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Cyrix founder Jerry Rogers aggressively recruited engineers and pushed them, eventually assembling a small but efficient design team of 30 people.
Its early CPU products included the 486SLC and 486DLC, released in 1992, which, despite their names, were pin-compatible with the 386SX and DX, respectively. While they added an on-chip L1 cache and the 486 instruction set, performance-wise they were somewhere between the 386 and the 486. The chips were mostly used as upgrades, either by end users looking to improve performance of an aging 386 and especially by dealers, who by changing the CPU could turn slow-selling 386 boards into budget 486 boards. The chips were widely criticized in product reviews for not offering the performance suggested by their names, and for the confusion caused by their naming similarity with Intel's SL line and IBM's SLC line of CPUs, neither of which was related to Cyrix's SLC. The chips did see use in very low-cost PC clones and in laptops.
Cyrix would later release the Cyrix 486SRX2 and 486DRX2, which were essentially clock-doubled versions of the SLC and DLC, marketed to exclusively to consumers as 386-to-486 upgrades.
Eventually Cyrix was able to release a 486 that was pin-compatible with its Intel counterparts. However, the chips were later to market than AMD's 486s and benchmarked slightly slower than the AMD and Intel counterparts, which relegated them to the budget and upgrade market. While AMD had been able to sell some of its 486s to large OEMs, notably Acer and Compaq, Cyrix was not. The Cyrix chips did gain some following with upgraders, as their 50- and 66-MHz 486 CPUs ran at 5 volts, rather than the 3.3 volts used by AMD, making the Cyrix chips usable as upgrades in early 486 motherboards.
In 1995, with its Pentium clone not yet ready to ship, Cyrix repeated its own history and released the Cyrix Cx5x86, which plugged into a 486 socket, ran at 100, 120 or 133 MHz, and yielded performance comparable to that of a Pentium running at 75 MHz. Although AMD's 5x86 was little more than a clock-quadrupled 486 with a new name, Cyrix's 5x86 implemented some Pentium-like features.
Later in 1995 Cyrix released its best-known chip, the 6x86, which was the first Cyrix CPU to exceed the performance of the Intel chip it was intended to compete against. Initially Cyrix tried to charge a premium for its extra performance, but the 6x86's math coprocessor was not as fast as that in the Intel Pentium. Due to the increasing popularity of first-person 3D games, Cyrix was forced to lower its prices. While the 6x86 quickly gained a following among computer enthusiasts and independent computer shops, unlike AMD its chips had yet to be used by a major OEM customer.
The later 6x86L was a revised 6x86 that consumed less power, and the 6x86MX added MMXMMX is a SIMD instruction set designed by Intel, introduced in their Pentium MMX microprocessors. It developed out of a similar unit first introduced on the Intel i860. It has been supported on most subsequent IA-32 processors by Intel and other vendors. instructions and a larger L2 cache. The MII, based on the 6x86MX design, was little more than a name change intended to help the chip better compete with the Pentium II.
In 19961996 was a leap year starting on Monday (see link for calendar), and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty''. Events January January 5 Hamas operative Yahya Ayyash is killed by an Israeli-planted booby-trapped cell phone Jan Cyrix released the MediaGX CPU, which integrated all of the major discrete components of a PC, including sound and video, onto one chip. Initially based on the old 5x86 technology and running at 120 or 133 MHz, its performance was widely criticized but its low price made it successful. The MediaGX led to Cyrix's first big win, when Compaq used it in its lowest-priced Presario computer. This led to further MediaGX sales to Packard BellPackard Bell was an American radio manufacturer, founded in 1926, that later became a defense contractor and manufacturer of other consumer electronics, such as television sets. The company was acquired in 1968 by Teledyne. In 1986, Beny Alagem and a grou and also seemed to give Cyrix legitimacy, as 6x86 sales to Packard Bell and eMachineseMachines was a maker of low-cost home PCs based in Irvine, California. It employed about 135 employees and sold between 1 and 2 million computers per year, before its purchase on January 30, 2004 by rival Gateway Computers, who purchased the company in a quickly followed.
Later versions of the MediaGX ran at speeds of up to 333 MHz and added MMX support. A second chip was added to extend its video capabilities.
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