude!

Re:Cyrix user

[Pike]

I forgot that most people play games and things...since I don't ever play quake I guess my video and sound demands are lower. My cheap $16 sound card stopped working when I switched to Linux and I really haven't missed it. Don't really need Voodoo3 to play chess! I'm looking for a good computer to run a browser, email, word processor, and of course programming stuff. I always thought programming was better than most games but that's just an opinion.

Other than games, graphics-intensive stuff, or other multimedia, I don't know what you'd need a $4000 laptop for. I will probably get a docking station for the added comfort when I'm at home, however.

At my job, a major AEC firm, most of the salaried workers are being given leased thinkpads, and it has worked out just great. Something like that with an eight or nine-hour battery life would suit me just fine thanks :-)

JD

Re:Cyrix user

[Trejus]

the problem with a fast,laptop is that it also means a hot laptop. Hot laptops are no good, they tend to freeze for no reason every so often. Then again, I maybe be wrong and prehaps the crusoe runs cooler than my celeron, but heat is defiently something to think about.

Re:Cyrix user

[Keeper ofthe Keys]

Other than games, graphics-intensive stuff, or other multimedia, I don't know what you'd need a $4000 laptop for. I will probably get a docking station for the added comfort when I'm at home, however.

It's all in the screen. Going Active/TFT makes the screen usable for long periods of time. In the past year, I've tried out a number of units (as they come through inventory :-)
- IBM 365 XD (P120/10"DSTN)
- AST Ascentia A (P120/12"TFT)
- NEC Versa 6060 (P166/12"TFT)
- IBM 380E (P150/12"DSTN)
- IBM 390X (PII400/15"TFT)

Guess which one I like the best? I found the AST the most usable, since I could bring it off-site, and work in the evenings, but it's speed was driving me insane. All the others (including the NEC) had horrible displays that were dim & washed out.

Don't compromise on the screen! If you do, you'll regret it later.

Who cares about Intel?

[miracles]

I'm not concerned about Cyrix's performance vs Intel's low end stuff, I think it's cool that you could probably overclock one of those .18 puppies a good 60%, but what's more important is that cyrix is still alive to power cool things like the webpad and other integrated handheld devices. i know transmeta will be wonderful and great and all those things, but i doubt we'll see anything from them until november or december, and whatever that is, it will still be a 1st gen device. Cyrix has a little lead on the appliance pc market.

let's be honest, we all know that there is nothing impressive about a cyrix cpu powerwise, but if you consider that they're working on something that has video,sound and networking builtin, then you have something that may even power your cell phone in a year...

Re:Who cares about Intel?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the worst logic I have ever heard...Cyrix has a slow core, has to use PR rating crap to get to 500MHz, but you think that you can overclock them 60%?

If that was true, why aren't they selling them as PR800MHz chips, instead of giving you 300MHz free for overclocking? And why do you think that Cyrix chips are useful for low power applications?

On a separate note, I think we now know why AMD is killing the K6-2+ and K6-3 chips: Cyrix is going to bring the prices for low-end chips down dramatically.

AMD is going to be squeezed good for the next year: Intel Willamette and Itanium at the high end, Cyrix Joshua and Samuels at the low end. They have no safe market; Cyrix will be cheaper, and Intel will probably be faster. I am predicting that they are losing money again by the 4th quarter.

Re:Who cares about Intel?

[fabjep]

Why do you predict that Intel will be faster? They have fundamentally inferior architecture in the PIIIs. The pipelines are too long (especially in floating point) causing disasterous results in wrong branch predictions. While I have no doubt that Intel could fix this problem in the future why should we assume that AMD will stagnate?

yeah but

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not competition if no one buys their product. I'm continually amazed at people who are willing to use that buggy, crappy, horrendous mess that Linux used to be just on principle but then they turn around and support Intel. You supported a fledgling OS, why not a fledgling chip?

Re:yeah but

[Fluffy the Cat]

Linux offered a Unix-type operating system with fully available source code that you were free to modify to your heart's content. Not only that, it was GPLed - any work that you contributed couldn't be swiped by someone else and used as part of their commercial product. Linux offered something new and exciting. And free, of course.

Cyrix on the other hand - well. A Cyrix processor isn't any more free than an Intel one in either meaning of the word. If they were releasing the chip design so that anyone could attempt to improve it then I'd see your point, but as it is all Cyrix really has over Intel is that they're probably guilty of fewer grossly immoral activities. It's not a paradigm shift in the same way that Linux promised to be.

Re:yeah but

[Anonymous Coward]

But my point is that for the overwhelmingly vast majority of linux users there is no difference. What percentage of linux users ever contributed anything to the kernel project? Or any other project for that matter? I know several people who have been using since before 1.0 and they have never submitted a patch for anything. They used it to be anti-establishment and because it was free as in Free Beer. I just don't see a closed design Cyrix chip as that much different from how the vast majority actually interact with linux. But my point is people keep saying "Yay for competition" and "I'll never buy a Cyrix chip" in almost the same breath. The two simply cannot go together.

Redeem their name?

[fridgepimp]

I'm trying to remember when they had "name" they could redeem. As long as I can remember cyrix chips have been flaky.

I'm no expert, but I've always had crappy luck.

-FP

Good read, Cyrix may have a chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Good read on Ars as usual. I've been following some of the Joshua developments, and I commend them for not reporting pure hype. The reserved conclusions are well placed. The comments on the PR are right on. Why on earth do they keep using this scheme? I think it belittles their product, and it insults customers as well!

Cyrix has really unimpressed me for the last several years. This new parenting by Via may be the one thing that saves them. Dual issue FPU and a full speed L2 cache twice the size of the Celeron could make this a very nice CPU indeed.

Go Cyrix!

[plik]

I really hope this works out well for them. Down with the Intel monkeys! Down! I think its time for a new chip monopoly in town.

Re:Go Cyrix!

[plik]

If you are my friend, moderate this up! [;

Re:Go Cyrix!

[Manaz]

On the contrary - I think it's time the old monopoly was closed down, and we were introduced to something we haven't had in a LONG time in the consumer PC processor market - choice.

Cyrix/Via (with Joshua), AMD (with the K6-3/K6-2+) and Intel (with the Celeron) it would appear now ALL have Celeron-class (for want of a better term)processors in the marketplace - for the first time - all aimed at consumers.

While AMD and Intel are battling it out in the medium-high end market (P3 & Athlon) and AMD are soon to release top end processors to compete with Intel's Xeons, we now have a 3 way (and possibly 4 way if you include Transmeta) battle for the low end market.

We should be getting better products for less money as a result of this, as each manufacturer attempts to gain market share - and this can only be a good thing.

Well done Cyrix/Via.

Re:Go Cyrix!

[captaineo]

On the contrary - I think it's time the old monopoly was closed down, and we were introduced to something we haven't had in a LONG time in the consumer PC processor market - choice.

Yeah, but all the choices suck =). I don't mean to sound harsh, but there is not a compiler hacker on this planet who likes the x86 architecture... Moreover, the choice will be short-lived, as Intel starts flooding the channels with Merc, er, Itaniums. It will take a while for anyone else to implement the IA64 instruction set; until then we're stuck with (admittedly low-cost) x86 clones.

One thing that struck me about the Transmeta announcement was their huge emphasis on x86 binary compatibility. From a consumer's point of view, they're right on target - but as a hacker I'm quite sad to realize the true extent of the damage Intel's years-long monopoly wrought. We won't be free from the Ghost of 8088 for a long while...

Yes, let's have choice... Somebody start working on an Alpha, Sparc, or PowerPC clone!

Hey, they won't be releasing with a goofy name!

[Paul Neubauer]

Pentium. Celeron. Itanium.
Athlon.
VIA Cyrix III.

At least they got that right.

I've heard horror stories about Cyrix chips too.
Mainly that linux users stopped having problems when they switched from Cyrix to AMD.

Curiously, I have heard horror stories about AMD as well. Some of the remaining OS/2 users have foudn that they stop having problems when they switch from AMD Cyrix.

I'm not proud - I'll run whatever chip I can get my hands on :) And the competition is a Good Thing. Maybe I'll never use a Cyrix III, but I may benefit from it anyway.

Re:Hey, they won't be releasing with a goofy name!

[ReinoutS]

I am an OS/2 user but I've never heard about problems with AMD. I've been using AMDs myself since 1993. Can you elaborate?

Re:Hey, they won't be releasing with a goofy name!

[Paul Neubauer]

I'd suggest a search on Dejanews, I recall seeing this issue a few times (as recently as 1999, maybe int 2000) in a couple of the os2 newsgroups.

Myself, I have an AMD K5-133 that quite happily runs OS/2 Warp Connect (3.0) so I've not run into it directly.

Re:Hey, they won't be releasing with a goofy name!

[Kmon]

I am an OS/2 user but I've never heard about problems with AMD. I've been using AMDs myself since 1993. Can you elaborate?
Didn't IBM actually sell AMD stuff under the IBM name for a while around when Warp 3 came out? I remember my friend opening up his PC and seeing this big ibm-blue DX4/100 chip with an IBM logo emblazoned on it. I would've thought that they would've made sure that OS/2 ran on AMDs really well.

A rant and a wierd idea

[cybergremlin]

First of all the PR raiting scam is just that, a scam. When I sold PCs customers would look at a cyrix233 and think that it ran at 233MHz. They would then see sub par proformance on a game that wanted a high MHz rated pentum and think that they got a lemon. What they did not understand (often even after a lengthy expanation) was that the chip did NOT actualy run at 233MHz. These cyrix emachines were embarasing to have on the sales floor. The constantly crashed and blew chunks when it came to game play. End of rant

Second Item
Here is an interesting idea (altho I doubt that it will ever happen): Motorola could buy cyrix (or better yet Transmeta) and gain access to the x86 market. They already make the chips for Macs, Palms, and many wireless devices. Transmeta looks like it may present a threat to Motorola's handhend dominance. This is especialy true if the Transmeta's chip can be set up to emulate a 68000, the chip that Motorola makes for the PalmPilot. Right now everytime someone buys a Palm Pilot it is money in Motorola's pocket. There are plenty of reasons not to do this of course (like cyrix's rep stinks to high heaven and no one has made it profitable) and I dont think the Motorola is in the mood for a radical change to their product line.

