Slashdot Mirror
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. "
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
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
Sounds good... I'd like to see more companies in the processor market. Prices have been artificially high due to lack of competition lately.
/. always required 70 seconds between posts?
ps: has
Make Seven
Username taken, please choose another one.
I wouldn't buy a Cyrix chip either, but it is always a good thing to have another competitor against Chipzilla.
-
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.
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.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
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.
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??
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -- Homer Simpson
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.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
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."
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.
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
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
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.
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...
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
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.
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.
Pentium. Celeron. Itanium.
:) And the competition is a Good Thing. Maybe I'll never use a Cyrix III, but I may benefit from it anyway.
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
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
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.
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:: =)
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.
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...
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
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.
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.
So, with a name like Joshua, will it finally let me nuke the Russians?
________________________________
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.
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? .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?
Intel's
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
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.
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.
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.
I have to return some videotapes...
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.
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$
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.
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_
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.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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
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.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
and while not ultra fast, they are cheap and they DO work.
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
Except that they were already bought out by VIA, as the article said.
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...
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.
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.
Ah, the last peanut -- overflowing with the oil and salt of its departed brothers. -Homer
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).
--
--
"Insert witty quote here."
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....
Insert mind here.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
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?
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.
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.
- learn mathematics - shoot dope -
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
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
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
Tom's Hardware is happily devoid of a terminal z.
- learn mathematics - shoot dope -
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.
in a laptop
I'll stick with me case =)
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
Greetings Dr. Falken. How about a nice game of chess?
Later. Let's play Global Thermonuclear War.
Hehe
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
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.
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...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
>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...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
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.
I can make these machines do anything I want. Make this world anything I want it to be. Just so long as concentrate hard
>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)
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
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.
> 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.
I can only think of that guy that yells
Y O S H U A
on sproul...
there is no thing
what else could you want?
Wowdeargodallmighty!!! Now we all will be able to issue Joshua commands and make our computers work as we expect them to do...
:P
:)
"Open your mouth!!!"
Don't know what I'm talking about? A hint...
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
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
...Upgrade now to Schrodingers Dog...
"Strange game. The only winning move is not to play." -- WOPR
GREETINGS PROFESSOR FALCON
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.
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).
"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?
With their new LEADMINE tech. coupled with their Sinking Point Unit they should be just fine...
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).
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.
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])
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
-------------------------
Your Ad Here!
-------------------------
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
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!
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.