What Happened to Cyrix Processors? | Nostalgia Nerd

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  • Опубліковано 21 лис 2024

КОМЕНТАРІ • 3,6 тис.

  • @andychow5509
    @andychow5509 4 роки тому +731

    I'm still amazed at how all companies were able to use the exact same socket. You could buy a motherboard, and then decide from which manufacturer to buy the CPU.

    • @3rdalbum
      @3rdalbum 4 роки тому +203

      I love the idea of third parties producing faster CPUs for an older socket, as an upgrade path, so the customer wouldn't need to buy a whole new motherboard just to get a more modern CPU.

    • @DracoDan2
      @DracoDan2 4 роки тому +135

      I actually am amazed by the reverse - That AMD was able to survive after they suddenly and unexpectedly needed their own chipset, socket and motherboard designs and for companies to get onboard with making boards that were NOT compatible with Intel. The Super Socket 7 was the transition point and luckily it allowed at least older Intel CPUs to still work, giving AMD a decent stopgap.

    • @andychow5509
      @andychow5509 4 роки тому +41

      @@DracoDan2 I'm not that surprised that AMD could adapt. They had experience reverse-engineering chipsets, and if they didn't build their own alternative, they could have probably gotten one from VIA, or many others. Since they already had the socket 7 licence, it probably wasn't that hard to bump the front-side bus an extra 50%. And by "not-hard" I mean relatively. At the time AMD had their own fabs, so they had experts at every level to figure it out.

    • @DracoDan2
      @DracoDan2 4 роки тому +13

      @@andychow5509 That's not exactly accurate though, they didn't create that bus (EV6), they licensed the technology from DEC who had created it for their Alpha CPU line (before they mistakenly sold out to Compaq). They also did create the first chipset, the AMD 750 before getting help from VIA and their KX/KT133 chipsets.

    • @goytabr
      @goytabr 4 роки тому +37

      That's probably one of the reasons why now Intel keeps changing sockets as you change your clothes. Not that anyone would try to make an Intel Core clone these days, but it probably has a paranoia component as well, to be on the safe side. And it's also not that AMD is totally innocent, in spite of its long-lived sockets in recent years. Remember the socket 939 fiasco circa 2010, which left many AMD users fuming?

  • @tarajoe07
    @tarajoe07 5 років тому +394

    Back when PC Magazine was legit.

    • @CakePrincessCelestia
      @CakePrincessCelestia 4 роки тому +77

      Back when most of those magazines were still legit and there've been actual journalists...

    • @tr1p1ea
      @tr1p1ea 3 роки тому +34

      And those sweet demo discs. Those were the days.

    • @TheFellerHasAChannelGodDamnIt
      @TheFellerHasAChannelGodDamnIt 3 роки тому +3

      And when there was only on PC Magazine.

    • @WarrenPostma
      @WarrenPostma 3 роки тому +17

      Computer Shopper. Anyone remember that?

    • @Adamchevy
      @Adamchevy 3 роки тому +2

      @@WarrenPostma the size of those mags were amazing.

  • @ChrisCarpenter71
    @ChrisCarpenter71 5 років тому +223

    Brilliant as always. I remember the Cyrix chips being like a saviour to us “funds challenged” young pc upgrade enthusiasts in the late 90s.

    • @chuckmiller5763
      @chuckmiller5763 4 роки тому +24

      You could make money building PCs back then, or doing virus removal. PCs were around $2000.00, you could built one for under a $1000.00, sell it for a decent amount and still save the customer money. Virus removal (remember internet is just becoming huge, AOL dialup) viruses everywhere. $50.00 and you would be back online, I had computers lined up for days.

    • @davekp6773
      @davekp6773 4 роки тому +10

      As a former field service engineer, I fitted a few of them at small business IT departments and factories around the Thames Valley in the 90s. They were a saviour to many.

    • @QR_Code
      @QR_Code 4 роки тому +6

      yeah, i remember buying a pr233+ cuz the pentium was outa my price range 😀 but it was detected as a 486 and wouldnt run a particular piece of software i had 😉

    • @mancubwwa
      @mancubwwa 4 роки тому +8

      @@chuckmiller5763 Wow that's... interesting. Living in an ex commie land (Poland to be precise) you could get a decent PC for a small fraction of this money. And I'm not joking: around 1998/early 1999 my 15 year old self was able to build pretty solid PC with my own savings from allowance. In a country, mind it, where median salary at the time was something akin to 300$ a month, so it couldn't have costed me more than $200-$300. Obviously for a new PC you would have to add a price of most basic peripherals (I was reusing monitor, keyboard, mouse, and probably a sound card, and akso possibly a cd drive) but still... (if you wonder about specs -It was a celeron 333 which I run permanently overclocked at 415 Mhz with a RivaTNT based GPU and... I have no real idea how much RAM, as I was constantly upgrading. Damn it was 20 years ago and I still remember building the rig.

