VOGONS


Cyrix appreciation thread

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Reply 200 of 362, by kool kitty89

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sliderider wrote:
Gamecollector wrote:

By the way, was there a standard (2.9 V) version of this Cyrix?

You mean 66mhz x 4.0?

I don't think there were any commercially sold (non ES) parts at 2.9V that went beyond the 75 MHz PR333's 262.5 MHz, and my extension, no parts shy of 180 nm NS manufacturing that broke that. (some 250 nm parts were marked as 2.2V, mainly for embedded/mobile variants, but still in the same speed range as the 2.9V parts)

Also note that site you linked is a bit inaccurate as it lists all those as 350 nm parts when many are 250 or 180. See: http://www.cpushack.com/CyrixID.html

Cyrix seemed to push voltage as high as practical on desktop parts, presumably to maximize yields, so there was no voltage rating change from 350 to 250 nm for normal desktop parts, but 180 nm dropped to 2.2V max. (the 250 nm IBM manufactured Cyrix branded MII 366 -250 MHz- runs quite happily at 2.2V in spite of the nominal 2.9V rating and appeared to overclock well to 3x100 MHz when left at 2.9V, though the most exhaustive testing done was a few benchmarks and maybe an hour of playing Unreal Gold)

I'm not sure why they didn't produce 4x66 MHz parts sooner given that's so very close to the 3.5x75 MHz PR333's sped as to be negligible (and there's yield trade-offs for running the I/O bus higher anyway). I'd bet most, if not all 250 and 262 MHz rated parts run totally fine at 266 MHz, but maybe it was about the bus performance and marketability? (75, 83, and 100 MHz bus parts have higher PR ratings for given clock speeds, so better margins on sales)

The 2.2V 266 MHz parts seem more often aimed at the mobile market, though I did just see one gold-top desktop 4x66 PR333 go on Ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cyrix-MII-333Mhz-cpu- … n-/252195160382 (nice pics there, very clear manufacturing code too; it's a 180 nm NS part) I'd hazard a guess that 66 MHz in general was more popular/common/standard for laptops, thus driving the ratings towards that market segment while the 180 nm process in general probably had yields high enough to mean anything capable of a 75 or 83 MHz or higher bus speed was also capable of better than 266 MHz, so those 66x4 parts were in the bottom-barrel range of 180 nm parts. (anyany slower 180 nm parts would also likely be 66 MHz too) The most common 180 nm parts seem to be the PR400. (95x3)

Probably a bit of a shame given 66 MHz bus arrangements were generally more stable (no PCI/AGP overclocking among other things) though 95/100 MHz stuff managed that too.

Reply 201 of 362, by kool kitty89

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Ah wait, there's another obvious possibility I'm overlooking. 686MX and early (maybe anything prior to the 180 nm NS ones) only came with 2x 2.5x 3x and 3.5x multipliers, so 66x4 wouldn't be possible at all, thus making 75x3.5 the closest you'd get. (though 75x3.5 is probably faster for pretty much everything than 4x66, just not as useful for people with boards most stable at 66 MHz)

That wouldn't explain the late arrival of 2.5x100 MHz parts or lack of 2x100 ones unless stability on the I/O side of the chip was really that problematic, or chipset-dependent enough not to risk dealing with. (still odd given 83 MHz gave tons of problems in practice, on the chipset and PCI bus end, so any 100 MHz quirks would seem pretty easily mitigated by that; there's a reason AMD stuck pretty solidly to 66 and 100 MHz speeds on the K6 -and 95 MHz is just underclocking 100 MHz chipset modes across the board)

Reply 202 of 362, by kool kitty89

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Heh, for a moment I thought this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-ThinkPad-701C-701 … DwAAOSwnH1WZDXM

Was using an IBM 5x86C ... then I looked closer and noticed the obvious AMD in the description (and on the chip). That said, it seems IBM kept the surface-mount 5x86C in production long after Cyrix had stopped 5x86 production/distribution, so laptop use wouldn't be out of the question.