Re:A rant and a wierd idea

[G27 Radio]

I haven't been incredibly happy with Cyrix either. I'm a not-so-proud owner of two Cyrix MediaGX boxes that can't reliably run Linux, Win95-98, or NT 4.0. These boxes are the most worthless pieces of trash I've ever bought.

I paid less than $50 a piece for these ~200Mhz boxes and I still feel like it's a total rip-off. I know Alan Cox has a couple of them...I wonder what he thinks of them.

numb

Re:A rant and a wierd idea

[technos]

Odd. I own a total of four MediaGX based systems and am happy with them. Two are POS/IS boards normally seen in x86 cash register setups, and while their performance (at 166) isn't stellar, I can't beat them in terms of size or price. One is a NEC-made subnotebook, clocked all the way up, and bought for a song. The last is a Cyrix-made baby-AT. All run Linux well. One of the POS boards has a 73 day uptime, and only that short because I updated the kernel. They aren't designed to run games, nor crunch spreadsheets. Cyrix was trying to play a 1998 Transmeta: Medium duty, low power consumption mobile computers. And they do that well.

On a side note, your GX boxen wouldn't happen to be US Design Concept's GX Lite's, would they?? Updating the BIOS helps, but they just plain suck.

Re:A rant and a wierd idea

[Raffy]

I can offer my sympathy and understanding to those who buy a "Cyrix xxx MHz" chip and see xxx -n MHz in the real world.

In my case, it was trying to drop Quake3 into a machine with a Cyrix 300 processor. "Oh, the chip runs like a P2 233" he says. Funny, Q3A's diagnostics report, "Pentium 180 MHz processor installed. This program may not function correctly."

One more reason for me to give a big "Thank You" to J. Carmack. . . I now have a way to benchmark unknown-quantity CPUs against known entities.

Of course, I've worn the W off of my keyboard. . .

Rafe

V^^^^V

This chip looks rather nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the specs on this chip looks rather nice. Especially the amount of cache compared to celeron.

I guess this could be great celeron competitor

Good old cyrix

[[hk]doogie]

I sure hope this chip is better than the previous ones released by them. The non-clock lock seems like a brilliant idea for overclockers/tweakers. I'm still wondering if the front side bus speed is unlocked. It might be in there best interest to sell them multiplier/FSB unlocked and put a good core on the chip. It might even beat the celeron at overclockability! If only Crusoe was for the desktop ::sigh:: =)

Just like Crusoe

[Anonymous Coward]

Show us the benchmarks baby! REAL ONES! None of this "power consumption" BS, run a bunch of them, then give a few out to Toms Hardwarez, Go-Ananands and Firing Squat. If it wont do 60fps at 1024x768x32 with a GeForce DDR then they can kiss their a$$ goodbye.

Re:Just like Crusoe

[fabjep]

Tom's Hardware is happily devoid of a terminal z.

SMP?

[night]

Anyone know if these chips will SMP on an ABIT
BP-7 (s370) or similiar. I'd love to run a cheap
dual 500 with a >=100 Mhz FSB without overclocking.

Re:SMP?

[Esperandi]

Well, they seem to be aiming at the portable market... and these are not going to be bare chips you can plug into a mobo, they're going to be combos with sound/video/networking all built in. If Cyrix repeats their past performances, attempting to replace any of the default stuff will result in extreme disaster. Sparks and smoke and such.

Esperandi

Re:SMP?

[florin]

You can probably forget SMP. Neither Cyrix nor any of the other X86 clone makers has ever made any chips that included the local APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller) component that is necessary for Intel style multiprocessing. You need this to be able to allow more than one CPU to handle interupts. Since Intel reserved all rights to that technology strictly, AMD and Cyrix agreed on a competing standard instead and called it OpenPIC. But unfortunately so far no chips or motherboards ever materialised that adhered to that specification. If this chip has any sort of multiprocessing ability, which I seriously doubt, it likely won't be compatible with the Abit's I/O APIC.

There's a small chance that the combined sum of the various technology exchanges that VIA, Cyrix and in particular National Semiconductors have had with Intel over the years might have changed this, though. Look at how Cyrix is assuming that those crosslicenses are transfered onto them now that they were first bought by NS and then VIA. That's why they're using Intel's GTL+ bus, for instance, which AMD never dared. Maybe NS owned rights to the APIC too. But still that's all too late for Joshua's design anyway, and actually someone asked a Cyrix support person about this a while back and she said pretty sure no SMP.

Re:SMP?

[dan the person]

No http://www.viatech.com/products/cyr3faq.htm

Too bad. WarGames was cool : )

[Grant Elliott]

I was thinking the same thing. There was no Samuel in WarGames that I know of. It would have been quite a stretch for Cyrix to name a processor after the WOPR anyway. It would probably take about 10 minutes to ask if you'd like to play a game. And the really fast Tic-Tac-Toe...

It could be worse, I suppose... The AMD K6II could have been named after a supercomputer...

Cyrix? Oh... I remember them

[Chemical]

I remember when I went to Fry's to get some new components. The salesman (ever talk to a sales person at Fry's BTW) told me to go with the Cyrix 6x86 166 instead of a genuine Intel Pentium. He said that they cost less, offer full compatability, and offer better performance than Intel.

It turned out only one of these things were true. It did indeed cost less. But then again you get what you pay for. I remember I had such a hard time with a lot of software, only to call up tech support and find out that the product isn't Cyrix compatable or it needed a patch or something. One peice of hardware I bought (soundcard or something) turned out to be incompatable with Cyrix processors. Not only that, but performance was terrible. Sure it was a nice upgrade from my 486, but compared to actual Intel machines I used, it was pretty bad. Not only that, I found out later that their 6x86 '166' wasn't actually 166Mhz. It ran at 133 and had "special features that make it run as fast as if it were 166Mhz". What a clever marketing scheme. Intel should do that too: Come out with the Pentium 1.2Ghz that only runs at 800Mhz but has "special features" so it runs as fast as if it were 1.2Ghz.

In conclusion, I vowed to never buy another Cyrix processor as long as I may live. I advise others to do the same, and not to believe their hype. Remember what they delivered in the past, and that history often repeats itself.

Re:Cyrix? Oh... I remember them

[Fluffy the Cat]

In terms of integer performance, a 133MHz 6x86 is approximately as fast as a Pentium at 166MHz. The FPU performance is distinctly worse, though (along with pretty much every Intel clone up until the Athlon). I don't have any problem with what Cyrix did - they never tried to pretend that the chip wasn't really a 133, but if they'd simply marketed it as a 133MHz Cyrix then nobody would have bought the things. If the Fry's person tried to sell it to you as a 166MHz processor, though, you probably have the right to his first born son. Or something like that.

Re:Cyrix? Oh... I remember them

[be-fan]

Why vow something stupid like that? Companies have turned around before (ahem AMD!), and remember, Cyrix is under a new owner. When it comes out, read the reviews. If it is faster and cheaper, buy it! No reason to make a vow against it!

Re:Cyrix? Oh... I remember them

[geekoid]

Yeah, I had the EXACT same experience.No more Cyrix for me.
It sounds like you might enjoy this new site I've just started working on: Frysucks.com

Re:Cyrix? Oh... I remember them

[cybergremlin]

I used to work at a computer place that was one block over from a Frys. Half of our customers were people that had a bad experiance there and vowed never to do buiseness with them again. Thank you Frys, your lousy service made me a mint in commisions.

As for the idea that Cyrix is under "new management" remember that Via got them from National Semiconductor who bought them from...
Never seem anxios to catch a hot potato.

Re:Cyrix? Oh... I remember them

[Eric Sharkey]

He said that they cost less, offer full compatability, and offer better performance than Intel.

It turned out only one of these things were true. It did indeed cost less.

In 1996 I bought a 100MHz 686 which Cyrix branded a PR-133. I ran with it as my primary system for two years and never had *any* problems with hardware/software compatibility. Prior to that I had purchased Cyrix brand 586 and 486 systems. The 486 ran fine. I think there was some funny business going on with the 586, though, since I had to underclock the thing to get it to compile a kernel. I suspect the vendor, though, not Cyrix. With none of these three chips did I ever experience a software compatibility problem.

Yes, I know that some companies have said that their product doesn't work with the chips, but I've also had many companies tell me that their products don't work with Linux, while in fact they worked just fine. If a company hasn't tested something, they frequently claim it to be incompatible, since, that's the safe call to make. For some reason, companies seem to have a very hard time saying "We don't know.".

The Cyrix 686 chips *do* perform significantly better than Intel pentium chips running at the same clock *for certain types of calculations*.

If you aren't happy with the fact that salesman treated you as a "mark", that's understandable. But when presented with marketing information by a salesman, you have to be aware that his motivating factor is to sell a product. If you would prefer a salesman that more honestly represents his product, then by all means, shop somewhere else, but don't fault the original manufacturer.

Re:Cyrix? Oh... I remember them

[Muad]

>Not only that, I found out later that their 6x86 '166' wasn't actually 166Mhz. It ran at 133 and had "special features that make it run as fast as if it were 166Mhz". What a clever marketing scheme

It is called P-rating, and it was not a marketing scheme but a way to compare 5th-generation processors built on different cpu cores. IBM used it as well, and I believe AMD had done the same.

I vowed to never buy another Cyrix processor as long as I may live

Just because a cheap salesman lied to you you are not entitled to blame Cyrix. With the AMD Athlon as the only notable exception, Intel's cpu cores have always been the most powerful in their class during their lifetime as cutting edge technology (please no trolls on the fact that, yeah, you can now buy a faster 486 from somebody else but, guess what ? Intel is making pentium IIIs!).
Notably, in the area of floating point operations, intel's cores have never been challenged until the Athlon came along, and if you ever believed otherwise it probably means you were either looking at outdated technology OR you did not know your chips (in other words, the salesman was thinking for you).