    • @josephtremblant2173
      @josephtremblant2173 4 роки тому +1

      @@chuckmiller5763 That's exactly what I did. To be able to learn the technical stuff to properly build PC's professionally. I worked Pro Bono for 3 months at my friend's father PC Store. My brothers were having cool vacations in Europe and Miami while I was having my ass worked off for free figuratively speaking, to learn the non-accessible knowledge that lead me to have my own business 1 year later. I was 15 years old only. When my father saw my initiative and determination, he fully backed me up by giving me an office at home with a personal phone number, fax machine, furniture and supplies. Also, he bought me professional tools and specialized software to do my job easier. My brother and sister hated me to their cores. When I started computer engineering at college, I already had 3 years of field experience and was the best student by far. Students hated me for it too but I was able to date the prettiest girls at college, because they all wanted good grades. Had a new girlfriend every semester and not proud of it, mostly ashamed of it, there were a couple of occasions when I manage to have 3 GF's at the same time. I guess was lucky to have the brains and the looks. lol. I was sleeping only 2-3 hours per day because I've never stopped working.

  • @leroyjr.4464
    @leroyjr.4464 5 років тому +175

    Somewhere i have a sticker that says “Cyrix Instead” shaped just like the intel inside sticker

  • @fogllama
    @fogllama 7 років тому +475

    I worked for Cyrix. One of my favorite jobs. I was in IT rather than Engineering, but still, it felt like we were fighting the good fight and doing something important.

    • @taketimeout2share
      @taketimeout2share 7 років тому +29

      Yeah, getting kids so disappointed with Quake performance that they shot themselves. Or their parents. We need more space on this planet. Overpopulation, etc.
      Give yourself a pat on the back.

    • @johanbogg9158
      @johanbogg9158 7 років тому +92

      I played quake on a Cyrix without shooting myself, I did as all the others i knew and bought a Voodoo-card which greatly increased the speed no matter what CPU you had...

    • @taketimeout2share
      @taketimeout2share 7 років тому +16

      You Sir, are a better man than me.What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
      .I'm writing this from a hell populated by the legions of innocents who used the lords name in vain while contemplating the performance of their Cyrix chip in Doom.
      Its hot down here. Yes, they use Cyrix down here too.

    • @fogllama
      @fogllama 7 років тому +78

      Again, I was in a support role, not engineering. I cannot tell you why Cyrix didn't focus on floating-point performance (the key to Quake). I can tell you that many of us played Quake (my handle comes from there) on Cyrix chips we got at cost, so I understand the frustration. The Good Fight was to keep competition going. Consumers lose when there is a monopoly. Monopoly means less innovation, higher prices and less choice. No matter whose chip you ran, Cyrix helped you get the best at the lowest price. Meanwhile, I prefer not to comment on other aspects in the above video, especially on Mr. Swent's arrival and what we felt that meant. But the history video could have ended at that point with only a short summation.

    • @taketimeout2share
      @taketimeout2share 7 років тому +9

      I'm joshing, mate. Yes its a great story (true story) but a lot of people were miffed when the system was such a disappointment, after all the hype.
      The problem is, and its just as true today, the whole truth isn't told. That it was so weak in some important games should have been made clear.
      That's all. Mom and Pop are not gonna buy Johnny another PC when he tells them the one they thought would make him so happy, didn't.
      Just read the comments below. People were pissed off. I know it was cheaper but it doesn't matter. People were misled.
      I would never ever have touched a Cyrix, Via or a Nehemiah. But by then everybody knew their reputation.
      But they were exciting times.(if you didn't get burned).

  • @NorthernChev
    @NorthernChev 4 роки тому +123

    Man, I can remember absolutely chomping at the bit in wait for my Cyrix Cx486DX2v66 chip to be delivered to me at work. I ordered it because I was tired of my boss beating me at Doom (on breaks) with his "faster" machine. I only had the SX25 while he was using the latest DX66. You wouldn't think it would make all that much difference, but it did back then. Those few extra mHz made all the world better. Then a few months later he got the Pentium...

    • @draude8000
      @draude8000 2 роки тому +4

      ,🤭😁

    • @pixphi
      @pixphi 2 роки тому +1

      What happened then?

    • @Arturo124
      @Arturo124 2 роки тому +8

      The war...it never ends

    • @KingFluffs
      @KingFluffs 2 роки тому +7

      @@pixphi His boss lost, and due to being a sore loser, fired him for playing games at work.

    • @Trikipum
      @Trikipum 5 місяців тому

      man, it is more than twice the raw speed and it comes with a co processor... one would expect it to be twice as fast...

  • @mattmcfly2165
    @mattmcfly2165 7 років тому +158

    I literally sent cash money in the mail to cyrix to upgrade my 386 20mhz to 486 33mhz for $120.66. And they found it and shipped it to me after a phone call of course. lol. Love the 90's!

    • @iladelproductions8820
      @iladelproductions8820 6 років тому +41

      indeed amazing times not processor related but i recall spending hours on the phone with customer support to get a game up(don't recall the title) and running on my weak system. im pretty sure the guy know it wouldn't run on my system from the start but he spent at least 3 hours on the phone trying to walk through every fix he could think of to make it work! something like that would not happen today.

    • @widg3tswidgets416
      @widg3tswidgets416 6 років тому +10

      kizonthekeys customer service jobs almost always have a metric that measures productivity. His was probably phone time. He actually got an entire days work done by talking to one person: you!