OTOH this does appear to be using a 5x86C http://www.ebay.com/itm/PC-IBM-Aptiva-Modello … agAAOSw4HVWCrzr

IBM's long-term production of that part kind of makes me wonder whether Cyrix would've been better off just making an embedded 486 chipset (with onboard video and sound) to complement the 5x86C for set-top, mobile, and entry level low-end use rather than go down the Media GX route. (plus the Media GX was significantly slower and couldn't run a 50/60/66 MHz bus, and the 5x86 should've been able to clock about as high if re-engineered for those smaller/newer processes ... maybe support a 75 MHz bus too)

Reply 203 of 362, by Tetrium

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kool kitty89 wrote:

Ah wait, there's another obvious possibility I'm overlooking. 686MX and early (maybe anything prior to the 180 nm NS ones) only came with 2x 2.5x 3x and 3.5x multipliers, so 66x4 wouldn't be possible at all, thus making 75x3.5 the closest you'd get. (though 75x3.5 is probably faster for pretty much everything than 4x66, just not as useful for people with boards most stable at 66 MHz)

That wouldn't explain the late arrival of 2.5x100 MHz parts or lack of 2x100 ones unless stability on the I/O side of the chip was really that problematic, or chipset-dependent enough not to risk dealing with. (still odd given 83 MHz gave tons of problems in practice, on the chipset and PCI bus end, so any 100 MHz quirks would seem pretty easily mitigated by that; there's a reason AMD stuck pretty solidly to 66 and 100 MHz speeds on the K6 -and 95 MHz is just underclocking 100 MHz chipset modes across the board)

It might have just been a marketing thing or perhaps a way to have fewer RMA returns (I'm just guessing though)?
The 2.2v parts often have the 100MHz FSB and the older 2.9v ones have official FSB settings that are around the max that non-super7 boards can provide.
This means people who wanted a faster chip which had a maximum voltage setting that the older boards (officially) didn't provide, would be more guided towards getting a slower chip with higher voltage from Cyrix so there would be fewer returns of the 2.2v parts which would have quite a bit of difficulty working at 2.9v or 2.8 volt which often was the minimum voltage available officially.

There are K6-2 parts which were only rated at 66MHz FSB, but such chips were very uncommon, so it could be it wasn't much of a problem, and afaik it was very uncommon for overclockers to not be able to significantly overclock a chip unless they significantly reduced the FSB, even though the rest of the hardware would have no issue at that speed (so it was absolutely certain that only the CPU itself made overclocking the FSB next to impossible).

If I'm wrong though, then please let me know so there's proof that I'm still not too old to learn 😁

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Reply 204 of 362, by kool kitty89

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Tetrium wrote:

It might have just been a marketing thing or perhaps a way to have fewer RMA returns (I'm just guessing though)?
The 2.2v parts often have the 100MHz FSB and the older 2.9v ones have official FSB settings that are around the max that non-super7 boards can provide.

The vast majority of MII 366 (2.5x100) chips seem to the te 250 nm 2.9V model while the 95x3 PR400 seems to be the most common 2.2V part. (with a smattering of 250 and 266 MHz 2.2V parts of varying bus speeds -though mostly 100 and 66 MHz from what I've seen pop up on ebay)

The lack of 266 MHz (4x66) 2.9V parts seems more likely to be multiplier limited (of the 250 nm core) where the 180 nm refresh added 4x and higher multipliers.

Still, it seems a bit odd that it took them so long to put out the 2.5x100 MHz model given they put out so many 83 MHz rated parts. (or a 2x100 MHz model soon after the release of the 3x66 and 2.5x83 MHz parts)

This means people who wanted a faster chip which had a maximum voltage setting that the older boards (officially) didn't provide, would be more guided towards getting a slower chip with higher voltage from Cyrix so there would be fewer returns of the 2.2v parts which would have quite a bit of difficulty working at 2.9v or 2.8 volt which often was the minimum voltage available officially.