Joshua, eh?

[Stiletto]

So, with a name like Joshua, will it finally let me nuke the Russians?
________________________________

Re:Joshua, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, with a name like Joshua, will it finally let me nuke the Russians?

Only if you march around them seven times, blowing trumpets.

Re:Joshua, eh?

[Kesh]

So, with a name like Joshua, will it finally let me nuke the Russians?

For those of you who are left scratching your heads at this joke, Joshua was the name of the computer in the movie Wargames. It was offically known as the WOPR, but its creator called it Joshua.
____________________
Tension, apprehension
And dissension have begun

Remember a little chip called the K5?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I must say it sucked as well... but AMD soon after came out with the K6 (a great chip in it's own right) that at the time was faster than a Pentium *and* a Pentium Pro. And to think I just picked up a new one for only $20.00 (266).. Thats alot of power for a little money. And lets not go into the K7... This is a company that has redeemed themselfs with great products.

2.2V, 0.18um

[cperciva]

What sort of fabrication process are they using? The specs say that it will run off of 2.2V, but they are using a 0.18um process to make it -- are they trying to melt their chips?
Intel's .25um process originally designed to run with 1.8V, and their .18um chips are running on 1.6V and 1.65V -- why is this cyrix chips running with such a high voltage?

Re:2.2V, 0.18um

[Anonymous Coward]

What sort of fabrication process are they using? The specs say that it will run off of 2.2V, but they are using a 0.18um process to make it -- are they trying to melt their chips?

As I understand the NatSemi process that VIA is using to fab Joshua, $L_{eff}$ is supposed to be 180nm, but the pitch of the metal layers is based off of a 220nm process. This 0.18um process is not even comparable to AMD's or Intel's.

But are they going to beef up their support?

[Esperandi]

The thing that really put the nail in the coffin for me with Cyrix was reading about a guy who had a Cyrix machine and he bought an AWE64. The Cyrix didn't like the AWE64 and the system wouldn't boot. After going thru everything he could think, weeks of testing and hours on the tech supprt lines to different places, he calls Cyrix. Their response? "Oh yeah, we're not compatible with the AWE64, get a different sound card. No, we're not planning on fixing it. Bye."

I'm not too impressed by that, even if they put out a 5GHz chip that made the Athlon look like a Penitum 3 I don't think I'd want to get something that was all-integrated with no support at all for anyone who wants to add their own components...

Esperandi
Hasn't bought a "system" since he was 12, its just been parts and upgrades since then.

Re:But are they going to beef up their support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this wasn't Cyrix's fault, it was Creative's. The AWE64 included a physical modelling based software synthesizer, which required a reasonable FPU to run (equivalent to a Pentium 90; fyi, Cyrix's with a speed rating of PR133 and up were plenty fast enough).

Creative was locked in a rather nasty lawsuit with Cyrix at the time the AWE64 came out, and took advantage of the (massively overblown) publicity about Cyrix's slow FPUs to claim that Cyrix CPUs couldn't run the software synth. In actuality, there was code in the synth that checked to see if it was running on an Intel processor, and aborted if not. The fact that the software synth used was originally commissioned by Intel to show off Pentium processors may also have played a part.

IIRC, they later came out with a patch that allowed AMD CPUs to run it, and I even came across a website that had a patch that claimed to allow Cyrix CPUs to run it (I never tried, so don't know if it actually worked).

Re:But are they going to beef up their support?

[Esperandi]

FLAMEBAIT?!? 90% of the posts in reply to this story are talking about how terrible Cyrix has been in the past! I've never complained about moderation before, but this is completely ridiculous. I did not post this as a troll or to get flamed, I posted it because Cyrix's service is worse than their chips and if they don't improve that, whatever chip they produce won't matter!

Esperandi

Re:But are they going to beef up their support?

[JimPooley]

That's odd. I have an AWE-64 card. I also have a Cyrix based PC. I have not had any problems booting. There is one particular software utility which you can't use with a Cyrix CPU - it won't even let you install it. But it's not a utility I've particularly wanted to use anyway.
I've had the Cyrix machine for three years, and I've never had any problems with it.
OK - I may not buy another one, but that's mainly because my next computer will be an iMac!

Re:But are they going to beef up their support?

[IMZombie]

I had a Cyrix PR233 that ran the AWE64 just fine

They lied, and I will never trust them.

[eGabriel]

They said their 686 chips outperformed similar Intel chips. They even showed graphs that proved it to me visually. I have actually owned two, and
both were nowhere near the performance of my Intel and AMD chips.

Lying is the most abhorrent thing in the universe.
It has brought dishonor on the marketers and their families, and it is my hope that a plague of 1000 years falls upon them for their froghearted schemes.

Re:They lied, and I will never trust them.

[be-fan]

Actually, back in the heyday of the 6x86 (or maybe 5x86), the fastest pentium out was the vinilla Pentium sans MMX. Back then the performance of Cyrix chips (both FP and Int) were unmatched. Then the Pentium MMX came and brought out a really massive FPU, and Cyrix was left in the dust. The core architecture of the 6x86 is actually faster in integer apps than an equivilant Pentium MMX (maybe even PII) because a 233 MHz Cyrix performs like a 233MHz MMX for integer, but only runs at like 208 MHz or something.

Re:They lied, and I will never trust them.

[billybob jr]

the fpu of the intel pentium mmx was pretty similar if not identical to the original pentium.

pentium mmx vs pentium:
added more L1 cache, 32k vs 16k (i think, been awhile)

added mmx instructions, note that these are integer only

tweaked out some of the superduper scalar out of order supercalifragilistic part of the processor. actually I think the part is called the TLB - translation look ahead buffer.

All in all I think it was around a 10% to 15% increase in performance at a given clock speed.
This put the pentium mmx ahead of the 6x86 in integer performance, and smoked it in fp performance.

Re:They lied, and I will never trust them.

[JonK]

Lying is the most abhorrent thing in the universe.

Bzzzt - wrong

The correct answer is "being sanctimonious is the most abhorrent thing in the universe"

Did they show you graphs demonstrating that Photoshop, VST, Quake or Microprose Grand Prix would run faster on a Cyrix 166 than a P166? Or did their graphs show that it could run (say) Word faster?

Personally, I'm waiting for the plague of 1000 years to fall upon telephone sanitisers, PHBs, people who say that free access to guns make the world a safer place, the morons who believe salespeople and other such. It hasn't happened yet but that doesn't mean I've stopped hoping.
--
Cheers

dumb Q...

[CrAlt]

256K L2? Is there going to be L3 on the motherboard? Going from a 512K mobo to a 1Meg helped things out alot...having only 256K must suck.

Re:dumb Q...

[be-fan]

Actually, it does not suck. For most things that consumers do (ie. games, word processing, most media stuff) having a full speed on die L2 of 256K is better than having half speed 512K L2, or 1 or 2 meg bus speed L3. True, for servers its slower, but even for 3D studio MAX, rendering times increase less than 10 percent going from a 512K PIII to a 1meg Zeon. For consumer apps, going to 256K (like the new coppermine PIIIs) on die full speed is acutally about 10-20% faster than the old half speed on card 512K L2.

Re:dumb Q...

[CrAlt]

ok thanks

Re:dumb Q...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks? What did he do? Stroke your cock? You french fag.

Try catching up to AMD first...

[Anonymous Coward]

It really bugs me that everyone still goes around pretending that intel processors are the king. The K7 is faster... repeat after me.. "THE K7 IS FASTER". Why is it that no one can believe that intel is only second rate now? I guess no one told to marketing department.. and I know AMD is low on cash but they need to start running media ads.

Re:Try catching up to AMD first...

[fabjep]

While I am a strong believer in AMD processors (and own one myself) I think there are a few other companies that are being deprived of some noteworthy contributions. How about the DEC Alpha? Those things have been running at 500 mhz for a hell of a long time. As of six months ago they were going to release a 1.6 ghz by 2001 (if my memory serves me correctly quite possibly it's a bit distorted). Also, the new G4s are pretty impressive. Sure, they've had their troubles with the actual manufacturing process, but they are excellent processors.

Why Cyrix has a bad reputation

[billybob jr]

Cyrix has had some problems. One big one with the 6x86 line was that the chips required more current than Intel chips. The motherboards were built to meet the demands of the Intel pentiums. The snafu came from the fact that cyrix was a budget chip, but it didn't work in the inexpensive motherboards. Cheap motherboards aren't going to throw in a good power supply for the hell of it. They have just enough to get by, in this case it was just enough for Intel chips. Up to that point, Intel was the only game in town, so it was understandable. This led to stability problems in Cyrix based systems.

The first system I built was a p150+ (60Mhz bus, 2x multiplier) with a no name HX chipset motherboard. It basically worked ok. When bought a big fan I could overclock it. When I gave it to my mom, I underclocked it to ensure stability.

It was a fine system for running linux and windows 95. It sucked for quake, but it was good for Descent I and II.

About the L2 cache...

[Digital_Fiend]

Remember that the L2 cache is running at core frequency (like the Celeron), not half speed (like P2/P3's). This means that they'll probably be overclockable, and a nice little toy to play with. Just my 1/50th of a US$

Re:About the L2 cache...

[ajakk]

Whether or not the L2 cache runs at clock speed or not does not matter if a processor can be overclocked. The reason the Celerons overclocked so well was because they had so little L2 cache. L2 cache is a pain to overclock, so the less a chip has, the easier it is to overclock. However, overclocking a chip with on-die L2 is more helpful because of the speed-up of cache.

Re:About the L2 cache...

[ZiGGyKAoS]

the reason that the celerons overclock so well is that the say 300a comes off the same line as their 400 just with a diffrent multiplier. the p2 and p3s would clock just as well as the celeron but their cache flakes out. the celerons cache is on the same die as the processor so if the processor clocks at 500Mhz the cache will also.