    • @hagalazmultiverze3411
      @hagalazmultiverze3411 5 років тому +13

      I miss the old customer service of the 90's: my best experience was with DR Solomon (anti virus)
      During my studies, I came across a bug in DR Solomon on a P90 (HP) - when DR Solomon and HP Utilities ran at the same time (on Windows 3.11), DR Solomon would crash. So, I phoned our local customer service number (in Denmark) around 15:00-16:00 and was asked when, I normally leave in the morning. I replied about 7:00. "We'll send someone with an upgrade before that". At around 6:45-7:00 there was a knock on the door. Outside, there was a guy with a new set of disks (3.5") and a BIG apology for my inconvenience. Coming home from school that day, I upgraded - and it worked.

    • @Endeva09
      @Endeva09 5 років тому +2

      Henrik B Sørensen fantastic!

    • @chuckmiller5763
      @chuckmiller5763 4 роки тому +1

      @@hagalazmultiverze3411 I made a lot of money removing viruses with Dr Solomon, remember that 3.5 floppy drive boot disk Solomon had so you could scan the HDD and remove the virus.?

  • @malfaro3l
    @malfaro3l 6 років тому +45

    I'll never forget Cyrix. I remember being amazed at the engineering behind a chip that was compatible with Intel, without copying Intel in any way. This was the first time that I felt, as a consumer, the need to be part of something. Who could have forseen that would eventually lead to my tech addiction.

  • @Evgenii_Fedorovskii
    @Evgenii_Fedorovskii 5 років тому +92

    Golden words are said at the end of the video. I have the same feelings for Celeron's. Yes - they were cheap and "stupid" processors, but it was thanks to them that many people even had a personal computer at home. The games went slowly, but people still played and rejoiced.
    Thanks for the video, it was interesting!

    • @RJ-wx3fh
      @RJ-wx3fh 2 роки тому +2

      I distinctly remember a celeron label on our first home pc.

    • @stevenbjerke2825
      @stevenbjerke2825 2 роки тому +5

      So true, I bought a used computer from a high school friend that was a Celeron and it worked for everything I needed at the time. I upgraded from the family Pentium 133mhz to a personal Celeron 350mhz and it was a night and day difference for me.

    • @fridaycaliforniaa236
      @fridaycaliforniaa236 2 роки тому +2

      The Celeron 300A with an Abit BH6 mobo is one one my sweetest memories

    • @wethermon
      @wethermon 2 роки тому +3

      Back then we called Celerons the "Lentium" a word play between "Lento" (slow in Portuguese) and Pentium.

  • @jamesp4521
    @jamesp4521 6 років тому +469

    Working at a computer store in the mid 90s, we were standing around the store joking around, and my buddy suddenly points to the Cyrix in the display and busts out with the Crocodile Hunter voice; "Crikey it's a Cyrix Processor! A rare, nearly extinct species... Isn't she gorgeous! It's amazing how she moves so slowly, yet manages to survive in the wild!" I was in tears laughing at that one, so I'll never forget it

    • @MCAlexisYT
      @MCAlexisYT 3 роки тому +2

      Totally understandable 🥲

    • @DOOMZEDAY
      @DOOMZEDAY 3 роки тому +1

      U world you lived in doesn't exist anymore James.

    • @NEDMKitten
      @NEDMKitten 2 роки тому +2

      That's better than the old "Crix Sux" on Kali

    • @Broyale26
      @Broyale26 Місяць тому

      FasMath

  • @repairitdontreplaceit
    @repairitdontreplaceit 5 років тому +173

    i remember back in the day buying a 486dx2 and getting it home and with sweaty hands (it cost a fortune) fitted it in my pc only to find it didnt boot :( , i had put it in the wrong way around and i thought i had killed it ! .... but turned it around and it worked . my mrs found out how much i spent on it and went mental , we broke up a year later as she said i spent to much time and money on my pc . i found out later she had been having an affair with the it guy at her work . ironic mutch

    • @emre.mir.x
      @emre.mir.x 4 роки тому +41

      ironic indeed, and a good thing for you since computers worth both the money and the time you invested in and never cheats on you...

    • @malvessidrums
      @malvessidrums 4 роки тому +16

      good riddance. lesson for life. go your own way, do your own thing.

    • @josephtremblant2173
      @josephtremblant2173 4 роки тому +16

      I remember having to buy a new PC ring around top of the line intel 486 Dx2-66 in 1993 just to be able to play doom. It did cost a fortune. Fortunately as a college student, I was working and not paying rent thank's to the generosity of my parent's(basement was mine). Then I made a mistake of going to a sound blaster expo show and another expense was needed, an overpriced creative wave blaster board which required 2 pci slots to operate, a SB 16 bit stereo & a SB wave blaster daughter board, a few months later a new marvel was released and I bought it too, a creative sound blaster awe 32 which accepted regular simm memory and only required 1 PCI slot to operate, which brought countless hours of joy playing PC games thru unique wave synthesis(MIDI synthesizer). Most people used to listen thru a mono speaker from a PC and I had an orchestra while playing my fav games. Those were the days when having a PC gaming ring required to have a Mobo with 5 PCI slots available. 3 for video(1x 2d video card + 2x 3dfx voodoo cards(SLI mode) and 2 for audio (SB 16 bit + SB wave blaster).