I think they just pushed the voltage as high as the chips could reliably handle (without damaging the circuits our producing unreasonable amounts of heat -though they never pushed into the 30+ watts range like the 3.2V K6-233). Compatibility with older boards was a plus, but like the Winchip, I think it was more of a yield management system. (same for the K6's 3.2V and K6-2's 2.2 and 2.4V when Intel stuck with 2.0V -or the K6-2+'s 2.0V rating to the 1.75V Athlon and 1.65V Duron and Coppermine parts)

Cyrix also pushed their 180nm parts to the reasonable edge of voltage tolerance at 2.2V when overclockers (and boards supporting such) limited things to 2.0V. (and the K6-2+/III+ strictly limited max voltage to 2.0V in documentation -though realistically you /could/ run them at 2.2V without risking damage at the circuit level -just need to cool them a bit better) Cyrix did also use 2.2V rating for some select 250 nm parts, but this was for their embedded/mobile low-power CPUs.

I'm honestly a bit surprised they never went above 2.9V during their 350 nm process usage like AMD did with the K6. (might have been able to push out the 200-233 MHz 6x86MX sooner ... or prior to that, might have been able to push the older 6x86L to 3x66 MHz running above its standard 2.8V -on that note, my 6x86L PR-200 actually runs stable at 3x66 at 3.2V ... maybe a bit lower than that even, I didn't exhausitively test minimal voltage required, but I know the 350 nm process used tolerates up to 3.5V -or a bit more even- provided there's reasonable cooling)

Plus, if Cyrix wanted to maximize compatibility, they'd have gone with 2.8V and not 2.9V given the Pentium MMX and 6x86L standardized at that voltage. (the K6-166 and 200 opted for 2.9V for yield reasons like Cyrix had)

As an asside, a good number of non-super 7 boards that lack proper 2.2/2.4V support at least have a 2.5V setting, sometimes undocumented sometimes not. And indeed, there were press releases for Cyrix that promoted the 6x86MX at 2.5V on a 250 nm process, though this never related to official parts.

And as far as not pushing 3.5x83 or 3x100 MHz 2.9V parts (given a good number of 233-250 MHz parts do seem to run stable at those settings), your argument for older motherboard compatibiltiy might be significant as far as voltage regulators coping with the power use. (albeit any board that struggled with a 300 MHz 2.9V part would probably have had problems with the 3.2 or 3.3V K6-233) Additionally, I will agree that sticking with 2.9V consistently (at least up until it was dangerous to use -like with 180 nm parts) was probably for ease of consumer installation and motherboard matching on top of their own yields. (given both my 2.9V parts run fine at their rated speeds when knocked down to 2.2V -though they don't overclock well if undervolted, unsurprisingly)

After NS took over management, the change in business strategy also probably put a damper on innovating higher performance market segments (the MII seemed to be relegated to supplemental income in the budget range with more emphasis put into embedded system-on-a-chip design -and plans to re-spin the SoC core into S7/S370 as somewhat of an afterthought). That might be the reason the 100 MHz FSB parts arrived late, and certainly a likely reason Cyrix stopped pushing for even higher bus speeds (like pushing for officially rated 112 MHz FSP MVP3 boards or even 124 MHz -which pushed the PCI bus to 41 MHz like early 83 MHz bus boards did -or all 83 MHz TX boards; the 105/110/115/120 MHz offered on some Ali based SS7 boards would be less interesting given they were poorly matched to Cyrix parts ... that is HAD Cyrix stayed on target with their 1996/97 market model in '99)

And I previously made a mistake referring to my PR366 as an IBM part, I rechecked the serial number and it was indeed a National Semiconductor 250 nm process chip. (runs fine at 3x100 MHz 2.9V so long as it doesn't overheat, but 2.5x100 MHz at 2.2V can run fine with passive cooling, at least at normal ~70F/24C room temps)

There are K6-2 parts which were only rated at 66MHz FSB, but such chips were very uncommon, so it could be it wasn't much of a problem, and afaik it was very uncommon for overclockers to not be able to significantly overclock a chip unless they significantly reduced the FSB, even though the rest of the hardware would have no issue at that speed (so it was absolutely certain that only the CPU itself made overclocking the FSB next to impossible).