2.2 million transistors?

[billybob jr]

How can a chip with 256k L2 cache (on die) and 64k L1 cache only have 2.2 million transistors?!?!

Athlons have around 20 million or so. I think my celeron is around 8 or 9 million. My pentium mmx was around 3 million.

Just doesn't seem right.

Re:2.2 million transistors?

[MatriXOracle]

I think that's a typo. According to this page at Thresh's, the number is 22 million. I think that sounds a lot better.

Re:2.2 million transistors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats weird. Here at Ace's hardware they mention 24 million. Anyone know the real deal?

Re:2.2 million transistors?

[billybob jr]

In the Ars article they mention it as an estimate not a given fact.

Thank you, thank you.

[joshua_doesnt_know]

Finally I get some recognition here. Glad to see more info on this processor. What a great name for it! Finally they name something after me! I feel so honored.

_joshua_

Re:Thank you, thank you.

[dyslexia]

You'll have to share that recognition with every other Joshua out there, including me. Let's all get together and pound Joshua processors into peoples heads.

Transmeta is irrelevant in consumer space.

[be-fan]

I don't understand all the people saying how Transmeta is competition to Intel, even at the low end. If you hadn't read the specs, even the 700MHz version, offers pretty bad FP performance compared to a P6 architecture. It has good integer performance, but in low end consumer space, thats irrelevant. Most apps that really need power are FP based and a chip with an FPU that can't match a 500MHz Celeron definately won't compete. Transmeta is for lightweight portables, nothing more.

Here are some *BETA* benchmarks

[Lethal_Geek]

FiringSquad has a benchmark of q3.

FiringSquad's Article

Too bad this cyrix chip looks as bad as the others, even though the silicon is still beta. I doubt this thing will be on the same level as a Celeron. Unless it is alot cheaper to get ahold of, I'd say screw Cyrix as always. :( Lethal Geek

Re:Here are some *BETA* benchmarks

[Mike_K]

Yeah, but if you look at the Celeron benchmarks there, they don't make any sense either. How come the higher the quality gets, the higher the frame rate gets? I'm having doubts about these guys' ability to run a decent benchmark.

m

Re:Here are some *BETA* benchmarks

[Anonymous Coward]

I checked out that link. It says that this is beta silicon, and that there are significant performance problems which need to be worked out in the next month before they are shipped.

HUH?

They are demoing broken parts, but plan to be shipping working parts in a month? It takes over a month to build inventory to begin shipping. You can barely push a fab lot through the factory in a month. Are they even going to test their bug fixes before shipping?

And what kind of chip bugs cut performance by 50%? Sounds like another Cyrix dog, to me.

(Not meant to be a flame...some people on this group are just gullible regarding Cyrix and Transmeta.)

Cyrix did not have a poor FPU.

[be-fan]

I just want to clear up some of the confusion some people are having about Cyrix and their FPUs. In the past, Cyrix chips were the fastest you could buy, in integer OR fpu. It wasn't until the Pentium MMX and its pipelined FPU that the Cyrix name became synonomous with crappy FPU performance.

Re:Cyrix did not have a poor FPU.

[raynet]

The Cyrix FPU was poor, as was AMDs. I'm not sure if Cyrix could beat the non-MMX intel chips, but after using many chips I have come to these conclusions..

• 6510@1MHz is slower than 80286@8MHz
• Doom could be played with 80386@16MHz
• AMD PR-166 @ 200MHz equals to Pentium 166
• Pentium MMX 200 @ 250MHz is faster than Cyrix MII-300 (as a server Cyrix MII-300 was faster)
• Upgrading system to AMD K6-II 400 didn't make games more playable (had to buy a new 3d-card)
• My friends always have faster computers than I can afford

Cyrix MII is/was amazing with integers, hope that their new CPU is good with FPU too, otherwise they don't got a chance to compete with other chips on the market.

Re:Cyrix did not have a poor FPU.

[be-fan]

Whoa, MII is way ahead of what I'm talking about. The MII is technically the 6x86MX, the version after the Cyrix 6x86. Back in the 6x86 days, Pentium MMXs didn't even exist, and the 6x86 FPU and integer unit whopped anything available. Think 1995-1996 and you have the idea.

Re:Cyrix did not have a poor FPU.

[billybob jr]

The 6x86 fpu was not superior to the original pentium. I played many games of quake on my 6x86, and it was quite a bit slower than comparable Intel chips. Sure the integer was good, but the floating point was not. Now Quake isn't a true floating point test, but it is indicative. Trust me, the cyrix fpu was not faster than the pentium.

Re:Cyrix did not have a poor FPU.

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall that the problem with Cyrix FP was that it required different kinds of instruction scheduling than the Pentium did, and back then everyone doing assembly optimization concentrated on Pentium-only optimizations since Intel had almost all of the market. This is why Cyrix did so badly in Quake -- it was stalling when the FP instructions were scheduled for a different kind of a FP pipeline, even though it could have performed comparably to a Pentium, were the code actually tuned for Cyrix.

Re:Cyrix did not have a poor FPU.

[billybob jr]

I've heard the same thing before. And while I am sure there is some truth to it, it just doesn't matter. Cyrix could have made an entire new instruction set and said: if people would just write code for our new instruction set it would be faster than Intel. Obviously they made a chip to compete with Intel. Obviously the code it was going to be running was made to run on the Intel.

I believe the cyrix chip did better when floating point operations were interwoven inbetween integer operations.

I am very skeptical that Quake could have been rewritten to perform comparably on the cyrix. It just didn't have the horsepower.

Re: a lot of eMachines use cyrix chips

[TheGratefulNet]

and while not ultra fast, they are cheap and they DO work.

--

Always a Signal 7 or Signal 11 on Linux install

[Anonymous Coward]

And only on systems with Cyrix chips. I'll let other people be the guniea pig before I try a Cyrix chip again.

Re:Always a Signal 7 or Signal 11 on Linux install

[Anonymous Coward]

Before I bought a PR233 there were some issues with Linux and Cyrix. This made me paranoid about it. I searched for info and found a page about patches for Cyrix--which were last updated about 6mos prior. Not having installed Linux or used it, I had no idea what I'd do with such patches if they were necessary. I asked on comp.os.linux.install or something about Linux and Cyrix, and got several replies from happy campers with the same generation of Cyrix chip and even earlier --nobody said "DOn't go there"

So I did. I installed Linux RH5.0 and leaving aside RH5.0's foibles, things worked flawlessly. That was March 1998, so the guinea pig is old enough to vote now.

New Cyrix cpus from Via, well I'm a K7 person now. But I look forward to hearing about how they do. Could make a good "book" style mini PC for LAN stations.

Re:Always a Signal 7 or Signal 11 on Linux install

[SoftwareJanitor]

That is usually caused by bad memory and/or incorrectly set BIOS parameters or incorrectly set motherboard jumpers. It generally isn't caused by a faulty CPU, and as lots of people I know have successfully installed Linux on Cyrix chips from the 486's to the M-II, I don't think it is fair to blame Cyrix for something that probably isn't their fault.

Cyrix.... naah.

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my machines has a cyrix chip, and it's one of the most unpredictable, flaky, and just plain underpowered CPUs I've ever seen. Personally, I like Intel because most things are meant to be Intel compatible. (I know, I know, "so why do I play with Linux?")
I haven't tried AMDs, so I really can't judge them, and while I'm quite excited about the Crusoe (and will probably buy a Crusoe system without much testing,) I'm still skeptical about them.

Re:Cyrix.... naah.

[SoftwareJanitor]

Early Cyrix 6x86's have overheating problems. In order to run reliably they require a special 'Cyrix-approved' chip fan/heat sink (fan spins at roughly twice the RPM and the heat sink is about 1/2 again as big as a standard Pentium fan). The 6x86MX and M-II's seem to have fixed those problems. The early chips also require a motherboard with a very good voltage regulator due to their high power consumption. If your Cyrix equipped machine has a cheapo motherboard, a standard Pentium style chip fan or if the BIOS parameters and/or motherboard jumper settings aren't configured correctly, then you may have problems.

I've had great luck with AMD processors, from the 486's to the K6 family. Most of my friends have recently bought K6-II or K6-III's and all of them are really happy with them including speed and stability. I would wholeheartedly recommend AMD CPUs compared to any similar priced to slightly more expensive Intel CPUs.

Well, at least they didn't call it the 'WOPR'

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss the evil empire. An ominous bad guy superpower makes for a lot of good movies. Now the bad guys are mostly penny-ante freelance terrorists (bin-laden) , minor dictators (hussein), or small countries fallen into anarchy (timor, chechnya, yugoslovia). And the "evil" Red China that also enjoys "most favored nation" status with the west. Not sure what to make of that. Even the bad guys are now born again diplomatic heroes now like many-times-over killer and assassin Yassar Arafat. When does he go on trial for the people he had killed, and school busses blown up? Woah, we're waaaay off topic here.

Re:Well, at least they didn't call it the 'WOPR'

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's not like the Palestinians have any right to the land they had inhabited for 2000 years. Who cares? They're just dirty Arabs, right? Poor Isrealis, they take land that belonged to others, then take even more of that land, settle that occupied territory (against the Geneva Convention, but who cares about international law when it's our allies that break it), and when the native population fights back, it is they (the Palestinians) who are the terrorists. Compare the number of Palestinians killed by Isrealis vs the number of Isrealis killed by Palestinians since Israel was created and then tell me who the terrorists are.

Re:Well, at least they didn't call it the 'WOPR'

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's not like the American Indian had any right to the land.. blah.. blah... blah..

Face it.. Israel got attacked by the arabs. The arabs sucked and got beat, and lost some land.

Deal.

Re:Well, at least they didn't call it the 'WOPR'

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee thanks for clearing that up; now it all makes sense. Fucking idiot.

