IBM / Cyrix 6x86MX PR200 vs Intel Pentium 200 MMX

[@dan_mer]

That Cyrix was my first CPU I bought the day I started IT graduate school. God I'm old.

[@e1woqf]

I'm even older. My first CPU was a 8085@2MHz 😎

[@benrogersdevon]

@@e1woqf 2MHz! first 'machine' I had use of as a kid was an Atari ST540FM which consisted of an 8MHz Motorola CPU and 512KB of RAM. The one I had use of had no HDD, just a 3.5" floppy drive but in 95 when I started secondary school, we had a lot of DOS and Windows 3.1 machines and there was an Acorn (don't recall model) and an Acorn BBC Model B (2MHz 6502, 16KB RAM, etc which were n the library which I used to use and simply "mess about" with the code in the game, snake so I could make it look different on the Monochrome monitor.

[@EgoShredder]

NASCOM computer for me, followed by a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K back when those were new.

[@312diag]

K6-2/400 2nd was Athlon XP 2800+

[@x3mality160486]

same

[@nneeerrrd]

22:20 I'll tell you what happened here. Not all 3D games of the era used floating point math for 3D. Many still used fixed point math which runs on integer ALU of the processor. And this is the area where Cyrix was stronger then Pentium.

[@RetroSpector78]

Was also thinking something along those lines. Cool to see the little underdog managing to beat Intel in certain areas

[@nneeerrrd]

@@RetroSpector78 yeah those Cyrix CPUs were true "volks pentiums" until overclockable and affordable Celerons and Durons came into the scene later.

[@rcajavus8141]

@@nneeerrrd i built a lot of systems for my friends in that era, from P75 that I told everyone to skip, only P100 and P133 in first gen, and then later only P166 and Cyrix, however for all that time i just kept my 486dx2 with Matrox and Cyruss Logic and had Win95 and MP3 and mpeg4 video and higher resolutions, but when p200mmx came I bought it and OC it first day to 266 and that system kept me gamimng to Athlon64x2

[@desther7975]

From the good old days when one motherboard could take CPUs from several manufacturers. Why don't we have a universal socket and chipset for AMD and Intel today?

[@LilMalygos]

On other hand we basicly have intel and amd now on x86 home consumer market front and nothing more.

[@YaroKasear]

This is because both AMD and Intel are anti-competitive when the cards are down. They both went out of their way to kill third-party chipset manufacturing and hijack front side bus and socket designs. Intel goes without saying but people like to paint AMD as if they're some saintly innocent do-no-wrong technology company. The reality is that AMD also did their best to screw their competition when the chance came. You have to realize one of the reasons Cyrix was even able to enter the x86 market was because sockets and front side bus platforms were basically standardized by the industry as a whole, so if you had the engineers and intellectual and monetary capital you totally could design and fab x86 CPUs that would work as drop-in replacements for other x86 CPUs. AMD, after they were done second-sourcing for Intel AND Cyrix both got into the x86 market for themselves entirely because the industry, not Intel, controlled the platform, and so you could easily just look up pinouts and specifications on both front and rear-side bus designs and produce CPUs that would work. Then stuff like how extensive the bus could be, connectivity, what sort of RAM you had, etc, basically was left up to the motherboard manufacturer, so long as they conformed to various standards laid out by groups like the IEEE or JEDEC. What resulted was that Intel, AMD, and Cyrix had to actually compete in terms of what the CPUs themselves were capable of doing, as the CPU was not going to be changing how the platform itself worked. So a CPU had to sell itself on its performance and capabilities independently of trying to hold features or specific platform technologies hostage unless you use their platform like they do now. I'm looking at you, Intel, with Optane, and you, AMD, with Infinity Fabric. Those are examples of technologies that should have been left to motherboard and chipset manufacturers to support, not enforced by what brand of CPU you had. Well, once Intel and AMD saw an opportunity to actually put front side bus functionality on their CPUs and felt they could get away with it, they did, and it gave them an excuse to also reject industry standard sockets and make proprietary ones instead. For a while they still let third party manufacturers make rear-side bus chips (nVidia used to actually support a lot of AMD CPUs with their nForce chipset. This was before AMD bought out ATI and started competing with nVidia.) but eventually they killed that off too and started integrating more FSB features into their CPUs until this day where FSBs are basically an obsolete term and you just have a singular chip serving as the southbridge that is manufactured by the same company as your CPU. Why? So that companies like Cyrix and Transmeta would never be able to show up and disrupt their cash flows again. Gone are the days when you could design and fab a drop in replacement for a Pentium because the sockets are proprietary and the platforms are treated like trade secrets now. If you were to try and make an x86 CPU that could run in, say, a socket 1151 chances are Intel would sue you out of existence, or AMD would take you to court over trying to use AM4+. Intel and AMD are not your friends.

[@chihophuocbao6661]

@@YaroKasear I guess this change adds up to the problem that PC hardware are so diverse today which make software/peripheral manufacturer hard to keep up with compare to Mac.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

@@YaroKasear So it's the on chip proprietary front and back side bus architecture that makes designing a compatible cpu almost impossible?

