![]() It was also priced too high, Tobak added.ĬTX will be the first computer maker to use the chip and will market systems in retail stores.Ĭyrix expects to ship tens of thousands of the 6 x86MX chips in June and to increase this to the hundreds of thousands in the third quarter. It has also tweaked the processor to boost 32-bit performance to twice that of the older 6 x86.Ĭyrix hopes to make the 6 x86MX more of a success than the original 6 x86, which hit the market without an infrastructure in place to move the chip quickly into systems. IBM says the lower megahertz speeds are an advantage, reducing power consumption and heat, making the chips moreĮnergy-efficient and more reliable, respectively.Ĭyrix has speeded up the chip by quadrupling the amount of on-chip cache memory that was on the original 6 x86. But the company believes its PR rating approach will win out. So a PR233 Cyrix chip, which the company claims is as fast as a 233-MHz Intel Pentium II, will run at a clock speed slower than that level.Ĭyrix admits that this causes confusion among some customers who have become used to gauging the performance of chips based on megahertz ratings. The megahertz rating, or "clock speed," for the Cyrix processors, is slower than the PR rating. We're not going to give that away ," said Steve Tobak, a vice president at Cyrix. "It's a significantly superior architecture. The company does this because it believes it has a better design for its chip, whose performance is not accurately reflected in a megahertz-only rating. Cyrix does not own manufacturing facilities.Ĭyrix rates its processors based on a "PR" rating, not on megahertz as AMD and Intel do. Much of this agreement is predicated on the fact that IBM manufactures the 6 x86MX for Cyrix. IBM will also sell the 6 x86MX chip, based on an agreement with Cyrix. MMX is a technology for speeding up multimedia applications such as audio, video, and communications. "They need MMX and the higher performance in order to stay in the race," said Michael Slater, publisher of the Microprocessor Report, an industry newsletter. The company's primary target markets are consumer PCs and computers for small businesses.Īnalysts say this chip is crucial for Cyrix to stay competitive. Intel's 233-MHz Pentium II is priced at about $600.Īt the low end, Cyrix will price the 6 x86MX, with a rating which is equivalent to a speed of 166 MHz, at $190 for systems at the $1,000 level. Currently, Intel's high-end Pentium and Pentium II processors are found in systems above $2,000 and more often above $2,500.Įven Advanced Micro Devices' K6 processor, considered a low-price leader at $460 for the 233-MHz version, costs significantly more than Cyrix's new high-end 6 x86MX, which is priced at $320. ![]() The Cyrix 6 x86MX, previously known under the code name M2, is similar in performance to Intel's faster MMX Pentium and newly introduced Pentium II processors.īut the price is decidedly different: The bulk of the Cyrix chips will be targeted for sub-$1,500 computers. Cyrix (CYRX) introduced its first MMX-capable processor today, hoping to turn heads by offering a high-speed chip at a low price.
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