Speaking of version numbers...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the version number of your internet?
Mine is version 5:
Microsoft® Windows® 98 Second Edition comes with Microsoft Internet 5.

What a fucking luuser...

[_Bruce Perens]

Tried to be constructive, got +3, funny. Serves you right.

For what it's worth

[Bryan Ischo]

I have built two systems with Cyrix chips:

1) A PR-200 in July of 1997 for my sister as a wedding present. It is still running strong and they use it almost every day. When I ask them if they want to upgrade, they ask why. Seems that the Cyrix 200 is still fast enough for them. Even Tomb Raider III runs well on it (with the original VooDoo card that I put in it).

2) An MII-300 last year for my neighbor, in a system that I gave them as a gift. They think it's plenty fast also.

Neither have had any problems whatsoever, except for the MII-300 which started crashing a few months after I foolishly overclocked it to 333. I clocked it back down to 300 and it was fine.

Also, my friend built a system with a PR-166 years ago that still works great (although it seems slow as molasses now).

Cyrix have great integer performance and a phenomenal price/performance ratio. Sure their floating point is lousy (or at least was), but who cares? So what if my Quake III can't draw frames faster than my monitor refresh? Even a Cyrix 200 is a decent gaming platform for most people.

BTW I am an AMD guy myself, have a K6-233, K6-2 300, and K6-III 400. Next upgrade will be an Athlon, of course.

Re:For what it's worth

[Deflatamouse!]

You're an AMD guy, but you buy your friends Cyrix? That is soooooo evil!!!

Re:For what it's worth

[Anonymous Coward]

I fully agree with you, I am sick of all the Cyrix bashing that goes around. Most of these people have never owned Cyrixs and have only heard rumors.

When I bought the computer that I am using now it was a Cyrix PR200, instead of running at 66.6 x 3 = 200MHz like Petiums, it ran at 75 x 2 = 150MHz. I ran a few benchmarks on it that tested processor performance. Later I upgraded to a Pentium 200MMX, the same benchmarks that I ran before showed that the Pentium was slower. The reason I upgraded was for 3d game (floating point) performance, which the Pentium was twice as fast at.

I think it is great that Cyrix can produce better performing processors for everyday tasks for less than half the price of their Intel counterparts.

Note: I think the key to the peformance rise was the use of slower processor speeds and faster bus speeds. That is why an Athlon 500 (200 MHz Bus) will outpeform a Pentium 800 (133MHz Bus) every day of the week.

Re:For what it's worth

[maraist]

There are so many factors to performance it's not funny. You have the classical memory BUS speed, the periferal bus speed ( if you're overclocking, or have a strange multiplier ), you have your MB chipset buffering scheme ( how many delinquent requests can it keep going ). You have the performance of the chipset itself. Of course you have the huge variable of different periferals strenths and weaknesses which pull you every which way but sunday. Then of course you have hardware drivers which tend to be optimized for specific processors ( the norm being intel, but in some circumstances, like AMD's 3DNow for Voodoo's Glide ).

Then inside / around the CPU you have cache, which is a HUGE variable. You have the raw MHZ speed, you have the pipeline depth, and the latency, both of which are negatively affected by larger caches ( due to address resolution logic ). Then you have the port deth ( how many parallel accesses can the cache access ). And finally the size and bandwidth of the cache. AMD / Cyrix have gone with bigger but lower performance caches, while Intel has gone with more complex but smaller caches. Hypothetically, a larger, simpler cache will be cheaper to design, but will take up more surface area, and thus provide lower yield. To make matters worse, some programs require high speed access to a very small data-set ( and thus benifit Intel ), while other applications just use a lot of data, and anything that minimizes main memory access boosts speed. I believe Quake qualifies for the former, while Office apps ( and scripting languages in general ) benifit the latter.

AMD and Cyrix also, for a while there, worked at enhancing the internal instruction flow algorithms. Making huge branch prediction buffers, and in the case of Cyrix, producing all sorts of algorithmic optimizations that Intel strangely didn't implement.

I believe the main reason AMD and Cyrix didn't work as hard at their FPU was because it's a _really_ ugly design project. It's more fun to work on general purpose flow design and playing and tweaking a simplistic cache design, than to get dirty with all the possible combinations of floating point logic ( especially one as ugly as the 8087 family. I believe Intel owns several patents on some highly optimized implementations, so the others would have to devote some big bucks to tweak theirs without violating any laws. Not to mention, making it faster often times means taking up more silicon. Thus you have a larger die ( thus lowering yields ) and the logic is expensive to design / debug / implement to boot.

The next issue was latency. Intel, with the 80686 line ( I hate their non-informative naming conventions ), went super-pipelined, which worked great for sequential operations, but performed horribly in random branching contexts. AMD and Cyrix both opted for a narrow pipe-depth, with an emphasis on branch prediction. Thus even failed predictions had minimal penalty.

The fastest possible processor will be non-pipelined and have n-wide execution components. The reason being that each pipeline stage introduces a store and forward delay. Some stages may perform minimal operations, thus wasting 75% of a clock tick. This really hurts data-dependancy delays, since a pipelined FPU might take 15-150% longer to complete a Divide which the very next instruction requires. If all other data-dependacy paths are blocked, all the pipelining in the world won't do you any good. In the integer world, this is very common. I'm about to perform a cache missed memory fetch, but first I must calculate the address. If every other instruction is based on the contents of that memory cell, then pipelining can only hurt this particular case.

The biggest opponent to complex and optimized operations was that they would slow down the rest of the processor ( by requiring slower clock ticks ). But the device manufacturers are learning how to make different parts of the CPU run at different frequencies. ( They've long since learned how to run the BUS at a fraction of the Core ). Intel's next 80686 processor varient will have a clock doubled integer core, for example.

Still, the main reason we don't see a return to complex optimizations is that having 32 ADD components is extremly more expensive than having 2 16 deep add components. Even though you'll get a significant performance boost ( assuming you can manage that huge bus, and a potentially large number of register ports ), you probably won't make up for the added expense in shere complexity and yeild loss ( due to extra size ).

Thus, Intel went for a partially pipelined FPU which had heavy latency penalties, but improved overall operations ( especially for non data-dependant operations ).

AMD Finally headed this off by making multiple independant and fully pipelined FPU's in their Athalon. ( they spent the extra bucks to remove many of the stalling conditions caused by sharing of resources by seperate components ).

Personally I like SUN's java-multi-threaded CPU concept ( even if it never succeeds ). Basically, you have 4 parallel fully functional, non-related, non-pipelined, fully optimized functional units. There are no resource contention issues, no scheduling problems, a simplified logic design. And it's cheaper because you take away pipelining. The best part is that each of these extrememly simple components are just cookie cuts. You spend all your time tweaking the hell out of one tiny unit, then make 32 copies. Almost as easy as cache design.

I believe the Crusoe could learn from this. They already have their simplified design, they could take it a step further. Say, keep a single CPU implementation for power-critical devices. Then replicate that core 8, 16 or 32 times for a desk-top varient. Since you can control your wrapper code, you can determine what is the optimal CPU-width. I'm sure there are many cases that would allow you to submit 32 parallel instructions ( at least for the compiler ).

Re:For what it's worth

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok... I owned a cyrix as well.. (a friend gave a to me so maybe it was fucked to being with) but it was a PR 200 (or 233... I can't remember)... I could only get it to run underclocked at 150mhz a and even then it needed alot of cooling to run right... ( I couldn't underclock it any lower on the board I was using).. piece of shit. I got rid of it and it was replaced by a K6 450.. (and the 450 can be a bit flakey at times but if it's cooled right I have to problem) and I will never go back... I love the products that AMD puts out.

Re:For what it's worth

[billybob jr]

You are attributing problems to the processor, but I believe your motherboard is a more likely culprit. While the cyrix did have some issues with heat and power, the chip itself wasn't flaky. I've never heard of a K6 being flaky. I bet it's your board or system.

Re:For what it's worth

[jovlinger]

Personally I like SUN's java-multi-threaded CPU concept ( even if it never succeeds ). Basically,
you have 4 parallel fully functional, non-related, non-pipelined, fully optimized functional units.
There are no resource contention issues, no scheduling problems, a simplified logic design. And
it's cheaper because you take away pipelining. The best part is that each of these extrememly
simple components are just cookie cuts. You spend all your time tweaking the hell out of one tiny
unit, then make 32 copies. Almost as easy as cache design.

Tera baby! 128 threads, hardware support for context switching, no L1 cache, no pipelining, no superscalar units.

Bascially, you context switch after each instruction. Since you have 128 threads, this hides all the memory latency. You gotta love that design.

Re: Second Item

[Rimbo]

Except that they were already bought out by VIA, as the article said.

cyrix chips are damn good for the price!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using cyrix chips since the 387. Ive used the 387, 486dx2-80, the 5x86-120, the 6x86-pr150, and the cyrix M2-300. Never have had a problem with one. Of course the FPU is sub par, but for a linux machine, they kick ass!! Ive had my M2 uptime for over 6 months without one reboot, running distributed nets rc5 client the whole time. have not had one glitch.. and for the whopping 30 dollars I paidfor it back in june of last year, I can't complain at all.. And the performance kicks ass as well(note this is not a game machine, it is a server).. Oh yea I have also run game servers on it as well including quake2/quake3/half-life etc.. not a problem.. So I for one am looking forward to building another kick ass server from a cheap cyrix chip...

Duel Processors?

[mnemon1c]

Could one run duel processors with this new chip? It might make up for it's lack of power by having 2, plus since cost is a factor, it would be even better.

Re:Duel Processors?

[dan the person]

How many time must i say this, No SMP http://www.viatech.com/products/cyr3faq.htm Q. Will the VIA Cyrix® III work in a multi-processor motherboard? A. The VIA Cyrix® III will not work in a multi-processor motherbaord unless it is the only processor installed. If the motherboard supports the 2.2V core voltage and FSB, then it will work in a stand alone configuration.

Re: Fooking Moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

i think you messed up.... your links work dood.