[@pc-sound-legacy]

@@YaroKasear This is plain capitalism. Starting with a variety of company's sharing a marked, it always went down to a consolidated market with just a few leader company's left.

[@dougtemple8474]

I'm very excited to have come across this video. In the early 2000s when my parents bought a shiny new Athlon XP 1800+, I got the old machine which was a Cyrix 6x86MX PR200, the exact 75x2.0 version shown in the video, just labeled Cyrix rather than IBM. About a year later, I received a free upgrade from a friend who had a Pentium 200 MMX; I ran it at 83x2.5 in my machine for 208MHz; it wasn't a big overclock in terms of clock speed, but the L2 cache and RAM ran faster this way. I do remember it wasn't a big uplift in my desktop PC experience, but in the games I was playing at the time like Need for Speed, it was a big improvement. It's so cool that these two chips, before and after my upgrade, came into this single video so many years later. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

[@mrvellu]

great video as usual! 1997 certainly was an interesting year for computers. Now I tend to favor 486 for DOS games and Pentium 2 based system for Windows 95-98 games. 1995-97 builds are not my favorites for gaming but I still like them

[@chrismisc7856]

Cool video. I had Cyrix CPUs when I was a kid because it was all I could afford and they worked well enough.

[@madson-web]

IBM Cyrix 233 was my true first computer. It was amazing at time. Then I got an AMD K6 (500mhz).

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah AMD also had some great cpu’s during that time. But kinda like these old Cyrix cpu’s. In some degrees technologically very advanced and beating intel on a lot of fronts. Amazing considering their difference in budget (marketing, R&D...)

[@lordsnowy4638]

Same here, then i got a Duron 750

[@rasz]

K6 was outside design, so all the AMD R&D budget went into buyout of NexGen :)

[@mnlwrnr]

This was my first PC in 1996: Case: MIDI Tower CPU: Cyrix 6x86 P200 RAM: 16MB HDD: 2GB Floppy: 3,5" CD-ROM: 12x speed Video card: ATI 3D with 4MB & MPEG video hardware decoder Audio card: Aztech Waverider Pro 32 3D (100% Sound Blaster compatible) Monitor: 15" CRT with integrated stereo speakers PS/2 keyboard PS/2 mouse with scroll wheel Software: Windows 95 & Drivers on OEM CD

[@magnum333]

This is the most comprehensive video I have seen of the Cyrix CPU. Kudos!! I'm subscribed now.

[@kkolakowski]

About this peculiar "Screamer 2" performance on Cyrix with software renderer - I guess this is because of fixed-point math its engine could've used. It basically means it didn't use FPU but emulate floating point math using it's integer unit. This was a popular technique with many old 3D engines, and also later, in "mobile" times when early ARM CPUs also had very weak FPUs.

[@daishi5571]

I think you have it, as it would also account for the less than stellar rendering accuracy (it was however a fun game)

[@thomassmith4999]

Quake was pretty much the first game that wanted a strong FPU, Scream was earlier than that so no problem

[@VK2FVAX]

Great video. It was a great era :) I used to use the Cyrix's a lot especially with UNIX and UNIX-Like systems and a bit of Windows also. Code optimisation and compilers had a huge influence on performance of these guys (especially intel's compilers and some use of missing instructions in the two early Cyrix families). Also there's Cyrix non-mmx which is an enhanced 486 core, and Cyrix MMX. MMX's also if memory served had the missing RTDSC instructions to make them more Pentium compatible. There was a lot of jokes about the non-mmx Cyrix like the PR200+ being "the world's fastest 486". An example on the code optimisation issue is MS VC5 vs MS VC6. It can really throw your benchmark results around with the same unchanged code. The FPU in the several Cyrix's is definitely weaker than Intel's at the same PR value, but the integer instruction speed is definitely higher .. partly due to the lower latency from ram over a faster FSB (ie: less pipeline stalls) and less need for it to have a cache miss and need to hit the FSB to fetch data. Larger L1 cache in the second generation with MMX no doubt helped here also. Also, a lot of motherboards of the era had 256kb cache upto some of the SS7 VIA AOpen boards with 1mb cache, as software improved, cache alignment of code could have a very significant impact on performance. Really enjoyed your video. If you get a chance, grab some of the other underdogs ..I know they're not as great but the NexGEN and IDT WinChips and sure chuck a few AMD's in there along couple of other little known's like the few that SiS released before the Cyrix IP went over there ..they're a load of fun to run up, benchmark and explore.

[@ayuchanayuko]

Imagine when AMD and Intel used to share the same socket

[@irvingchies1626]

now both require instruction sets from the other

[@souta95]

Now you need to find an IDT WinChip :)

[@3DfxAslinger]

I have a Winchip C6 and Winchip 2, both with 200 MHz.

[@Stratotank3r]

@@3DfxAslinger Yeah, have both in my little museum. Also the Rise mp6 @ 200MHz.

