pctechguide.com

  • Home
  • Guides
  • Tutorials
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • Glossary
  • Contact

Cyrix 6x86MX

Cyrix’s response to Intel’s MMX technology was the 6x86MX, launched in mid-1997, shortly before the company was acquired by National Semiconductor. The company stuck with the Socket 7 format for its new chip, a decision which held down costs to system builders and ultimately consumers by extending the life of existing chipsets and motherboards.

The architecture of the new chip remains essentially the same as that of its predecessor, with the addition of MMX instructions, a few enhancements to the Floating Point Unit, a larger 64KB unified primary cache and an enhanced memory-management unit. Its dual-pipeline design is similar to the Pentium’s but simpler and more flexible than the latter’s RISC-based approach.

The 6x86MX was well-received in the marketplace, with a 6x86MX/PR233 (running at a clock speed of 187MHz) proving faster than both a 233MHz Pentium II and K6. The MX was also the first leading processor capable of running on a 75MHz external bus, which provides obvious bandwidth advantages and boosts overall performance. On the downside, and in common with previous Cyrix processors, the 6x86MX’s floating-point performance was significantly less good than that of its competitors, adversely affecting 3D graphics performance.

The Cyrix MII is an evolution of the 6x86MX, operating at higher frequencies. By the summer of 1998 0.25-micron MII-300 and MII-333 processors were being produced out of National Semiconductor’s new manufacturing facility; in Maine and the company claimed to have already seen shrinks of its 0.25-micron process to produce 0.22-micron geometries on its way to its stated goal of 0.18 micron the following year.

However by 1999, while AMD and Intel were leapfrogging one another in clock speeds, reaching 450 MHz and beyond, National Semiconductor were in financial trouble and Cyrix were lagging well behind their rivals, taking almost a year to push the MII from PR-300 to PR-333. It was no great suprise therefore when in August of that year, Cyrix finally bowed out of the PC desktop business, with National Semiconductor selling the rights to its x86 CPUs to Taiwan-based chipset manufacturer VIA Technologies.

  • Cyrix 6×86 CPU – the first Pentium compatible processor
  • Cyrix 6x86MX
  • Cyrix MediaGX

Filed Under: Cyrix CPUs

Latest Articles

Think About Headless Commerce as of a Modular System

In recent years, eCommerce has transformed to where consumers no longer handle purchases on conventional websites. Shopping is currently carried out through IoT devices, mobile apps, and more channels. Traditional online shopping has had its shortcomings, diminishing customer experience. In this … [Read More...]

Hard Disk Compliment

The next step up in capacity, 500MB to 1GB, is enough to back-up a reasonably large disk partition. Most such devices also offer good enough performance to function as secondary, if slow, hard disks. Magnetic and MO technology again predominates, … [Read More...]

How to Use System Restore

What Is System Restore and Why You Should Use It Watch the video or just read the written guide [jwplayer config=player file=http://www.pctechguide.com/videos/system-restore-pctg.mp4 image=http://www.pctechguide.com/videos/system-restore-video.jpg] System Restore takes snapshots of your … [Read More...]

Best Laptops for Professional Writers in 2023

If you need a new laptop as a writer, you may find yourself bewildered by all the choices. For one thing, there are so many brands to choose from. … [Read More...]

What You Need to Know About Automation with Chrome

Automation is drastically changing the way we interact with the Internet. One survey found that 76% of businesses use automation to streamline … [Read More...]

9 Steps to Take When Building a Web Scraper in Python

Web scraping is a method for collecting, organizing and analyzing information that is spread over the Internet in a disorganized way. It can … [Read More...]

8 Steps To Streamline Your Business Operations with Virtual Data Rooms

With the increased reliance on networking and cloud computing, businesses generate and store an ever-increasing amount of sensitive information. As a … [Read More...]

Advantages and disadvantages of using Perl in web programming

Web pages are designed using programming codes and a number of technologies as tools to achieve the desired objectives. An example of the above … [Read More...]

Why Cross-Chain Trading Is the Future of Crypto Investing?

The rapid growth and evolution of the cryptocurrency market have opened up exciting opportunities for investors. Within this dynamic landscape, … [Read More...]

Guides

  • Computer Communications
  • Mobile Computing
  • PC Components
  • PC Data Storage
  • PC Input-Output
  • PC Multimedia
  • Processors (CPUs)

Recent Posts

Converting Images To Digital Computer Data

So ok, so far we've discussed that the world is analogue, and the computer is digital, but, you say... can we get back to pictures? Well, the … [Read More...]

4 Tools to Keep You at the Top of Productivity

Keeping on top of everything is difficult these days with all the obligations we have. Many executives and professionals feel like they are drowning … [Read More...]

Intel Mobile Pentium II technology guide

The natural progression of the low-power Deschutes family of Pentium II processors to the portable PC market took place … [Read More...]

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright © 2023 About | Privacy | Contact Information | Wrtie For Us | Disclaimer | Copyright License | Authors