It was mostly early K6-2 parts that were 66 MHz rated (the 266 and some variants of the 300) aside from mobile parts that tended to stick with 66 MHz fsb more often. AMD avoided any of the clock speeds that pushed the PCI/AGP bus out of spec, hence no 75 or 83 MHz parts or ones pushing beyond 100 MHz. (at least not officially speced as such) Plus by the time SS7 boards with 2.5x PCI dividers showed up (for 33MHzPCI/83MHz FSB) arrived, they all had 100 MHz support anyway (with a few possible exceptions like some VP3 based boards) and aiming at 100 and 95 MHz made more sense.

Given AMD's willingness to push 2.4V parts (and 3.2V on the K6-233) I'd bet they would have pushed K6-2 and K6-III parts higher for yield reasons (so-called factory overclocks) if not for heat generation becoming unreasonable and SS7 motherboards being poorly suited to fitting large heatsinks. (plus scaling back K6-III production in general due to Athlon demand and the fact the normal K6-2 didn't gain much beyond 500 MHz ... and they had something better -the Athlon- for the high-end and didn't need to push the K6-2 or 3 that hard) Plus, given motherboard stability and real-world performance, offering 110 or 112 MHz bus rated K6-2's would've been more significant.

I'm a tad more surprised Intel never resorted to overvolting their parts, particularly in the Coppermine days when they fell behind the Athlon in peak performance and raw clock rate. And their awkwardness with the PIII 1133. (pushing it up to 1.8V or 1.9V probably would've solved the stability problems -and given overclocking experience, and electrical limits of the CPUs, going up to 2.0V and 1.2+ GHz would've been realistic) It's not like Athlons weren't pulling out more wattage than those existing PIIIs ... and even at 2.0V a coppermine PIII wouldn't start to pull out ahead in heat/power of the top rated Thunderbirds until you got close to 1.4 GHz. Then again, it's also slightly odd they never released an 8x133 MHz (1066) PIII just to have something stable above the 1000 MHz part.

On a more general Cyrix history note, I was browsing around some articles (some I'd read before but missed details on) and noticed a bit more on the 6x86's FPU, particularly that the FIFO queue is 4-instructions deep with a 4-deep store queue as well (I assume that'd be 4x64-bit words for buffering FP data ... or maybe 80-bit) so more than the single-op FIFO buffer I'd assumed.

http://www.alaska.net/~akusedpc/pages/cyrix/6x-tb.htm
http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/qed/cpuwar.html

Both those mention it and the latter addresses the more general speed issues of the FPU which I was well aware of. Lacking of pipelining and ability to parallel execute FP and Integer operations isn't a major bottleneck on the 6x86 or MII (or Cyrix 5x86) and neither are the Fdiv and Fsqrt instructions, but just the common Fadd, Fsub, Fmul, and Fxch operations (all 4 cycles at peak throughput, some with latencies of 6-7 cycles vs the P5 and P6 FPUs having 1-2 clock throughput and 3-4 clock latency for all of those ops. (some have effective 0 clock execution for superscalar execution -like Fxch) So the 6x86 wouldn't have benefitted from including a PIPELINED FPU as some articles and critics claim, but just needed faster operation on those common functions.

The K6 and K6-2 are much faster on all those operations and have lower latency than the P5 or P6 (all 2-clock throughput and latency, except the later CXT core K6-2 that has superscaler -0 clock execution) but from all I've managed to dig up, is a single-stage execution design without added FIFO queue or similar buffering (let alone formal execution pipeline) to facilitate overlapping ALU and FPU operations. The K6 seems to take more of a hit from P5 or P6 optimized FPU scheduling than the 6x86 does, or rather the 6x86 doesn't seem very dependent on FPU scheduling in general due to the FIFO and generally slow execution. (the K6 would probably benefit more from a FIFO buffer than the 6x86 does, given the latter needs a pretty high portion of integer code interleaved with FPU calls to balance parallel execution while the K6 would fit in much more with 1:1-ish integer/FPU execution timing parallelism that the P6 and P5 benefit from)