[@RetroSpector78]

Always on the lookout for cool stuff, but this one hasn't found it's way here

[@Stratotank3r]

@@RetroSpector78 Got my chips from China last summer. There are a few seller in HongKong and Taiwan. Rise mp6: www.ebay.com/itm/Rise-Technology-MP6-PR-266-MHz-MP6441RPFH4-Q-TESTED/143074735003?hash=item214feb339b:g:VhkAAOSw7wFcDUuR

[@Imperious685]

Thanks, that was a great review. I recently picked up a IBM 6x86MX PR166 and a IBM 6x86MX PR333 3x83mhz, am looking forward to messing about with them. I also have a K6-2+ and a K6-3+ that will run at 550mhz stable and pass some benchmarks at 600mhz. Back in the day I went from a p200mmx to a Duron 650@900mhz, what a giant leap in performance that was. The motherboard I had the P200mmx in suffered an untimely death as a result of the Chernobyl Virus that wiped the bootblock in the Bios, I could have fixed that now but it ended up getting binned, unfortunate as it was a DFI Intel HX chipset motherboard. The P200mmx will run all day at 100x2.5 on the stock 2.8v on super socket 7 mobo, some people have gotten them up to 300mhz but with the high risk of killing it. Overclocking is fun as long as You don't over-do it.

[@3DfxAslinger]

Always nice to see this direct comparisons and a 3dfx Voodoo Banshee in action! Yes, the 6x86MX is a bad overclocker, but maybe you can find a Cyrix MIIv low voltage 180 nm version with 2,0-2,2V VCore, they are good overclocker.

[@RetroSpector78]

This one is currently running stable at 187.5mhz. Sometimes has a little bit of an issue with some winstone tests (1 hour testing), but playing games, working in windows, running prime95 all seems to work fine. Difficult to view the cpu temperature unfortunately

[@daishi5571]

@@RetroSpector78 It needs liquid cooling ;-)

[@TheNovum]

Id love to see a three-way comparison with the AMD also 😊

[@BadManiac]

I'd love to see both AMD K5-PR200 and K6-200 compared with the exact same hardware!

[@WolfKenneth]

InWin chip would be interesting too

[@RetroSpector78]

Don't have the InWin chip, but have a couple of Cyrix / AMD / Intel chips that can be benched in the same way

[@WolfKenneth]

@@RetroSpector78 please do!😍

[@Korium84]

God, I miss this era.

[@Joshua_N-A]

What happened in 1997? Bankruptcy? How would the market be today had Cyrix survives? How would Ryzen will become? Could Cyrix have survive had they venture into graphics card instead of CPUs?

[@mattpierce5009]

Great video and channel, subbed. I very much appreciate that your videos get right to the content without a lot of fancy editing and loud music.

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx a lot ... really appreciate comments like that !

[@m1k3e]

Great video! Really interesting to see all of those old tests and benchmarks. Reminds me of the Nostalgia Nerd video "What Happened to Cyrix?" that also mentioned Quake performance. Thanks for another awesome video!

[@djpirtu2]

Remember having P200MMX @250MHz (3x83MHz) for a long time on Asus P5T2P4. Fast enough for almost anything that time.

[@warrax111]

that was one of the fast machine for 97' and up to mid 1998. For 1.5 year, complete dream build for that era. Then, it was dethroned by cheap Celerons 266 and 300, and particulary 300A in august 1998. :) (would never expectd, that so fast and cheap processor will appear just in 1.5 year after Pentium MMX, complete shock. I was expecting like even in 2000, Pentium 233 MMX will be still only mid-range processor, quite expensive, cheap Celerons and AMD k6-2 400-500mhz was total shock for me, how cheap yoi could have in 1999 that performance, that beats overclocked Pentium 233 MMX by huge margin )Actually, Celeron 266 was only bit faster from 250 MMX, but after overclocking to 100 FSB, those Celerons outperformed Pentium MMX by 2-3x times, also offered AGP slot. I have also 75 mhz capable motherboard for socket 7 with Pentium 233 MMX as vintage computer. With INtel TX chipset 430. After overclocking to 75x3.5, 262.5 mhz, that system is socket 7 beast. Heard, there is unofficial BIOS for 83mhz, but could not get that for my board (QDI Titanium 250/1b)

[@SomePeopleCallMeWulfman]

In the 90s I always used to buy the "underdog" CPUs. Anyone remember the NexGen Nx586-P90?

[@RetroSpector78]

Not that familiar with the non intel / amd / cyrix cpu’s. But totally get the underdog sentiment.

[@macdaniel6029]

I bought them because I had no money :D Back then we did know nothing about FPU power or benchmarks. We just saw the PR numbers and thought: Cool. Same speed, half the price ^^

[@lordmmx1303]

@@RetroSpector78 NX686 which was in development is now known as AMD K6 after AMD bought NexGen

[@stevec00ps]

Was that one of the high clocked 486 core CPUs?

[@5roundsrapid263]

Mac Daniel Me too! I knew a guy with a PII 450. I was jealous. I bought a K6-2 350, and overclocked it to 400. I then got a Voodoo3 and overclocked it! My system was about half the price and just as fast.

