Cyrix CPUs

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Cyrix

Cyrix Socket 5/7 CPU's tended to have good windows performance, but a bad FPU and most tended to get (very) hot. Also most Cyrix CPU's tend to be very poor overclockers.

486SLC/DLC

486S

486DX, DX2, DX4 =

5x86 (M1sc)

A scaled back version of the original 6x86 core that was compatible with the 486DX bus.

6x86

Cyrix's first Socket 7 CPU. This CPU is rather slow (particularly for playing games) and produces a lot of heat.

6x86L

Cyrix's attempt to fix the heat issues, though it was only moderately succesfull at doing so

6x86MX/MII

This is basically a 6x86L with MMX instructions and a larger cache. Later renamed to Cyrix MII, this was also Cyrix's last processor line for Socket 7. As these CPU's were clocked (slightly) higher, the heat problems re-emerged. The heat problems were only fixed when a 2.2v version of the MII was released.

The Cyrix Socket 7 CPU's are generally not recommended for use in a retro build as there are better alternatives available. The most notable exception to this rule are the 2.2v parts of the MII which runs a lot cooler and are even somewhat overclockable. One note is that Cyrix CPU's support Linear Burst, which may accellerate it's performance by as much as 10%, though Linear Burst was never made available on Intel chipsets.

IBM/Cyrix MII PR333
Cyrix 6x86MX PR233