Reply 205 of 362, by kool kitty89

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kool kitty89 wrote:

I'm a tad more surprised Intel never resorted to overvolting their parts, particularly in the Coppermine days when they fell behind the Athlon in peak performance and raw clock rate. And their awkwardness with the PIII 1133. (pushing it up to 1.8V or 1.9V probably would've solved the stability problems -and given overclocking experience, and electrical limits of the CPUs, going up to 2.0V and 1.2+ GHz would've been realistic) It's not like Athlons weren't pulling out more wattage than those existing PIIIs ... and even at 2.0V a coppermine PIII wouldn't start to pull out ahead in heat/power of the top rated Thunderbirds until you got close to 1.4 GHz. Then again, it's also slightly odd they never released an 8x133 MHz (1066) PIII just to have something stable above the 1000 MHz part.

Somehow I forgot the Pentium 4's release date when writing this. With the mediocre performance the 1.4 and 1.5 GHz launch models offered as it was (and failing to outperform the PIII-1000), pushing higher voltage >1 GHz coppermine PIII's would've compromised most of the higher clocked willamette P4s as well. (Granted, the Tualatin PIII and Celeron came out not too long after the 2 GHz P4 -and the super-overclockable Celeron 1200 at 1.6 GHz could beat it pretty easily) So with that in mind, it's not too hard to imagine Intel intentionally limited the Pentium III late in its life, at least with official ratings.

Same would go with stopping at 133 MHz FSB when 150 MHz would've fit 600 MHz RDRAM very well and was already stable on nearly all 133 MHz rated chipsets at the time. (officially rated 150 MHz SDRAM wasn't common though -PC-133 was usually 7.5 or 7 ns stuff, so 143 MHz tops- but Intel wanted to push RDRAM anyway, and the 600 MHz stuff common -for RDRAM- of that time would have fit perfectly -PC-700 RDRAM wasn't much more uncommon in the 2000/2001 period either, so 166 MHz FSB would have fit well with that -and maybe even been easier to set up a 2.5x AGP divider for than 2.25x for 150 MHz, but I'm not sure how close Intel's i820 and i815 were to handling 166 MHz reliably -I don't recall seeing good overclocking success at 166 MHz, even with RDRAM -unlike 150 MHz, which seems to go pretty well even with SDRAM on decent quality Apollo Pro-133 based boards even)

Reply 206 of 362, by candle_86

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kool kitty89 wrote:

I'm a tad more surprised Intel never resorted to overvolting their parts, particularly in the Coppermine days when they fell behind the Athlon in peak performance and raw clock rate. And their awkwardness with the PIII 1133. (pushing it up to 1.8V or 1.9V probably would've solved the stability problems -and given overclocking experience, and electrical limits of the CPUs, going up to 2.0V and 1.2+ GHz would've been realistic) It's not like Athlons weren't pulling out more wattage than those existing PIIIs ... and even at 2.0V a coppermine PIII wouldn't start to pull out ahead in heat/power of the top rated Thunderbirds until you got close to 1.4 GHz. Then again, it's also slightly odd they never released an 8x133 MHz (1066) PIII just to have something stable above the 1000 MHz part.

They did the Pentium 3 1.13 Coppermine was a 1.75V chip, and it wasn't stable it was recalled and thats why Coppermine never was over 1ghz, 1.13 was unstable at any voltage it was simply the hard limit for 180nm Coppermine.

Reply 207 of 362, by feipoa

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I had a dual 1.10 Ghz Coppermine (100 MHz FSB) system which ran beautifully for many years. Still have the matched pair of CPUs in my bin.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 208 of 362, by shamino

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feipoa wrote:

I had a dual 1.10 Ghz Coppermine (100 MHz FSB) system which ran beautifully for many years. Still have the matched pair of CPUs in my bin.