[@thomassmith4999]

Nice video, I ran the Cyrix CPUs for a while back in the 90s. I wasn't much into Quake and I was aware of the better desktop performance so it was ok for me. Now days when I'm getting old buisness machines from the scrap I see a lot of them and rightfully so are running the Cyrix cpus.

[@morantaylor]

I remember buying my IBM 686MX PR200 back in the 90's being a student at the time it was good bang for buck. Still have the system it had been parted out to upgrade to a super socket 7 system in the late 90's. System has been rebuilt to the same specs using my original parts except for the Voodoo 1 haven't been able to find one at a reasonable price.

[@alpharisc]

I had a 6x86 200mx then went to a intel 200mmx that I overclocked to 250mhz. For me the 6x86 was extremely unusable for music software, all the MIDI timing was all over the place and the performance in Impulse Tracker using the MMX driver was significantly worse than the Intel. I do recall Windows 95c running unusually fast on the 6x86 however, nice memories of that time, cool video! Interesting to see it in some games.

[@michalzustak8846]

I love that this is actually a fair comparision and not just "it runs Quake badly so it sucks" so often done by modern Cyrix reviewers. Most 3D games from the 1994-1997 era actually still used fixed point math as the Playstation 1 used it. Also, at that time, 20 fps was considered "good" performance in SVGA resolution 3D so the performance in Quake would not be seen as so bad even if inferior to the Pentium.

[@appwraith]

I think this is, for me at least, the best era of retro computing. Back in the day I had a Cyrix 233MX, and later upgraded to an AMD K6-2 500, all in an Acorp 5ALI61 board. I want to rebuild that PC someday.

[@RetroSpector78]

Wraith yeah ... I’ve been focussing a lot on XT class machines, and as much as I like these old machines (and 286 , 386), the stuff that you got as a kid does hold a special place in your heart.

[@Xaltar_]

What killed Cyrix was that it didn't predict the explosion of PC gaming in the late 90's. It was producing CPUs under licence for IBM, likely it's biggest contract, and as such had heavily optimized it's architecture for productivity tasks. AMD on the other hand seized the opportunity to capitalize on the gaming craze. Games liked frequency, a trend that holds to this day. Socket 7 was a golden age platform that never would have been so prominent if intel had renewed it's licencing agreements with AMD. Intel didn't allow AMD in on the Pentium II architecture so AMD worked with the licences it had. There were also other, less known CPU brands back then, Winchip, Rise and ST, all trying to jump on the bandwagon hoping to ride the boom to success. Those are a lot harder to come by now. We sold Winchip 233 CPUs in our budget systems. ST and Rise I only remember from PC magazines of the time.

[@MrSpacelyy]

We had this cpu or at least the same product range (maybe different frequency) And man I always tried to find uses where it was fast. But that floating point thing was so sad. Great video.

[@MrKillswitch88]

I always liked setting the fsb to 83mhz or higher when the board supported it and those cyrix procs often worked without a fuss other than being furnace procs.

[@RetroSpector78]

OC will be for the next video :) This mainboard only went to 75Mhz but have a super socket 7 that goes all the way up to 100Mhz.

[@givemeakawasaki]

Nice comparison! thanks for the video!

[@RetroSpector78]

You are very welcome ... lots more socket7 stuff to come ... don't forget to subscribe / share ! Thx a lot for the comment

[@XynoGaming]

Like always, a great video. keep up the great work o7

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx ! Glad you liked it.

[@sedrosken831]

I've had a few machines complete 98 installs and end up being unstable, but by and large you're right -- the Win3x-based setup is temperamental enough that if your system is held together with bubblegum and good vibes it generally won't get through an install.

[@AetiusPraetorian]

I used to swap an AMD K6-233 with the P-233MMX to run benchmarks on the same system/motherboard. Pretty cool stuff back in those days.

[@7rich79]

Wow, those speakers in the opening shot gave me a flashback :D I had the exact same model, the first "upgrade" I bought for my IBM Aptiva P100MHz pc :D

[@RetroSpector78]

one of the more popular models in the nineties ... lots of manufacturers made these.

[@rogert151]

mine picked up some sort of cb radio frequencies as i could hear faint sounds of people taking, even cursing, maybe they were causing some interfernce

[@stevec00ps]

I was a big Cyrix fan back in the day (oh and needed a big fan on it! ha) That 75MHz bus speed is overclocking the rest of the motherboard and the expansion cards too though which helps with performance.

[@RetroSpector78]

The pr200 came out in 75x2 and 66x2.5 editions. Mine was a 75x2. In next video will try some overclocking

[@twainjones]

1:55 AGP ports!!! I remember those 😂👍👍 I must have had one or two of those graphic cards in the 90s. What a nostalgia trip 😄 I think PCI Express appeared 2004

[@osgrov]

This is very cool. I never got to play with the Cyrix stuff - for some reason they were not popular here in Sweden. Considering the massive price delta, I'd say it's a very impressive chip. I want one! Bit of a new style for your content! I like it a lot and it reminds me of Phil of course, one of my favorite channels and a real hero in the retro community. :) Keep up the great work man, I am really enjoying your videos.