    • @spladam3845
      @spladam3845 4 роки тому +8

      It sounds like you were already having an expensive affair with the PC

    • @josephtremblant2173
      @josephtremblant2173 4 роки тому +4

      Sorry to hear that. Seems like you ex had an inclination for technology anyway. Currently, my wife is extremely happy that I completely moved away from PC gaming/PC Server projects at home to PS4 pro(for gaming) and to ARM64 SBC boards like the cheap raspberry Rpi4's 8Gb and Odroid boards as N2/N2Plus and C4, which keep me occupied during my spare time at home and specially during the long winters in East Canada. The expense is much less now once you're are setup with mandatory accessories which are way cheaper than PC ones.

  • @robertadkinsii1825
    @robertadkinsii1825 5 років тому +67

    OH man, I remember the days of the "Is the Sub-$1000 PC Upon Us?" articles. We were such summer children in those days.

    • @PR-fk5yb
      @PR-fk5yb 3 роки тому +3

      Now budget is limitless it seems with graphics cards over that limit...

    • @MisterFoxton
      @MisterFoxton 5 місяців тому

      It's a struggle to build a contemporary gaming PC under that budget these days. Easy enough with used parts, but if you want everything new, you'll have to compromise.

  • @Euquila
    @Euquila 6 років тому +775

    The 90s seems like this weird dream. It's hard to believe I was part of it.

    • @gabrieleriva651
      @gabrieleriva651 6 років тому +7

      Lord Sidius the 80s didn’t gave us Space Jam,

    • @FortyTwoAnswerToEverything
      @FortyTwoAnswerToEverything 6 років тому +29

      The thing I'm disappointed in myself for is not getting into more programming in the 90's as a teenager. I was too much into building a PC and browsing the net.

    • @vh9network
      @vh9network 6 років тому +7

      Gabriele Riva, the 80s gave your the Empire Strikes back and Return of the Jedi. Michael Jackson Thriller and Bad, Tears for Fears, and many great pop songs (90s had pop but it got burried by grunge rock before that got buried by late 90s hip-hop) the Commodore 64, the IBM Compatible PC, and the NES.

    • @funbucket09
      @funbucket09 6 років тому +3

      That’ll be the shrooms and heroin

    • @freeman2399
      @freeman2399 6 років тому +3

      Don't forget Saved by the Bell and Power Rangers!

  • @scottwilliams895
    @scottwilliams895 2 роки тому +106

    There's a certain meta/irony in watching this nostalgia video *5 years* after it was released.

  • @NullStaticVoid
    @NullStaticVoid 4 роки тому +44

    Back in the days when overclocking could mean a 50% increase in power!
    I remember getting a Cyrix P200 (pr200?) and clocking that up to 333. Then upgrading to an AMD on that same motherboard and going to 400mhz!

    • @CakePrincessCelestia
      @CakePrincessCelestia 4 роки тому +6

      I think my 3570k with ~30% increase (3.4 -> 4.4) still holds up pretty well.

    • @bricefleckenstein9666
      @bricefleckenstein9666 2 роки тому +1

      I can remember getting an occasional AMD K5-75 to clock at K5-PR166 levels (but only some of the VERY early production, most were lucky to hit K5-100 levels).

    • @joefish6091
      @joefish6091 2 роки тому +4

      Its also the day when you could now encode mp3s faster than they would play. in the 120MHz age it took longer than the song time to encode.

    • @nicholas-k8j
      @nicholas-k8j 5 місяців тому

      it became popular in 1998 when all the PC mags started to boost about it on the pentium 2 celeron.... it was very technical though and nobody had fancy Cpu coolers then they were all OEM so pretty risky

  • @DasIllu
    @DasIllu 6 років тому +46

    When i was 16 (in 1995) i started working in a small business that assembled PCs, server and installed network and isdn hardware and cables.
    One day a customer showed up and ordered the cheapest PC we could build. Cyrix 486, Shuttle mainboard, some noname ram and granpa' finest cookies as harddrive.
    I spent hours trying to find timings and voltages that all components could agree on.
    It was the day i learned "jumper kung-fu".
    23 years... damn...

    • @CakePrincessCelestia
      @CakePrincessCelestia 4 роки тому +3

      Back in the day where there still was noname RAM with which you totally could eff up the whole rig's stability if you put more than just one into it...

    • @ash-cn2oh
      @ash-cn2oh Рік тому +1

      In the same year I built myself a 486 PC, the mainboard of which had 45 jumpers.

  • @TheAfroman
    @TheAfroman 7 років тому +105

    Great video. So much nostalgia in this.. shopping the pc part price list and upgrading my 486DX.. man...how time flys

    • @TheAfroman
      @TheAfroman 7 років тому +4

      truth. i remember the PC Magazine covers that were like 200MHZ?! like we had just discovered a cure for cancer.. hehe

    • @bvbxiong5791
      @bvbxiong5791 7 років тому +3

      same here. i miss drooling over pcmag and tigerdirect magazines late into the night. i miss the CompUSA flyers that would come every weekend in the newspaper. i miss the demo disks that used to come with PC gaming magazines...just the thrill of playing a few minutes of a new game ran by YOUR computer was better than crack.

    • @raychang8648
      @raychang8648 7 років тому +3

      Talk about nostalgia. I recently went through old stuff and found a Feb 1997 PC Magazine, and a Maxell DC-6250 1/4" "data cartridge" (=backup tape), among many other things. Fun memories. I happened to open the magazine to an article that starts out "I finally decided to get a new modem....."