The 1.1GHz Celeron is a later stepping than the broken 1.13GHz Coppermine P3. That stepping apparently scaled better. Presumably they could have also used that core for a working 1.13GHz Coppermine, but for whatever reason Intel decided not to revisit that speed grade.
The only problem I can imagine is that the P3 does have more cache so the chip would draw more power.

Reply 209 of 362, by candle_86

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shamino wrote:
feipoa wrote:

I had a dual 1.10 Ghz Coppermine (100 MHz FSB) system which ran beautifully for many years. Still have the matched pair of CPUs in my bin.

The 1.1GHz Celeron is a later stepping than the broken 1.13GHz Coppermine P3. That stepping apparently scaled better. Presumably they could have also used that core for a working 1.13GHz Coppermine, but for whatever reason Intel decided not to revisit that speed grade.
The only problem I can imagine is that the P3 does have more cache so the chip would draw more power.

No Coppermine T did revist 1.13 but it had some changes from Coppermine

Reply 210 of 362, by Skyscraper

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I have got my silver top Cyrix MII 2.2V "flip-chip" CPU and done some quick testing.

It runs stable at 3x100 with stock voltage but wont even load Windows at 315 without me giving it 2.3V, these CPUs seems to reach a brick wall.

3x100 MHz for a speedrating of 433 was all I hoped for but isnt it a bite strange that a supposedly 0.18 micron CPU wont go higher as the K6-3+ can do 600 MHz?

(The sellers pics)

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New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 211 of 362, by BSA Starfire

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I'm really jealous of that 2.2v Cyrix. I don't think the issue with speed is the voltage or FSB though. I think that is all the architecture will allow for. Cyrix were all about IPC rather than high clocks, that is why VIA used the IDT "winchip" design rather than cyrix for the socket 370 chip. It did high MHz despite poor IPC, thats what sold at the time.
Best,
Chris

286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
386SX 33MHz,ULSI 387,4MB Ram,OAK OTI077 1MB. Seagate ST1144A, MS WSS audio
Amstrad PC 9486i, DX/2 66, 16 MB RAM, Cirrus SVGA,Win 95,SB 16
Cyrix MII 333,128MB,SiS 6326 H0 rev,ESS 1869,Win ME

Reply 212 of 362, by BSA Starfire

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About time I showed off my Cyrix 6x86 collection. I have 2 other in use, a Gold top MII 333 in my TIME ALi Aladdin 5 & a IBM 6x86 MX 333 in a SiS system.

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286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
386SX 33MHz,ULSI 387,4MB Ram,OAK OTI077 1MB. Seagate ST1144A, MS WSS audio
Amstrad PC 9486i, DX/2 66, 16 MB RAM, Cirrus SVGA,Win 95,SB 16
Cyrix MII 333,128MB,SiS 6326 H0 rev,ESS 1869,Win ME

Reply 213 of 362, by Skyscraper

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Here are some benchmark results with the Cyrix MII "433GP"

Cyrix MII 333GP 4x66 MHz 2.2V version @ 433GP (3x100MHz)

Gigabyte GA-5AX

Aladdin 5
512KB cache
1x128MB SDRAM
S3 Trio64V+ 2MB PCI
SB AWE64 ISA

DOS

Quake: 45.7 FPS
Doom: 83.08 FPS (2134 gametics in 899 realtics)
3dbench2: 339.2 FPS
PCPbench: 86.6 FPS

Windows 98SE.