[@Szeghjani]

nagyon jó vedó lett még csinálhatnál ilyen retró cpu benchmarkot !!

[@LUNATIC75]

I dread to think how much money I 'wasted' on AMD and Intel CPU's and motherboards in the Socket 7 era! I was never tempted by Cyrix though, it just couldn't pull those FPU's in games. My last CPU from that era was the K6-III 450. I have fond memories of that particular build.

[@RetroSpector78]

Only hava a K6 and K6-2 here ... would love to get myself a K-3

[@MrToldi]

@@RetroSpector78 It's nice to see the mighty socket 7's still kicking around. Thanks for the upload. I finally managed to get my hands on a motherboard that supports my k6-2+ 500, which is similar to a K6-III in performance, only with half the size of on die L2 cache. Which makes it miles better than a plain jane k6-2, considering the lack of any on die L2 cache on those processors (not to mention the decent overclocking potential of the + models, thanks to the smaller manufacturing process). As a consequence a lot of emphasis was put on the motherboard. In particular on the speed and amount of L2 cache soldered onto the board, which had a considerable influence on the overall system performance. By the way, it would also be interesting to see the P1 200MMX overclocked and pitched against a later model k6 or earlier k6-2. The 200mmx should clock rather well, possibly reaching 290 Mhz (3.5*83). Keep up the good work!

[@RetroSpector78]

Endre Toldi we should get together for a lan party :)

[@RetroSpector78]

Endre Toldi planning to do some overclock videos. Problem is I don’t want to push it over its limits, but not easy to get sensor data on the socket7 platforms. And without knowing stuff like cpu temperature its hard to find dat limit. Have a k6-2 350 also. So think you can expect some more socket 7 videos. And we can always put your k6-2+ 500 on the bench :)

[@MrToldi]

@@RetroSpector78 On ocasion I'm using an infrared thermometer and just point it onto the heatsink. It gives an accurate indication of the temperature (not the cpu core temp of course). Most of the time due to laziness :) I really just use my finger (watch out for static electricity though). If I can't hold my finger on the heatsink for more than two seconds the cpu is getting too hot. With socket 7 cpu's this barely happenes though, especially if you strap on a socket 370 cooler. Good luck and enjoy the gained free computing power. :D

[@Astinsan]

The cyrix was the first development cpu I ever owned.. somehow a friend of mine obtained one by bs’n with them and convincing them he was interested in deploying it in a fictional company.. was really cool to me at the time to see a cpu that could perform as good as the intel variant.. not surprising that my friend was able to obtain one. He had the gift.

[@kulicher]

Yeah. 6x686MX-PR233 my first pentium class CPU. Priced like K5-120 or P1-90... and in games work just like P1-90 =)

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

Cyrix PR200 was my first Pc ever! Can you take a look at the K6 series, those had a great reputation back then but I never owned one.

[@brambotterman7804]

Have these ... With a Spacewalker motherboard. Liked those box-designs of Spacewalker/Shuttle :) :)

[@RetroSpector78]

Really liking these (super)socket 7 builds ... nice to be able to replay these old games. And not constantly worrying about exploding tantalum caps and failing mfm drives :)

[@BusygrowUk2012]

I had the Cyrix 6x86 PR166 and then later upgraded to the Intel P200 MMX I also had a Voodoo Banshee, the difference was quite big in some games. I do remember Heavy Gear and Shogo Mobile Armor ran a lot better on the Intel. Quake 1 ran fine on both, I never noticed any difference.

[@jasejj]

I never really thought that comparing the CX processors directly with Intel was all that fair. Part of this was down to cyrix's own marketing - the chip was a 150MHz in reality, and was half the price (much less than half price when they'd been on sale for a while). They should have advertised the chip as 150Mhz - they had the price advantage so fudging the speed served no purpose. If you compare two chips at the same price, the CX utterly blew Intel away. And that was always how I judged them - I had a budget, and compared the chips in that budget. Needless to say I bought a lot of Cyrix and AMD processors! This was even more pronounced in early 1996 when Intel had the P75, and Cyrix were punting the high-speed 486 processors. The SGS 486-133 was on sale for about £20, the P75 £200, and the SGS held its own at a tenth the price.

[@lwvmobile]

My first actual usable computer that wasn't too old back in the day was an Acer Aspire with an AMD K6-2 processor. That was back when home computers were first starting to become more affordable to the lower middle class.

[@dangingerich2559]

Back in the day, I had a series of Cyrix processors in my PCs: a 5x86-120, a 6X86-P150 (OC to P166 level), and a 6X86MX-PR233. I do remember how my performance was... uneven. Intel had a really big advantage with their FPU design for a lot of years. I think it was from the Pentium to the Athlon that nothing matched them. AMD's Athlon was a real market savior.

[@ukwan]

I had a Cyrix P150+ then a PR166 and PR233 before switching to AMD Athlon, Athlon XP then Core 2 Quad... How much computing moved on in 10 years was insane.