    • @purrbox7514
      @purrbox7514 7 років тому +3

      I only had a 486sx due to being a kid however I deliberately chose the SX over an AMD as I couldn't bare to have a PC that didn't have an Intel processor. Kids who had AMD's got laughed at in my school, if you had a Cyrix you were pond life, nobody would even speak to you.

  • @goss4444
    @goss4444 4 роки тому +80

    I really liked working at Cyrix in Longmont, CO. I especially remember how awesome the break room was, free soda and a espresso machine. How I got a testing technician job with them is I told the truth about my understanding of Windows, from 1 to 10 (one being the least, 10 being the most). I told them that even the most knowledgeable engineer at Microsoft probably couldn't be more then a 9 and there is so much in regards to the development side that I don't know even exists, so I said a 6. They said every other person they interviewed just blurted out a 10, with no explanation as to why they think they know it inside and out. It had to be the best interview I have ever had. Anyway I did well there and really miss the talking to the cool engineers, but left to help Mike Booth make a video game, Nox in Fort Collins (that is another story).

    • @Gatorade69
      @Gatorade69 4 роки тому +5

      I find it funny that Longmont has a tech background, my stepdad worked at IBM in Longmont.
      Cool town now too, now that I'm older. Lots of good microbrews in the city like Left Hand. I kinda miss that town.

    • @prezidenttrump5171
      @prezidenttrump5171 Рік тому

      I really liked working at Cyrix in Longmont, CO. I especially remember how awesome the break room was, free soda and a espresso machine. How I got a testing technician job with them is I told the truth about my understanding of Windows, from 1 to 10 (one being the least, 10 being the most). I told them that even the most knowledgeable engineer at Microsoft probably couldn't be more then a 9 and there is so much in regards to the development side that I don't know even exists, so I said a 6. They said every other person they interviewed just blurted out a 10, with no explanation as to why they think they know it inside and out. It had to be the best interview I have ever had. Anyway I did well there and really miss the talking to the cool engineers, but left to help Mike Booth make a video game, Nox in Fort Collins (that is another story).

  • @emperoroftheknownuniverse3475
    @emperoroftheknownuniverse3475 7 років тому +127

    First PC I built completely from scratch had a Cyrix CPU as it's all I could afford at the time and had the biggest bang for the buck...Brings a nostalgic tear to the eye...Cue digital lighter...

    • @NeilRoy
      @NeilRoy 7 років тому +4

      Yeah, they weren't much, but building them yourself had a certain level of pride. It took me six months to build my own. I didn't have much money, so I would buy a part or two at a time each month until one was built. :) Good times. There's something I miss about those slower, more limited systems and graphics back then.

    • @supermasterPIK
      @supermasterPIK 7 років тому +1

      Please adjust your LEd numbering on the case to 200 whenthe computer ran to 133, to everybody said "WOOW"

    • @Cyph3rHaxPalm
      @Cyph3rHaxPalm 7 років тому +2

      Emperor Of The Known Universe same here mate!

    • @krazykat64
      @krazykat64 7 років тому +3

      Same same. It was a crap PC, but man I was I ever proud of that thing. Just the fact I could put something like that together with my own hands and actually have it boot up and run opened up a whole new world.

    • @kaitlyn__L
      @kaitlyn__L 7 років тому +1

      i *still* bought the parts piece by piece over 6 months just last year >.>

  • @johnstephenalbert
    @johnstephenalbert 6 років тому +98

    Only time I ever bought a Cyrix chip was in 2000 when Intel introduced its "ID number" anti-piracy measure for the Pentium III. I thought I was being such a consumer privacy activist by boycotting Intel.
    Oh how naive we were back then.

    • @CakePrincessCelestia
      @CakePrincessCelestia 4 роки тому +2

      I still remember No TCPA, was quite a thing in the early 2000s.

  • @urbielatenightgamingadvent567
    @urbielatenightgamingadvent567 4 роки тому +39

    I remembered that time, I never buy a Cyrix chip but the computer hardware was exciting. New hardware came out every week like 3DFX, Sound cards. Great times ;)

    • @CameronHuff
      @CameronHuff 4 роки тому +6

      The magazines you had to get to buy parts for your computer. Good times..

  • @atomiclemon77
    @atomiclemon77 7 років тому +166

    A lot of effort went into that video. Well done!

    • @taketimeout2share
      @taketimeout2share 7 років тому +2

      A lot of video went into that effort more like. One can only polish a turd so much. We use PCs to play games. The Cyrix couldn't. Therefore it was, is - and always will be, shit.
      Game over.
      Yes it is an entertaining video, but it it rambles on a bit at times and the viewer can be still digesting the information when the next hopper load of facts and figures is poured into their brain.
      My video = Cyrix promised a 747 but delivered a paper plane. 2 pictures, A 747 and a child holding a basic paper dart. Big round of applause. I bow, smiling graciously and a lot of resources burned while watching his video are saved. All very dull but preventing Global warming is dull.

    • @alynn333333
      @alynn333333 7 років тому

      Who's this "we", Kemosabe? Got a mouse in your pocket?

    • @taketimeout2share
      @taketimeout2share 7 років тому +1

      Always. And a joystick, Mister Ed..

    • @alexa.davronov1537
      @alexa.davronov1537 5 років тому

      Many thanks to author.