SuperPi1M: 10m 12s

"MPEG1 DVD" PAL 720*576 MP2: ~12.5 FPS
"MPEG1 DVD" NTSC 720*480 23.976 MP2: ~15 FPS
VCD PAL: OK
VCD NTSC (23.976): OK

CPUmark99: 25.0
PCMark2002 CPU score: 433
PCMark2002 Memory score: 542

Everest Ultimate 5.50.2253 Beta

Memory read: 555 MB/s
Memory write: 98 MB/s
Memory copy: 136 MB/s
Memory latency: 117.0 ns
CPU Queen: 424
CPU PhotoWorxx: 271
CPU ZLib: 1130 kB/s
CPU AES: 217
FPU Julia: 12
FPU Mandel: 10
FPU SinJulia: 37

Sandra99

CPU Benchmark
CPU Dhrystone: 769 MIPS
FPU Whetstone: 266 MFLOPS

Multimedia Benchmark
Integer MMX: 430 it/s
Floating-Point FPU: 130 it/s

Memory Benchmark
CPU Memory Bandwidth: 126 MB/s
FPU Memory Bandwidth: 134 MB/s
CPU Assignment: 131 MB/s
CPU Scaling: 108 MB/s
CPU Addition: 146 MB/s
CPU Triad: 117 MB/s
FPU Assignment: 127 MB/s
FPU Scaling: 120 MB/s
FPU Addition: 143 MB/s
FPU Triad: 145 MB/s

I run the GA-5AX F4 BIOS and all performance options in the BIOS setup are turned on, beneficial or not. If some Cyrix optimizations are not in the BIOS setup or turned on automagicly they weren't used, I will download some Cyrix opmimization tool to see if I can squeeze out some more performance.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 214 of 362, by BSA Starfire

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I have found with my systems that Cyrix is better off on SiS or ViA chipsets, my results with Ali were pretty poor.

286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
386SX 33MHz,ULSI 387,4MB Ram,OAK OTI077 1MB. Seagate ST1144A, MS WSS audio
Amstrad PC 9486i, DX/2 66, 16 MB RAM, Cirrus SVGA,Win 95,SB 16
Cyrix MII 333,128MB,SiS 6326 H0 rev,ESS 1869,Win ME

Reply 215 of 362, by Skyscraper

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BSA Starfire wrote:

I have found with my systems that Cyrix is better off on SiS or ViA chipsets, my results with Ali were pretty poor.

Trading blows with a Pentium 166 and an AMD K5 PR166 @116 MHz in the Everest tests isnt great so you might have a point. 😁

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 216 of 362, by BSA Starfire

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check out line 393 in phils benchmark*(https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lvF9n … wpNU/edit#gid=0), far below my same 6x86 on SiS with even on board 6326. As for being close to K5 166 or pentium 166, well that can't be right?

286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
386SX 33MHz,ULSI 387,4MB Ram,OAK OTI077 1MB. Seagate ST1144A, MS WSS audio
Amstrad PC 9486i, DX/2 66, 16 MB RAM, Cirrus SVGA,Win 95,SB 16
Cyrix MII 333,128MB,SiS 6326 H0 rev,ESS 1869,Win ME

Reply 217 of 362, by Skyscraper

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BSA Starfire wrote:

check out line 393 in phils benchmark*(https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lvF9n … wpNU/edit#gid=0), far below my same 6x86 on SiS with even on board 6326. As for being close to K5 166 or pentium 166, well that can't be right?

It did beat them both in the CPU tests but lost with some margin to the P166 in the FPU tests while only just beating the K5 @116. I do not think Everest is the right tool for measuring Socket-7 performance though.

Looking at the DOS tests the CPU seems to be as fast as a Pentium MMX @ 2.5 x 100 on average when it comes to games or about as fast as a Pentium MMX @ 3 x 100 if you just ignore Quake or about as fast as it's speed rating if you only look at synthetic benchmarks. 😁

In CPUmark99 The Cyrix MII-433GP crushes even the Pentium MMX running at the same 3 x 100. I will post the complete benchmark results for the Pentium MMX @3x100 for comparison when Im done benching.

I will try the Cyrix "MII-433GP" with Via VPX and MVP3 later. 😀

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 218 of 362, by Skyscraper

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Here is the full benchmark results with a Pentium MMX @ 3x100 for comparison with the Cyrix MII @ 3x100 a few posts above.

Everything else including all the hardware and BIOS settings are exactly the same exept for Write Combining which the Pentium MMX dosnt support.

