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Cyrix's 'Joshua' announcement

Posted by Hemos on from the trying-to-redeem-themselves dept.

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. "

5 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. About Cyrix. . . by WD · · Score: 5

    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.

  2. A rant and a wierd idea by cybergremlin · · Score: 5
    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.

  3. Cyrix? Oh... I remember them by Chemical · · Score: 5
    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.

  4. Re:Go Cyrix! by Manaz · · Score: 5

    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.

  5. For what it's worth by Bryan+Ischo · · Score: 4

    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.