I still need slots.

[Rimbo]

Most of the technology has plateued and doesn't need to be upgraded often anymore (cpu speed, sound cards, video cards, ethernet, etc.) Well, on the sound card issue, I still need a full-length ISA slot no matter what computer I upgrade to unless I keep my old monster around for some reason; however, if I'm going to upgrade, it will probably be for better music capabilities. One of my soundcards is an old Roland LAPC-1. Why do I keep this ancient piece of hardware? One reason: Nothing sounds like it. Because it has analog synthesis built-in, along with those neato Roland filters, it just makes sounds sweeter, cleaner, and just plain differently than any digital equipment can. Groovy, baby. That, and the SoundBastard's one-MIDI-device-at-a-time limitation sucks...the LAPC-1 can at least do multiple outs (three).

Re:What makes these inferior chips so interesting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid ass moderators.

Trolling for Scooby doo!

blah

[TRoLL.]

fuck you

what is your karma anyhow?

[ArchieBunker]

Mine peaked at -14 but its gone up to -11 today.

Re:what is your karma anyhow?

[Microsoft Rules]

Dear White idiot.

My karma is -311

Thank you.

YOU KNOW U
I AM U
I LOVE U
I SUCK U


~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~ ,'~-,'~

Redeem the name? Please.

[redled]

Please, cyrix, for your own good, just /change/ the name. As some earlier posts pointed out, cyrix's were not really bad I have used have provperformers. However, all cyrix's en to be extremely unreliable. I'm not sure if this is due to the chip design itself, or simply the fact that it was often found in cheap pc's with cheap components. It's beside the point anyways. Cyrix has become interchangeable with "crappy." So, the obvious solution is clear: change the damn name. One more thing, a good idea would be to drop the weird mumbo jumbo- remember how the old ones were marketed, for example,as a 6x86+ 200MHz+ (actually running at a much slower clockspeed). Anyone who sold cyrix's in a computer store should know how confusing that naming scheme was to customers.

--

Re:Redeem the name? Please.

[redled]

I'm sorry, I spotted a couple of typos in there after I posted..oops (the culprit: typeover was toggled on by mistake). Anyways, here's what it should read:

Please, cyrix, for your own good, just /change/ the name. As some earlier posts pointed out, early cyrix's were not really bad performers. However, all cyrix's I've used have proven to be extremely unreliable. I'm not sure if this is due to the chip design itself, or simply the fact that it was often found in cheap pc's with cheap components. It's beside the point anyways. Cyrix has become interchangeable with "crappy." So, the obvious solution is clear: change the damn name. One more thing, a good idea would be to drop the weird mumbo jumbo- I remember how the old ones were marketed, for example,as a 6x86+ 200MHz+ (actually running at a much slower clockspeed). Anyone who sold cyrix's in a computer store should know how confusing that naming scheme was to customers.

--

Cyrix chips..

[RoLlEr_CoAsTeR]

I, along with several others who I noted have replied below, have had experience with a Cyrix chip. My Compaq laptop runs on a Cyrix 233 chip MMX and the only thing I don't like about it is that it's slower than I'd like it to be. Sure, I'm not the expert and so I wouldn't be able to properly compare chips, but it performs well enough to do what I want it to do (run *cringe* Winamp, apps like word processors and Paint shop and da dee da). I'd like more RAM to help it out, but that's not possible right now. I will admit that, yes, it's slow.. considerably, but then again, when compared to, say, a Celeron, I would pick the Cyrix anyday because the Celeron has hang-ups (well, at least, the one I'm thinking of does). Yeah, I realize that Celerons, as a whole, aren't good processors (as far as I know), but.. that's just an example of at least one processor to prefer after a Cyrix....

Re:Cyrix chips..

[Swano]

Come on! Maybe you should do some research about the celerons before bashing them and say a thing like:

"I would pick the Cyrix anyday because the Celeron has hang-ups"

How about going to Toms Hardware and see what he thinks of the celerons??

Well at least, you got one thing right:

"I'm not the expert and so I wouldn't be able to properly compare chips"

Re:Cyrix chips..

[shepd]

I did some research for him. :-) You know what I found out? The celeron is CLOCK LOCKED.

That seems like one hell of a hangup to me. Being forced to use a 66 Mhz bus, when 100 Mhz is avaliable (unless you want to terribly overclock the chip).

Re:Cyrix chips..

[Swano]

Well, first of all it's not clock locked, it's multiplyer lock and so what??

I have a dual celeron 366 @ 550 on a abit BP6 and I have absolutely NO problems.... actualy, I have more then one month uptime.

If you really did some reshearch you must have sean that the celeron is an overclocker dream.

Re:Cyrix chips..

[iainl]

PIIIs are clock locked too, and Athlons even more so. So I'd steer well clear of those too.

Besides, given that the older Celerons could actually take going all the way to 100 FSB, its not a problem.

iain

Re:Cyrix chips..

[IMZombie]

Yes they are clock locked. You you know what that means? No really!

Celeron 366 = 5.5x66MHz

What you can't change is the multiplier. You can go crazy with the bus. I too am running a Celeron 366 at 550 (5.5x100MHz) at nearly the stock voltage (2.05v).

It's no Pentium III, but with my "old school" Riva TNT + 2 3Dfx VooDoo2's I have no problem pulling 60 FPS at 1024x768. Chip / mobo and fan cost me less than $200.

Re:Cyrix chips..

[shepd]

>Yes they are clock locked. You you know what that means?

That if I buy a decent celeron chip, and not what is now the slowest availiable (366 Mhz where I am) I'll NEVER be able to run it at 100 Mhz bus.

I know - A friend of mine has a celeron 466. Running that at a 100 Mhz bus == 700 Mhz == WAY TOO MUCH OVERCLOCKING!

The days of overclocking celerons will very soon end. The 366 was the last chip you could reasonably have a hope of getting 100 Mhz bus out of.

Re:Cyrix chips..

[shepd]

>PIIIs are clock locked too, and Athlons even more so. So I'd steer well clear of those too.

Yeah, but these chips actually take advantage of the faster bus speeds today's PC offers, like 100 Mhz.

And the Athlon is not truly clocklocked. You just need to put some effort into changing it... Buy a "goldfingers" adapter. Or better yet, save your money and build one. :-)

I will be steering away from the PIII though. For lots of reasons... :-)

>Besides, given that the older Celerons could actually take going all the way to 100 FSB, its not a problem.

True - but they don't make them anymore, so that point doesn't count (unless you have a really kickass used parts supplier).

I know that 100 Mhz bus WAS possible on the older celerons. I have a 300A, and it goes at 100 Mhz just fine, but even pushing it to 103 Mhz is too much. I got lucky. Otherwise, I'd be stuck at 83, or less bus speed.

New celerons have multipliers of 7, or even higher. That is getting ridiculous considering 100 Mhz is availiable now!

Re:Cyrix chips..

[shepd]

>Well, first of all it's not clock locked, it's multiplyer lock and so what??

Quit nitpicking - you say tomaato, I say tomatoe. Tell anyone that the Celeron is clock locked and they will know what you mean.

And YES being multiplier locked IS clocklocked. By running the chip out of spec (which you must do to get a faster bus) you:

- Void your warranty
- Risk damaging the processor or motherboard
- Need a decent heatsink

>I have a dual celeron 366 @ 550 on a abit BP6 and I have absolutely NO problems.... actualy, I have more then one month uptime.

Me too. Not a month uptime, but I run a windows box, with a 300A @ 450 Mhz. I need to use the windows, since this box is used for heavy video editing and capture. It works as well as any other windows box.

Now, 366 Mhz celerons are bottom of the barrel these days. Look 6 months into the future - there won't be 366 Mhz celerons. You'll probably be "stuck" getting a celeron 466.

466 = 66 * 7 = 462 Mhz
100 * 7 = 700 Mhz

700 - 462 = 238 Mhz overclock.

Now compare that with your 134 Mhz, and I'm sure you'll see - this celeron overclocking isn't going to last forever. The gap will only widen as base speeds increase.

>If you really did some reshearch you must have sean that the celeron is an overclocker dream.

I did do the research, that is why I own a 300A! I could have gotten a 466 Mhz celeron at the time, but I didn't because I'm not an idiot! I know the limits of processors! And asking a processor for 200 Mhz more than what it was designed to do is asking for a LOT. And asking for 50% overclocking is a LOT as well.

Why didn't you mention these things? Ahhh, because you didn't do any research, and didn't use any common sense AND prefer to flame rather than explain...

And now for the final statement: You don't overclock for stability. Ask anyone who runs a real server. Ask anyone who runs a real server what they want in a processor - they will tell you a fast bus speed. Now to get that fast bus speed with a celeron, you need to overclock it. BAD. To get that fast bus speed with a K6 (last time I checked, which was a while ago) you simply used a lower multiplier, and higher bus speed. GOOD.

It's really that simple - Celeron == clock locked == bad. Most other chips != clock locked == good.

If you think having a clock locked processor (or multiplier locked for you tomaato people) is better than having one without those restrictions then I won't bother discussing this with you anymore.

Previous Cyrix Products

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember in 1996 when Cyrix tried to break into the portable PC market. I believe they were Toshibas that I was selling at the time at Staples. Well, anyway, we ran a sale, sold our whole stock, and they ALL came back within a month. Apparently the heatsinks werent enough to cool the lameass CPUs down. People came in with computers that smelled a lot like burnt plastic, we pulled the keyboards off the laptops and low and behold, they had scorched the bottom of the keypad. Bad design in my opinion by Toshiba...

I never liked the Cyrii (cyrix plural) however, in my retail experience they have been lame in every product they've ever been incorporated in. Further more, I owned a 133 that was just pitifull compared to an intel.