  • @maniacaudiophile
    @maniacaudiophile 7 років тому +67

    Just some interesting info from manufacturers in Taiwan regarding Cyrix MediaGX/Geode...
    They are extremely popular for making video slot machines, popular enough that some small manufacturers are buying recycled circuit boards that contains the version of the Geode/GX chip they need, desolder and test each chip before reusing them.
    And they have tested offerings from VIA, when mentioning VIA, the normally polite and timid engineer started to curse out loud about how crazy buggy VIA's CPU are...

    • @Mr1p0d
      @Mr1p0d 7 років тому +10

      Also let's admit it together, many Chinese and Taiwanese railroad locomotives do use the MediaGX as the processor on the control center :3

    • @NeuronalAxon
      @NeuronalAxon 7 років тому +1

      Why _that_ chip in particular, I wonder?

    • @Mr1p0d
      @Mr1p0d 7 років тому +3

      NeuronalAxon Because it was cheap to be built in in many low budget embedded motherboards for these kind of applications :3

    • @MrTweetyhack
      @MrTweetyhack 7 років тому +2

      that's insane. Don't they just use microcontrollers for those things? Certainly don't need an x86 to run something like that. Even ARM or MIPS would work and as cheap as Geode if not cheaper. This is the reason you don't bet on products with low life expectancies, the product disappears.

    • @maniacaudiophile
      @maniacaudiophile 7 років тому +1

      MrTweetyhack notice the video part. You can't really expect that much 2D graphics performance from MCU, and it could do a little bit of 3D effect from time to time as well.
      I think mediaGX is just barely enough to do it and cheap enough for good profit.

  • @mnlwrnr
    @mnlwrnr 4 роки тому +53

    This was my first PC in 1996:
    * Cyrix 6x86 P166
    * 16MB RAM
    * 2GB HDD
    * 16x CD-ROM drive
    * Aztech audio card (sound blaster compatible)
    * 4MB ATI 3D video card with MPEG hardware decoder
    * 15" crt monitor with integrated speakers
    * PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse
    * Windows 95 OSR2 OEM

    • @eval_is_evil
      @eval_is_evil 4 роки тому +7

      Oh man this takes me back... my first PC was a MITAC brand , 486 DX/2 66Mhz, 8mb of ram it came with OS/2 WARP (we switched to win 95 later) ...it ran doom well.
      My next PC had the legendary Pentium 166mhz with MMX of course :) I got it to play MDK lol

    • @josephtremblant2173
      @josephtremblant2173 4 роки тому +6

      My first PC in 1988. IBM PS/2 50Z
      Intel 80286, 10Mhz
      4MB RAM
      30MB HDD
      IBM 8512 Color monitor 14" VGA resolution
      Integrated VGA Display adapter
      IBM PC DOS Versions 3.30
      IBM 101 Keyboard
      3.5 1.44Mb floppy drive
      NO Mouse was needed

    • @eval_is_evil
      @eval_is_evil 4 роки тому +1

      @@josephtremblant2173 jesus that was before Charlemagne

    • @bwhite5310
      @bwhite5310 4 роки тому

      C64 then a sx386-25. They were exciting days in IT. So bored now.

    • @spooksy1982
      @spooksy1982 4 місяці тому

      That is almost identical to the first pc I ever got (family pc). It was made by time computers and was absolute garbage 😆 I always listed for a pentium - especially the mmx ones.
      I remember it was actually clocked at 133mhz but was supposed to perform like a 166. In fact for games I can remember my friends having a much better experience on a pentium 120.
      Still, I did have a mighty good time with that PC. Duke Nukem 3D. Quake 1 etc.

  • @SteelSkin667
    @SteelSkin667 6 років тому +347

    1:17 The 5x86 lacked branch prediction, meaning that it was immune to Spectre. LOOKS LIKE THEY WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG.

    • @lorenhusky2717
      @lorenhusky2717 6 років тому +13

      lol! Nice catch.

    • @louistournas120
      @louistournas120 6 років тому +14

      +SteelSkin667:
      I prefer to have branch prediction in my CPU.
      If you are doing something important with your PC, then you should have the option to disable that CPU feature.

    • @shayneoneill1506
      @shayneoneill1506 6 років тому +10

      True but it utterly brutalizes performance

    • @ciuyr2510
      @ciuyr2510 5 років тому +1

      iluminati

    • @straightlucky1382
      @straightlucky1382 5 років тому +4

      @ they knew it long before it happen, as always...what?

  • @wildbilltexas
    @wildbilltexas 7 років тому +34

    Awesome Video, but such a sad story. Intel was price gouging their Pentiums (a 166 in 1995-6 could cost you $500) and getting away with it before the 6x86 came along and forced them to drop prices fast. For a while Cyrix was the little company that could. Had Cyrix made their first 6x86's run cool with a fast floating point unit for Quake and 3D gaming they might have made fast fans with gamers instead of getting a bad reputation. But I remember a lot of businesses and schools here in Texas used computers with later lower voltage Cyrix MX and MII CPU's. For office, school work and Non-3D gaming Cyrix CPU's were a good bargain and kept a lot of local "Mom & Pop" OEM computer stores in business. I don't think Quake alone killed Cyrix. It was the combined attack from Intel's Celeron and AMD's K6 family (which were faster and better CPU's for Socket 7) that really did Cyrix in. They couldn't keep up with Intel's and AMD's rapid pace of development and then got gutted. Keep up the awesome work on your videos!

