Identical to the IBM 6x86 P200+ but with a lower core clockfrequency and front-side-bus. > Read more

In fact this CPU uses the same core as the IBM 6x86. If you wonder why: read here . > Read more

Consider first: 650nm, only 3,3M transistors, 150MHz and 3,5V. In other words: old manufacturing technology, same amount of transistors compared to the Pentium, Pentium topped out at 100MHz with 600nm; this goes up to 150MHz and 3,5V is guaranteed heat!

Specs-wise it needs a good design in order to keep up with the other brands. Luckily, for Cyrix, this CPU was available in June 1996 which is somewhere around the release date of the Pentium 200. See the benchmarks and look what Cyrix had to offer back then. In short summary: FPU performance is bad meaning you can't play Quake very well but integer performance is excellent and because of that Dhrystone is almost as fast as a Pentium 166! Also take a look at Doom (which doesn't use the FPU); it's ahead on the AMD K6-166 and nearly as fast as the Pentium MMX 166 and Pentium 200.

I remember this CPU running Quake and Half-life very slow (no wonder with that kind of FPU!) but Grand Theft Auto went really fast. Unfortunatly I have no way of benchmarking Grand Theft Auto but in my memory the Cyrix would outperform a Pentium MMX 200 if they both were fitted with a Voodoo Graphics card .

You might wonder why I mentioned Cyrix: this is because Cyrix designed the chip and IBM manufactured it. > Read more