Re:Previous Cyrix Products

[SoftwareJanitor]

Early Cyrix 6x86's did indeed have overheating problems, even in desktop units (you needed a special 'Cyrix-approved' CPU fan/heatsink combos -- one that the fan spins at roughly twice the speed of a normal Pentium fan and the heatsink is about 1/2 again larger in order to get reliable operation). Toshiba made a big mistake putting such chips into laptops, most of which don't have CPU fains at all, and which often run hot even with Intel or AMD CPU's.
Later 6x86's and the M-II's seem to have fixed their overheating problems by switching to a much smaller die size.

While your 133 probably wasn't impressive compared to an Intel 133, it probably cost less than 1/2 what an Intel 133 did. You only get what you pay for, and for the money, the Cyrix chips generally have been a pretty good deal unless you are a gamer or do a lot of math intensive work like scientific computing or image processing.

Re:Previous Cyrix Products

[billybob jr]

I bought a p150+ pretty early on. While it worked ok, it really wasn't that cheap. I think I paid 150 dollars for it, which at the time could have bought a pentium 120 chip. I wish I had gone with the Intel chip, but I didn't know what a fpu was at that point. Even though it had it's flaws, cyrix was big news when it was released. It was really hyped up, because there was nothing else at that point. AMD K5's were basically a no show. That hype may have hurt it as much as anything, because it wasn't really deserved.

Re:Previous Cyrix Products

[SoftwareJanitor]

I would agree that hype is generally a bad thing because it can set unrealistic expectations about a product. I remember when the Pentium 60's came out, and the place I worked for at the time bought several of them. They were real turkeys (FDIV and f00f bugged), especially for the money. I bought an AMD 486DX4-100 about the same time and it performed very similarly to the P60's for considerably less money. And it didn't have a lot of bugs in it either -- it is still working fine to this day (albiet, it hasn't been a machine I use on a daily basis for a long time). When it comes down to it, I almost never recommend that anyone buy something 'early on' unless they have thoroughly researched it and they absolutely need to have the latest thing for some real reason (not just to keep "ahead of the Jones'"). When you buy something that has just come out the price tends to be a lot higher than if you wait until it has been out a while. I prefer to buy one or two notches below the current top end.

Off Subject WHY does slashdot access my CD-ROM?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am on a NT 4.0 box.
Every day the first time I hit slashdot, and this only happens on slashdot, it tries to read my CD-ROM for about 5 secs, then everything is OK.
And it won't do it again until I hit it the next day.

this does not happen on any other site.
wierd.

cyrix sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah well I heard someone once ran a cyrix w/o a cooling fan. Not only did it crash but the thing exploded into a giant mushroom cloud. When he woke up his kidney had been stolen, aliens gave him an anal probe, and his neighbor killed himself by duct taping a rocket engine to the top of his car. I have never actually owned a cyrix chip, but I know they are crap because this story must be true. I will NEVER run a cyrix. I don't care if they are the last chip makers on the planet. I would rather use a slide rule!

is everyone idiots??

[Anonymous Coward]

I am seeing so many posts on here crying about how bad cyrix processors are, well I have own a bunch of them and have never had any problems with any of them, either running windoes or linux. In fact my M2-300 linux box runs at 100% load(dnetc client) all the time, with 100% reliability. I have had uptimes of over half a year, and the only time I rebooted was because I compiled up a new kernel, or added more memory.. Oh yea and on a technical note about the cyrix having bad fpu, well the amd k6/k6-2 has just as bad a fpu unit.. if you compare a cyrix m2-300 which runs at 233mhz to a 233mhz k6, there performance is practiacally identical... I for one will buy a cyrix III, when it comes out, they make kick ass linux/bsd boxes. And as far as heat goes only the old original 6x86 chips got hot!! damn hot!! my m2 gives off about the same heat as my old Pentium233mmx chip...

bull shit

[RelliK]

Original Pentiums already had pipelined FPU. MMX has *nothing* to do with FPU. Cyrix has always sucked at FPU and integer performance was not as great as they claimed either. Just 3 month ago I upgraded from my olde crappy Cyrix "PR" 200 (which actually ran at 150) to AMD K6/2-300 and I am seeing a *huge* improvement in speed and, most importantly, *stability*. In addition to being slow, Cyrix CPUs are also very unreliable. I am never buying them again.

___

Re:bull shit

[shepd]

Well, you are right, the FPU on a Cryix does suck.

The unreliability is caused by heat and power consumption though. These processors use almost 2x the power of an equivalent intel processor, so you MUST get a top-notch quality mainboard to run it in. And you must buy the biggest, baddest, heatsink to keep it at bay.

Do those, and they Cyrix will run fine.

Re:bull shit

[JoeS[AGN]]

actually you are only partially right.
the cyrix-cpu's did suck at FPU, but they ruled the integer.
the real problem with the cyrix-chips was their incompatabililty with the pentiumCPU's of the day

Possible Fix for your problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 400 mhz k6-2 and it started crashing like you describe and drove me crazy, espically when running a linux disk shreder under heavy load the kernel would vomit horribly. windows would just lose it at random and it would also crash sometimes at the bios screed! So far I have yet to have a crash since I moved the voltage from 2.2 to 2.4. Insteresting note the k6-2 450's run at 2.4 which makes me think amd should have recommended a voltage change on this core 1 speed earlier. Also says as long as you don't go above 2.5 you won't hurt the cpu Email jason.salopek@usa.net and let me know if this helps

fpu's?

[redshift83]

Not one but two FPU's? SWEET... this could slowly dig cyrix out... their lack of fpu killed them previously, who knows what will happen now

Huh? are you on crack?

[havardi]

I've played GTA and C&C on a Cyrix PR-166 and it's WAY slower than on my Pentium 133.. I've heard the Cyrix chips generally had an FPU performance comparable to a Pentium 90mhz btw, they suck

Who cares about benchmarks...Whose name is cooler?

[Notorious Coward]

Intel...
Amd...
Cyrix...

Yes, Cyrix. With a name like that, they could be heading an evil-world dominating corporation (ala-James Bond). To hell with Pentiums and Athlons..I want a computer that sounds mean. I want chills to run through the spines of my friends as I tell them that I have a badass Cyrix cpu in my box. Yeah!

Stop the Hate! No on 22!

Notorious Coward

MediaGX OK

[NuclearArchaeologist]

Well, I can't get all the resolution I should for X out of "Express Graphics", but otherwise things are solid. MS junk works and so does Red Hat. I've got two of them loaded up in old boxes for next to no dollars. Most of the money was spent on getting 64MB of RAM (OK two years ago) and hard drives for each.

Microsoft stuff has given me problems, but that seems to be what Microsoft does to all machines. 95 blew up one box, but 98 fixed it, thanks M$. The other 95 box, I never added much software too still runs just fine. Other machines where I work had similar problems with 95 regardless of manufacturer, and a decent tech recomended 98 as a fix.

I've put Red Hat on both and have no complaints further than the poor video support mentioned earlier. I can't really remember, but I think that the sound works too.

The short story is that MediaGX has worked just fine for routine stuff. They used to run my FORTRAN, and gave me better performance than shared time elsewhere, despite the "poor" floating performance. Web browsing, word processing, and all that junk is OK. This was a big step up from my beloved 66MHz 486. Games, well I never tried out much of that but gammers generally demand more than routine.

Other people have written their praise of the MII, but that's not something I know about.

By the way,

Cyrix has a habit of over-hyping products

You mean those dancing dudes in aqua clean suits who prommise to deliver the whole infromation super something on a convor belt? Oh yeah, that's another company. He who fails to hype, fails. Caveat emptor.

Until they get a GeForce DDR with 64 megs of ram..

[jackmott]

in a laptop
I'll stick with me case =)

www.lin2.2y.net

[Anonymous Coward]

did you check these guys out? progressive promotions they have a deal on those chips now!

Hello Joshua

[HunterZ]

Greetings Dr. Falken. How about a nice game of chess?

Later. Let's play Global Thermonuclear War.

Hehe

finally!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

THANK YOU! when i heard joshua as a computer thing something clicked in my head and has been bugging me all day, but thanks to you I finally remember, WAR GAMES!! WWWOOO =)

Probably the same time as the Israeli founders

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that keeps getting glossed over in the history books, the fact that the state of Israel was founded by men who also planted bombs and shot civilians with sniper rifles.

Cyrix is for computer users, not [gl]amers

[Splork]

I've got a 250Mhz "PR333" (83mhz bus) system here that I've had for over a year. It is a CPU upgrade from a 150Mhz "PR200" that used for a year before this. I gave the PR200 to a friend to upgrade his P75 to something snazzy.

The floating point blows chunks but that's what my Alpha is for. People don't seem to remember that Cyrix was the -first- to offer a bus speed greater than 66Mhz without overclocking (the old 6x86 P200+ ran at 75*2). Bus speed / memory access speed / video-memory access speed is the limiting factor in CPUs these days for compiling and even most games these days.

If they're not already too late to market they'll do a great job of making happy cheap-pcs (a "PR533" this April sounds like it may be a bit late for any price if that's really a "Pentium Rating" rating instead of "Pentium Pro/PII/Celeron Rating")

Mhz-wise the 6x86MX/MII series performs about the same as an equivilent PPro/PII/Celeron on integer instructions.

Personally I'd buy a lower-end Athlon if this system died to satisfy my x86 needs.

I don't have time for many fancy games. That's what my cheap PlayStation has always done a better job of.

Note to anyone un-informed: A PII/PIII/Celeron is really just a Pentium Pro CPU running at a higher clock speed with a few new "matrix math" instructions added on and different memory cache and sometimes bus speed arrangements.

Compaq Presario 1230?

[shepd]

Is that what you have? I'm typing this on one right now, 233 Mhz Cyrix MediaGX processor.

The cyrix chip in it has been good to me. Memory design problems on this laptop caused me to remove the NMI interrupt message from the linux kernel, but after that, things went fine. Other's don't seem to have the same problem, but oh well... such is life.

I'm even happier, since the MediaGX uses SB16 full emulation, so sound in Linux is very easy to setup. And the NeoMagic video on the laptop is fully supported.