When it comes to Integer performance the Pentium MMX and the Cyrix MII seem to trade blows at the same clock speed but the Pentium MMX has much better FPU performane, nihil sub sole novum.

Pentium MMX 300 3x100

DOS

Quake: 62.6 FPS
Doom: 82.71 FPS (2134 gametics in 903 realtics)
3dbench2: 247.2 FPS
PCPbench: 76.7 FPS

Windows 98SE

SuperPi1M: 8m 45s

"MPEG1 DVD" PAL 720*576 MP2: ~13 FPS
"MPEG1 DVD" NTSC 720*480 23.976 MP2: ~15.5 FPS
VCD PAL: OK
VCD NTSC (23.976): OK

CPUmark99: 17.8
PCMark2002 CPU score: 561
PCMark2002 Memory score: 578

Everest Ultimate 5.50.2253 Beta
Memory read: 370 MB/s
Memory write: 797 MB/s <--- This looks odd but it was the score I got.
Memory copy: 297 MB/s
Memory latency: 141.4 ns
CPU Queen: 486
CPU PhotoWorxx: 283
CPU ZLib: 1037 kB/s
CPU AES: 230
FPU Julia: 27
FPU Mandel: 33
FPU SinJulia: 66

Sandra99

CPU Benchmark
CPU Dhrystone: 749 MIPS
FPU Whetstone: 340 MFLOPS

Multimedia Benchmark
Integer MMX: 693 it/s
Floating-Point FPU: 236 it/s

Memory Benchmark
CPU Memory Bandwidth: 137 MB/s
FPU Memory Bandwidth: 151 MB/s
CPU Assignment: 149 MB/s
CPU Scaling: 116 MB/s
CPU Addition: 152 MB/s
CPU Triad: 131 MB/s
FPU Assignment: 149 MB/s
FPU Scaling: 144 MB/s
FPU Addition: 156 MB/s
FPU Triad: 154 MB/s

Edit

Perhaps its best I add the K6-3+ aswell, all settings are exactly the same as with the Cyrix MII and Pentium MMX.

K6-3+ 300 3x100

DOS

Quake: 55.8 FPS
Doom: 84.59 FPS (2134 gametics in 883 realtics)
3dbench2: 301.8 FPS
PCPbench: 107.9 FPS

Windows 98SE

SuperPi1M: 8m 55s

"MPEG1 DVD" PAL 720*576 MP2: ~14 FPS
"MPEG1 DVD" NTSC 720*480 23.976 MP2: ~16.5 FPS
VCD PAL: OK
VCD NTSC (23.976): OK

CPUmark99: 32.5
PCMark2002 CPU score: 545
PCMark2002 Memory score: 677

Everest Ultimate 5.50.2253 Beta
Memory read: 332 MB/s
Memory write: 115 MB/s
Memory copy: 148 MB/s
Memory latency: 128.3 ns
CPU Queen: 594
CPU PhotoWorxx: 310
CPU ZLib: 1332 kB/s
CPU AES: 314
FPU Julia: 46
FPU Mandel: 21
FPU SinJulia: 50

Sandra99

CPU Benchmark
CPU Dhrystone: 902 MIPS
FPU Whetstone: 350 MFLOPS

Multimedia Benchmark
Integer MMX: 783 it/s
Floating-Point FPU: 587 it/s

Memory Benchmark
CPU Memory Bandwidth: 133 MB/s
FPU Memory Bandwidth: 134 MB/s
CPU Assignment: 163 MB/s
CPU Scaling: 154 MB/s
CPU Addition: 113 MB/s
CPU Triad: 103 MB/s
FPU Assignment: 163 MB/s
FPU Scaling: 154 MB/s
FPU Addition: 110 MB/s
FPU Triad: 109 MB/s

/Edit

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 219 of 362, by Tetrium

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I was in the attic for a couple other reasons and at some point was taking pics and well, here's my stored collection of Cyrix Socket 7 chips (somehow a single Pentium snuck into the pic).

It's only these 3 trays though, may have one or 2 chips somewhere else.

Cyrix chips s7.jpg
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