    • @ydoomenaud
      @ydoomenaud 7 років тому +2

      The Celeron was literally a Pentium with a castrated cache, created by Intel marketing not engineering. It still is.

    • @wildbilltexas
      @wildbilltexas 7 років тому +5

      I agree the early Celerons and some later ones were junk chips. But the Celeron 300a (not 300) got a great reputation in the gamer community then for being easy to overclock to 400-450 mhz with a good heatsink. And that you could easily upgrade to a "real" Pentium II when you got the cash or when prices dropped was a nice bonus.

  • @Anoneeemouse
    @Anoneeemouse 5 років тому +86

    I remember my dad bringing one of the coprocessors home, handing it to me, and saying, "Put it in". I was like 9.

    • @slam5
      @slam5 4 роки тому +11

      putting in processors in those ages was very tough. for a 9 y.o it must had been impossible.

    • @virtualtools_3021
      @virtualtools_3021 4 роки тому +16

      Putting in shouldn't be difficult lol, configuring to work might be a challenge tho

    • @kirillassasin
      @kirillassasin 4 роки тому +5

      “Starting quake”
      Your dad: *literally cascade resonance scientist*

  • @delsarcade
    @delsarcade 7 років тому +91

    I remember trying to play Sonic the Hedgehog on Windows 98SE. It wouldn't work on Cyrix processors, since it did a CPU check on boot of the game to check the strength of the processor. I ended up downloading an unofficial Cyrix driver that fooled the game into thinking it was an Intel chip. Worked great, but a pain for some games.

    • @philipblank1824
      @philipblank1824 7 років тому +7

      I had the same problem with the original release of Final Fantasy VII, it would run to a certain point in the game and crash unless you had the Cyrix Driver, I personally owned the MX200 PR at 160mHz and a Trident64 2d card and Voodoo2 8meg adapter for graphics. LOL, what difference a decade does for our current gaming hardware.

    • @1pcfred
      @1pcfred 6 років тому +3

      I remember the Pentium CPU check in games now that you bring it up. I never heard about the driver trick though. What the Cyrix chip could run it did run fast. Still, I always felt like I only had a souped up 486 when I was using it.

    • @RJARRRPCGP
      @RJARRRPCGP 6 років тому +4

      +Paul Frederick The problem appeared to be the worst in Windows 95, at least pre-OSR2! (and probably earlier as well) Because Windows 95 reportedly, will report 486 or the like!

    • @1pcfred
      @1pcfred 6 років тому +1

      +RJARRRPCGP when I used that chip I was running Windows 95 too. Then I got a genuine Pentium 200 MMX. I also started running Linux too.

    • @TheTurnipKing
      @TheTurnipKing 6 років тому +1

      It was almost certainly something of this ilk. Many games were unwisely coded to identify whether or not it was running on a Pentium, and would just outright refuse to run if it didn't detect. Obviously this was intended to prevent the game from running really badly on underspecced 486s, but often locked out other perfectly valid non-Intel CPUs
      I seem to recall G-Police requiring an updated launcher to identify the Cyrix correctly, at which point it would start the game and run reasonably well.

  • @alittleolder
    @alittleolder 6 років тому +299

    I sold computers around the time they had their P200 and P233 models. It was really easy to sell to customers. "It's just as fast but cheaper"... that worked always...

    • @anonymousinc6330
      @anonymousinc6330 6 років тому +37

      And I was one of many who learned the hard way that you get what you pay for.

    • @anonymousinc6330
      @anonymousinc6330 6 років тому +16

      @Luca Rossi Had a new system built in 1998. Went with a Cyrix M2 because it was cheaper and it burned up within 45 days.

    • @toddsmith4735
      @toddsmith4735 6 років тому +4

      Actually the AMD's were the fastest back then at 200

    • @WimHamhuis
      @WimHamhuis 5 років тому +11

      @@anonymousinc6330 this could have been avoided by using a good cooler on that microprocessor, which turns out to become pretty hot when operating. However, i know some people who collect old processors. How about designing a motherboard which can hold say about 16 processors in 1 time. Thats a good idea, but the cooling still is neccasary on the processors. They get hot when operationg. The cooling prevents the burn up

    • @anonymousinc6330
      @anonymousinc6330 5 років тому +9

      @@WimHamhuis This one had good cooling. It was just a POS from the word go. Cyrix has gone the way of the dodo for a reason.

  • @ryuchao008
    @ryuchao008 5 років тому +177

    Now in 2019 with several security flaws around branch prediction, makes you wonder if Cyrix had the right idea all along to turn it off

    • @KurtRichterCISSP
      @KurtRichterCISSP 4 роки тому +26

      But it makes benchmarks higher, and that's the end all-be all to consumers. Consumers don't always know what they need, and if the marketeers aren't principled enough to inform the consumer, the market is essentially SOL.

    • @segoiii
      @segoiii 4 роки тому +12

      without branch prediction, you end up in the performance area of the first intel atom.

    • @SimonBuchanNz
      @SimonBuchanNz 4 роки тому +8

      @SteelRodent That is not true at all, from what I could tell from the guidance given to developers at the time. All you need is the ability to have some control over instruction execution, which is trivial with JS on the web, and you can sometimes skip software access checks (like JS array index checks) and try and scrape information you shouldn't have from the process memory (like information from other sites), so browsers had to much more carefully keep information out of the site's process.