Only the modem is not going to work well (LT winmodem).

What makes this laptop a dog slow one, though, is the lack of cache on the HDD. There is a total of 0k cache on it. That is why it feels like the laptop just dropped to a 486 in performance whenever it uses the hard drive. :-(

Just a note: Get the keyboard upgrade patch - it will fix the mouse hangup problems too...

Games do suck on this laptop though. But that isn't what it is for... it is for business apps. And they run beatifully... :-)

Cryix isn't really that bad.

[Matthew45464]

Cryix processors blow junks when it comes to anything 3d, but if you want to play 3d games you will be looking at a celeron/p3 or Athlon. Another problem is getting enough power and getting rid of the heat produced by Cyrix processors even though they tend to like to run hot. Even with these problems Cryix processors do a really good job when running desktop items and are really cheap. So if you wanted a good cheap computer for simple tasks you could get a cyrix & some cheap motherboard that surports 133mhz bus and has intergrated motherboard. Now we have a good use for all those 810 motherboards with no real 3d surport. I just hope they sell these things cheap enough to afford the 133mhz ram. Look at the possiblities for the thing instead of degrading it.

Sorry to pick holes...

[shepd]

>some cheap motherboard that surports 133mhz bus and has intergrated motherboard.

Two for the price of one! Now that is a deal I can handle! :-)

(I couldn't help myself)

for those in Berkeley

[willis]

I can only think of that guy that yells

Y O S H U A

on sproul...

Joshua Commands!!!!!!!

[WowTIP]

Wowdeargodallmighty!!! Now we all will be able to issue Joshua commands and make our computers work as we expect them to do...

"Open your mouth!!!" :P

Don't know what I'm talking about? A hint... :)

Joshua?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Strange game. The only winning move is not to play." -- WOPR

global thermonuclear war

[weefle]

GREETINGS PROFESSOR FALCON

VIA Joshua, the chip for god's chosen people

[DABANSHEE]

2 floating point units 2 MMX units 2 3DNow units 64kB 4-way L1 cache 256kB 8-way full speed on-chip L2 cache (64b interface with a 5-clock latency) The best, most efficient X86 integer unit out there - the Cyrix 686 integer unit. No multiplyer lock, so its compatable with any FSB speed between 66mhz & all the up to nearly 150mhz, if your MoBo & memmory can go that far. Made by VIA, so should be totally compatable & stable on any VIA 133A MoBo (fingers crossed) & finally a PR rating which is 'fair dinkum', & no more than 100 points above its mhz rating (PR500 is 400mhz, PR 533 is 433mhz). Actually Cyrix's PR ratings have always been accurate for their integer units, but was always taken with a grain of salt as far as floating point performance was concerned, plus towards the end of National Semi's stewardship, the gap between the PR rating & mhz was being stretched to the limit. But now with double the L1 cache of the Celeron, double the L2 cache of the Celeron, 2 fully pipelined FPUs, 2 MMX units & 2 3DNow units, the Joshua's PR rating is now on the conservative side. Plus they are dirt cheap, with even the 533 at less than $100. Looks like things don't look too good for Intel (well until Williamette/Foster anyway), what with the Athlon competing at the high end, Joshua at the low end, VIA competing with 133SDRAM chipsets, RAMBUS being too bloody expensive (plus its high latency), poor MTH SDRAM controller performance, Transmeta now being taken on by Taiwanese OEMs on the mobile front & of course with Merced/Itanium looking worse by the day (& with AMDs 64b Sledgehammer looking like it will more than twice as fast, as far as X86 code is concerned).

Cyrix made great math coprocessors

[Guppy]

"In the past, Cyrix chips were the fastest you could buy, in integer OR fpu."

Cyrix used to make great math coprocessors, like their version of the 80387. They were often significantly faster and cheaper than the Intel counterpart. Ironic that floating point became their main weakness, huh?

Sinking point performance

[ZiGGyKAoS]

With their new LEADMINE tech. coupled with their Sinking Point Unit they should be just fine...

PR ratings -- a wonderful idea wasted...

[Guppy]

It's a shame, but the PR-rating system was actually a great idea. It could have gotten consumers away from the idea that More Mhz=Faster, which simply isn't true. Now we have manufacturers playing the numbers game, in which "speed demon" chips (Which run at a high clock speed) have an advantage over "braniac" chips (Which do more per clock cycle). We've now cut off a promising avenue of R&D, solely for marketing reasons.

It's not a problem now, but in the future we could run into a brick wall with Mhz and memory speed limits, which might be solved in part by making Braniac chips. By that time it may not be possible to pursue such chips, because the public will have become fixated on Mhz, and will not buy them.

When the PR ratings first came out, AMD and Cyrix were pretty conservative in their ratings--AMD even rated one of their 133 Mhz chips as a "PR 75". But with insufficiently rigid definitions of "PR" and no way of enforcing them, "PR" quickly turned into Public Relations. As Cyrix watched their margins and market share shrink, they began to play fast and loose with the ratings. Eventually Cyrix chips matched their Intel counterparts only under the most ideal circumstances. Towards the end Cyrix even moved the goalposts, by quietly redefining "PR" to match the average speed of "competing CPUs" in the market (ie, whoever else was slowest at the time).

-2 Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

As an AC I cannot access the above post.

That is censorship, flat out.

In the US, doesn't this mean slashdot now has to take on the responsibility of being an editor (deleting illegal comments) for all of the comments posted, or face being responsible for everthing said on slashdot?

Re:-2 Censorship

[tak amalak]

Re:Moderators (Score:-1)
by Scooby dooby doo (scooby@yohoo.com) on 08:11 PM February 24th, 2000 EST (#98)
(User Info) http://www.scoobydoo.com/

this is mine: Karma -11 (mostly the sum of moderation done to users comments)

Trolling for Scooby-doo!

I support the United Coalition of Trolls for the Abolition of Moderation!
--

Intel had a similar problem with the P2...

[Chad Page]

... and the Athlon performed below spec in beta as well. It's not a damning problem, unless there's a bug in the shipping version. Which will probably happen in May/June since Via is going into PRODUCTION in April.

Maybe AMD will bring the K6 fpu up to par!

[Anonymous Coward]

If as stated, the new Cyrix cpu's have a fpu as "good as Celeron" then AMD will have to bring the K6-2/III fpu up to Celeron+ standards. This is a very good thing indeed! A K6 with a Athlon fpu?

What is the big deal?

[evilpenguin]

Here's something you should never ask on /., but just how dumb am I?

Of the six machines on my home network, I have two Cyrix chips, three AMDs, and one genuine Intel (and that, believe it or not, is my amateur packet radio router running on a 386SX16! AMPR is like a 9600 baud ethernet without collision detection -- a 386SX is up to the job). One of the AMDs is an Athlon, and the Cyrix'es are a pre-MMX 6x86 "PR200" which, of course, runs at 150MHz, and an MII-333.

I knew the "PR" stuff was BS when I bought them. I bought them because they were cheap. Cheap, cheap, cheap. I'm not a big game player (Civilization is about all I play) and the first 6x86 ran fine for what, four years now? (God help you with Cyrix chips if your CPU fan dies, though!).

Here's my point: I researched the devices before I bought them. I knew how well they did integer operations, register operations, and floating-point (which I hardly ever use) operations compared with the Intels, and I knew what I would be using them for (mostly writing and compiling C/C++ code on Linux) and I knew how much they cost.

I haven't had a single problem or compatibility issue.

Is Cyrix so variable in quality that I had the only two that aren't lemons, or did a lot of people swallow a bunch of marketing BS and buy things they ought not to have bought given their intended use? I'm genuinely asking. I haven't had a single problem. Have I just been lucky?

Oh yeah, I don't have any MediaGX's despite how cheap they are because I do my homework and for a long time there were Xfree and other issues with that particular cheap chip. That's when I went back to AMD. (My other low end box is an AMD-486DX4 clone that I have running FreeBSD basically to serve up a couple of CDROM drives via NFS -- Another low end machine that remains adequate to its task. I put my "Webmaster in a Nutshell" and my "Java in a Nutshell" deluxe CD-ROMs in it and then use them wherever I am on my network, from desktops to my AMD laptop [sorry, 7 machines, 4 AMDs])

Technology innovations and the T-rex

[fluxrad]

Heh...you know. the head of the US patent office back at the turn of the "other" century said that pretty much everything possible had been invented. Mind you this was before the atomic bomb, the airplane, etc. I think your statement is a very naieve one at that. Examples of incredibly recent technological advances (at least in computing) include the GeForce, Crusoe...and probably within 10-20 years we're going to be using quantum computers...alot is changing.

There are two things i need to say here:

1. Cyrix was, is, and always will be a shitty chip. Before you dismiss me as another IRC script kiddie with a chip on his shoulder against anything but AMD, hear me out; I've had personal experience troubleshooting Cyrix chips in tech support, and for my mother who got stuck with one under the pretext of an "upgrade" from a P200. I'm not posting here because a friend of a friend of a friend said they're a sub-standard chip. I'm posting because i know they're bad from experience. Can you name another company that has such overwhelming criticism coming from the public? I'll give you a hint - it starts with an "H" and ends in "yundai". Cyrix has had so many flaws for so long that this cannot possibly be just a problem of engineering. By now the whole damned engineering staff in the company has probably cycled through at least once. This is more than likely a problem of the way the company is run. Upper and lower management, design principles...you name it. Honestly, i'm surprised Cyrix has made it this far without completely disintegrating.

2. As far as a laptop killing a desktop machine...i don't see this happening for a LONG time to come. First of all...the 3d gaming market is going strong. Nvidia and 3dfx don't make kick ass PCMCIA video cards...at least none that i've ever seen. Additionally, laptops have a very long road ahead of them before they achieve full upgradeability. The current standard of upgradeability for a portable is being able to add a stick of RAM. maybe a new hard drive. This isn't going to be enough to dethrone the desktop for quite some time.

FluX
no animals were harmed in the writing of this post


-FluX
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