[@magnum333]

And where's the overclock video? 🤔

[@ianide2480]

When I finally stepped outside of the Commodore world I couldn't afford Intel. My early progression was AMD DX4 120, Cyrix 6x86 pr 166, AMD K62 350, and then a Celeron 300a (yep I got a successful 450mhz OC out of it). My favorite system was the Celeron 300a, man that thing was a beast.. I do have very fond memories of the 6x86 though, as it was my first step into Pentium class performance and I was always a fan of RPGs and at the time, it played all the games I played as well as any Pentium. Wish I could remember the name of the motherboard I had with the Cyrix, it had AGP and was an odd manufacturer. It wasn't any of the "normal" brands that everyone else purchased, it was a high quality board though. The manufacturer wasn't around for very long. They tried breaking into an already flooded market and just couldn't compete from what I recall.

[@diviksophistrum5466]

Your motherboard could be: Totem, Soyo, DFI, QDI, Lucky Star, Yang An, Soltek, Shuttle, SuperMicro, Tekram, Tyan, TIGA or ZIDA - rare or almost rare brands... In 1999 at my first job got Celeron 400 with i740 3D 8 MB videocard...we called it "an ugly fast server" because it was main computer in a net with a couple of Celerons 300 without any 3d accelerator, just integrated 2D..and played a lot after work, oh that wonderful times spent on Half-life! I still respect that Intel`s 3D chip i740..it was AGP and there was no texture memory in it, it was ...uhm...DIME yes, Direct ...eh... so it used RAM through AGP but was fast enough. I read a lot about 3D: bilinear filtering, antialiasing, bump-mapping and other magic words only for initiates

[@wishusknight3009]

clock for clock comparisons were also fun. And quite a few of the later mx and m2 cpu's can under-volt extremely well. And it is capable of running almost cooler than the Intel MMX chips can. One of the M2 chips that I have here, a PR300 i think? I have ran at a core clock of 187 and and at 2.4 volts. This was at the time running a classic listen server for UT a couple of years ago, and it did just fine with a couple of bots and upto 3 or 4 players connected. I even recall not needing a fan on its cooler. It could mostly run passive. I was also told by others I could have under volted it even more, and I may try that yet one day.

[@ricosun]

I remember playing Nascar, Duke Nukem 3D and later on Quake on Cyrix, it was the good old days

[@madmax2069]

Oh man, I had that case with my first windows PC in the mid 90 (Pentium 133). It was around 2002 when I found another case like it but had 3 5.25" drive bays instead of two which I moved everything from the other case into because the other case was pretty yellowed.

[@MichaelAStanhope]

I was a Cyrix reseller back in the day, they were decent performers for their price point. I found the Cyrix MII chips very lacking though, but again, compared to the Intel PII, it was a good alternative for a budget conscious buyer.

[@Zellio2011]

The Cryix got absoloutely crushed in floating point but beat the Intel in pretty much everything else, so obviously the racing game ran better because it's not using any floating point calculations.

[@jonchapman6821]

Cache matters

[@nickwallette6201]

Wow, this is on topic! I built a Cyrix 6x86 back in the day - decent for a while, but the cheap motherboard had under-cooled VRMs that could not hang with the low voltage and high current required by that CPU. It ended getting more and more unstable until I finally chucked it in exchange for a PII. But I decided it’s time to give it another shot (on a Tomato board no less!) with a PR200. I also just got a 3D Blaster Banshee - having been a bit of a Creative fanboy back then, but never had any of the graphics cards. It won’t go into this build, but will replace a Matrox Mystique that WILL go into this build. And finally, that HP CD Writer 7100i was my first CD-RW drive, so I just tracked down one of those as well! Also for this build. Small world! :-D

[@TimBorg]

I had at least two of these chips ... P166 for sure... maybe more.. and I think I have one in my CPU collection stil too

[@michaelclark3192]

Our first PC back in the 90s got upgraded from a 486 to a Cyrix 6x86 PR200 I'm pretty sure but games never ran as well as they did on my mates Pentium MMX computers and I can see why. We also didn't have a graphics card so had to use the internal graphics that shared 4MB of the 32MB of ram we had.

[@EgoShredder]

I remember this era having the infamous VIA Southbridge chipset nightmare with SoundBlaster Live! soundcards.

[@rawlynn2112]

From the benchies and the strong ALU cyrix had, can be seen that Cyrix M2 core was really a serious business ( literally )... for the vast majority of users and corporate users was more than enough. Business focused cpu.

[@GigAHerZ64]

You need to use Vintage version of CPU-Z! There is one. ;)

[@RetroSpector78]

The vintage edition failed with a blue screen of death unfortunately. Found 2 versions that did work (the last known supported version for win98, and some rebuild I found via vogons.

[@trixter192]

@@RetroSpector78 It was called straight up "cpuid" for the longest time.

[@enilenis]

Have both CPU's in my retro collection. Haven't fired them up in about 20 years.

[@macisawpobodzki6917]

Hello, where can i find the followup video with overclocked Cyrix?

[@Ivan-pr7ku]

Those two CPUs were in a strange juxtaposition. The 6x86 was a proper out-of-order architecture with many 6-th gen features, but a weak FPU, slightly faster than the 486 generation. Pentium was still in-order design, although super-scalar, but Intel included a really powerful FPU, more common back then in the RISC designs. That explains the trading blows in the wide spectrum of benchmarks, closely following the strengths and weakness of both architectures.

[@mirific87]

hya, would you be ever so kind as to make a video on the Pentium 266 Tillamook modding and maybe testing that CPU vs. AMD k6-2 and Pentium 2 266mhz please? I'd really really want to see how you can mod it with soldering or that conductive ink pen before I try doing it myself. There's a thread on vogons about it, but I'm scared of trying it with just a picture showing the modded pins and some tape that I don't have a clue what isolates.

[@davidwhitley5659]

fantastic chanel really enjoyed watching your videos

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

K6-2 vs Pentium 1 MMX at the same frequency and FSB would be really interesting, the performance should be very very similar.

[@RetroSpector78]

got an AMD K6 and K6-2 here and planning to play around with them a bit.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@RetroSpector78 would be great if you could test the k6-2 against the Pentium MMX if possible at the same frequency and FSB :)

[@matth4784]

I hat a pentium MMX 233 and it was a beast. I used it as my backup computer all the way up until probably 2007

[@kurwamacjebanapizda]

Where is that overcloking promised next video?

[@spidermcgavenport8767]

My vintage Packard Bell Legend 386sx had a Cyrix processor and mathcoprossor, 4mb ram, extremely useful for the time, Dos Shell, plenty of games to be played back when, Master of Magic, Fates of Twinion, Shadow of Yserbius Eye of the Beholder. All played fine. No music but back then that was a luxury. Still is now whether you have a Roland midi device or not.

[@spidermcgavenport8767]

Still have my first laptop, I'm looking to for my Packard Bell Legend 386sx but I'd rather have it decked out vs lowend. Meaning if DOS gaming is the purpose I'd want a Pentium overdrive or equivalent. And usb 2.0 support.

[@spidermcgavenport8767]

Curious, would shadow ram be functional with that motherboard, also would EMS expanded memory, be eligible to set pageframe address emm386.exe frame C000.

[@spidermcgavenport8767]

Put that Cyrix in a ISA card for graphics this would be outstanding.

[@damagepy]

I still have the same cyrix on my self (6x86mx pr200 2x75MHz) of course no motherboard, its just for display with many other thing, looks cool :)

[@johnblecker4206]

I can still remember crashing win98 in 3d mark do to no pci lock on early boards.

[@valenrn8657]

3D can be done on fix point integers e.g. PlayStation 1 doesn't have hardware floating point.

[@Wahinies]

Fond memories of my 200MMX oc to 250MHz using the first jumperless board.

[@madmax2069]

I still have my first Pentium era PC. It was a Pentium 133 with a S3 virge DX, then eventually I got a Pentium 200 MMX CPU for it, and a 3dfx voodoo 3 2000 to replace the s3 virge DX. I used it for quite a few years.

[@AshtonCoolman]

The Cyrix was fast but Quake and other 3D games required floating point performance. I remember that that's what killed Cyrix back in the day just like you covered here. My dad bought a P200MMX Sony VAIO PCV-120 in early 1997 and I was glad that I got it.....of course the Pentium 2 came out 2 months later so we learned a hard lesson with that one.

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah but from what I remember the initial p2 wasn’t that much of a performance gainer as a lot of people thought it would be. Socket 7 remained very interesting with amd offerings. And with a 3dfx card many games were playable. Also seems to be working fine on 187.5mhz (spoiler) :)

[@AshtonCoolman]

@@RetroSpector78 the Pentium 2 233Mhz was significantly faster than the Pentium 233MMX in some cases. In others they were close or it was even slightly surpassed. Phil did a video comparing these two along with the K62-400 that illustrates this. Ultimately, I would have much preferred to have that P2 233 which had upgrade options. I, unfortunately, didn't know that I could run the K62-400 in my Pentium 200MMX system because of its multiplier feature. That would have blew my mind if I had known back then.

[@pentiummmx2294]

I have a A-Trend 430VX mobo with a Pentium MMX 200, 64 MB PC100 SDRAM, nVidia Riva TNT PCI, 3Dfx Voodoo 2 8MB, Sound Blaster AWE64, WD Caviar 84AA, Windows 98 SE

[@RetroSpector78]

Classic build .... timeless..... a lot of people would have traded an arm of leg for that setup in 97 :)

[@jdspencer60]

I had a 200 MMX with 32 mb of ram and a 3dfx voodoo accelerator, that computer was a beast

[@nng1979]

Cyrix was a integer beast could outperform Pentiums clock for clock up to 30% performance increase. When it came to FPU performance that was another story, it wasnt fully pipelined and hence its performance in 3D graphics was closer to 4th gen than 5th gen. Had Geforce and Radeon been released earlier this would have been less of an issue.

[@alynicholls3230]

i personally have never seen a genuine black 200mmx cpu that cannot be overclocked, some do 233, some 266, but you are best to over clock by adjusting the multiplier for best results, bigger heatsinks and fans are a must too.

[@gatestonelandlord3610]

where can we get a copy of win bench 98?

[@raze7x]

Here, I guess (not tested): vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=579&menustate=0

[@Thohean]

Just watched this video and was excited to watch the overclocking video, but was sad to see it was not on your videos list; however, I do have a lot of cool looking videos to watch! Subscribed and anticipating the release of your OC video.

[@YoStu242]

I have somewhat bitter memories about Cyrix as I had 5x86 that was supposed to match Pentium 75. I was so jealous to see my friend's Pentium 60 run all games butter smooth when my "P75" had awfully choppy framerates.

[@EgoShredder]

Yeah those Cyrix CPUs were only good for integer based software , e.g. avoiding subjecting it to audio or video applications that exposed the horrific math floating point performance. If used for basic internet browsing and MS Office stuff then it was great, just as good as the Intel rival for that purpose.

[@mick9485]

I had a cyrix 233 and used to play a lot of quake multilayer, my friend who I used play against had a pentium 233 one day we tested our fps, I was just averaging 16 fps he was getting more than double, mid 30's. Needless to say I saved up and purchased a pentium 200. This was b4 3d graphics cards.

[@andrewnoonan4044]

I remember having a DEC/Digital Prioris system that had 4 PPro 200's in it. Bloody fast it was too!

[@dlinkster]

DEC was always ahead of the curve. I really, really hate that Compaq bought and destroyed them.

[@tHeWasTeDYouTh]

@@dlinkster hey........at least HP bought Compaq and avenged DEC by destroying it.....and then ruining everything like killing Alpha and being dumb enough to fall for Itanium

[@billmilligan1705]

You forgot the IBM 6x86MXL variant for laptops with a 1.8V core. I owned a PR366 6x86MXL with the revised FPU. Performance wise the revised FPU made a huge difference but too late for Cyrix

[@foley2k2]

Back in the day, I had a P75 that would run fine at 90Mhz. Combine that with a 12Mb Voodoo Rush and 16MB ram and you have a decent rig for 1998. After that, I went to a Celeron 300a and overclocked that to 450Mhz, saving hundreds. Then the GPU went to a Riva TNT 2. This was an nVidia card _before_ GeForce.

[@voiox]

There is a big "H" in Hz and a big "B" in kB (kilobyte), kb is kilobit. Also, big "V" for volt.

[@AllanAdamson]

one of my first builds as a kid was the 233 mmx... my first build was a 386

[@littlegoobie]

I think i only had 1 of the cyrix cpus and all i remember about it was the heat. that thing got so hot it would burn your fingers. same memories for the winchip.

[@jensdroessler3575]

I guess your Win98 version and the newest drivers would iron out most of the stability problems those CPUs had a reputation for back when they were new.

[@zosxavius]

Back in the 486 days Cyrix really got their start selling their version of the 486 as a 386 replacement. The weak FPU wasn't such a huge issue because software rarely used them, but even then, they were still nowhere near their intel 486 counterparts. The initials ones had about half the cache (maybe even less?) than a typical 486, which made them poor performers comparatively. This is why you see them overloading the cache later on and sure enough its 2x what the Pentium 200 had. Obviously clock for clock they are outperforming the Pentium on integer calculations which is impressive but again the floating point performance is really the weak link. What really killed Cyrix was that they just couldn't compete for performance and focused on low power solutions. National Semi buying them was the final nail in the coffin. If you've ever used an AMD Geode processor, you've were using a Cyrix design.

[@diviksophistrum5466]

Nostalgie...I had K5-PR90 at that times..and only read about 3D

[@Tom2404]

I think the AMD K5 is actually the fastest Socket 7 chip, but it can't handle high clockspeeds. Also the Pentium has an advantage over it's competitors in games because it was the most common chip. It's probably the cpu the developers of most games had and optimized their code for.

[@Sonyfreak]

Thanks for this great video. I would love to see more Cyrix stuff from you. Maybe a comparison with AMDs lineup? 👍

[@RetroSpector78]

Have got a 6x86 pr166+, think I have a 5x86 also, and amd k6, k6-2 :) planning on doing some videos on that ... first cyrix one will be the pr200 overclock. Have too many different systems to cover here, from 1977 - 1999 :)

[@Sonyfreak]

@@RetroSpector78 Sounds great! 😃

[@Power2All]

Oh damn lucky. I have the same exact process here as well, and much more :)

[@welshtechie6832]

My first PC was a Celeron 600MHz prebuild from 2000. It was pants - but this messing with jumpers frankly we are lucky not to go through that rubbish anymore! Those voltages WOW - 1.4V is seen as high these days! How times have changed!

[@abiez4018]

But Can It Run Cryssis?

[@HighIgnition]

I remember this was my last Cyrix CPU before moving to AMD, oh the nostalgia :(

[@MrBooMY3]

I used to build those exact kind of PCs with the same case and even sold the same speakers for a while. Pretty sure the tweeter is fake if they are the same as mine were.