    • @spudhead169
      @spudhead169 4 роки тому +1

      @@SimonBuchanNz Trivial? TRIVIAL? LMFAO!

    • @SimonBuchanNz
      @SimonBuchanNz 4 роки тому +3

      @@spudhead169 I believe you misread me: "have some control over instruction execution" is the trivial thing, and having that and to be in the same process as some secret data is enough for an attack to be plausible.
      The problem with assuming that because the attack itself may be very difficult that you don't need to worry about it, is that only one person needs to figure something out and share it for everyone to have access to everyone's secrets, and because the vector is so widespread it was a huge deal.

  • @MattHayesVinyl
    @MattHayesVinyl 7 років тому +297

    The first computer that I ever owned personally (i.e. not shared with family members) had a Cyrix 133 CPU. Embarrassingly, I always thought it was pronounced "Sear-ix" until I was corrected one day. That day is today.

    • @ravenfn831
      @ravenfn831 7 років тому +24

      I still pronounce it that way.

    • @torqued666
      @torqued666 7 років тому +16

      It is Sear-ex.

    • @hobbified
      @hobbified 7 років тому +1

      Mine too. Actually it was a 120, but I bumped the FSB up from 60 to 66 for that extra little bit of oomph ;)

    • @Machtyn
      @Machtyn 7 років тому +10

      Just depends. The voice also pronounces "them" as "vem". But, yeah, I pronounced it as "Si' riks", too.

    • @JustJohnny
      @JustJohnny 7 років тому +12

      Given he mispronounced Jalapeno, I wouldn't really use this as a guide on how to pronounce the company's name. Especially one that was based in Texas.

  • @MaurizioCerrato
    @MaurizioCerrato 7 років тому +192

    Hello, I really liked the video many thanks for doing it. However I find some minor imprecise information on Cyrix architecture.
    Around 17:00 you said that “whilst developing quake John Carmak realized that fpu and integer operation used different part of Pentium core and could be effectively overlapped. This nearly double the speed of fpu intensive game code, however on Cyrix processor the operation didn’t overlap”. This statement was a bit confusing for me so I did some research on the topic. Cyrix is capable of overlapping integer and floating point operation together, in fact was one of the selling point of the advantages of a Cyrix architecture over the Pentium. It is written on the 6x86 manual (datasheets.chipdb.org/Cyrix/M1/6x86/M1-1.PDF). The Pentium core in fact is not able to do that unless the floating point operation is a division. Division is and expensive operation and takes up to 39 cycles on a Pentium to be completed, but Michal Abrash ( this is the engineer responsible for Penitum optimisation in ID software, not Carmack) find out that in the specific case of the division you could pipe up 39 single cycle integer instruction while and division is in executing making it virtually a 1 cycle operation during projection phase. It uses also some extra care to optimise to some degree dot product and matrix multiplication. All of this is very well documented and you can find all the tricks used in Abrash’s book , chapter Floating-Point for Real-Time 3-D (www.drdobbs.com/parallel/graphics-programming-black-book/184404919 ).
    This optimisation you mentioned in the video was adding a feature that the Pentium lacked and the Cyrix had naturally by not using any tricks. What killed the Cyrix in floating point execution was the lack of pipelining for floating point operation. This massively reduce the throughput especially when you have a long sequence of floating point operation and you have no integer to overlap, like for example in a matrix multiplication. Without a pipelining the cpu have to wait the whole operation to be completed before issuing another, so for example if a multiplication takes 3 cycle you get a multiplication every 3 cycle. With pipelining the cpu can issue another instruction as soon as the current one left the current stage, so in the cpu have still to wait 3 cycle for the first operation to be completed, but all the susequent ones will be completed whitin a cycle of distance. On top of that Cyrix multiplication and Addition takes double cycles than pentium to complete ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X87en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X87).
    Concluding the Pentium-specific optimisation helped quake go an extra mile, but ultimately the Pentium had a very high floating point throughput even without specific optimisation compared to Cyrix.
    Sorry I wrote a long comment but I think it's important to clarify since quake vs Cyrix is kinda the whole point of the video.

    • @YourCRTube
      @YourCRTube 7 років тому +11

      This comment needs to be pinned. I also remember the problem being not just Quake, but most games! Thanks for the info!

    • @Oxigan2win
      @Oxigan2win 6 років тому +4

      Very good comment. Thanks!

    • @PaulScollon
      @PaulScollon 5 років тому +7

      Most researched comment EVER! Awesome info, thank you.

    • @Endeva09
      @Endeva09 5 років тому +11

      For some reason, I understood approximately none of what you said but really enjoyed reading it, fair play on the research and knowledge sharing side of things though, top stuff.

    • @deus_ex_machina_
      @deus_ex_machina_ 5 років тому +3

      You've gone above and beyond.
      @Andy Wheale Agreed.

  • @aaronseet2738
    @aaronseet2738 5 років тому +30

    Holy smokes. You unlocked a long forgotten section of my memory of those teenage days. While I didn't own a Cyrix processor myself, I think some friends did.

    • @External2737
      @External2737 3 роки тому

      I had one Cyrix processor. Then the market went AMD.

    • @AlexeiVoronin
      @AlexeiVoronin 3 роки тому

      You're lucky. Cyrix processors were utterly horrible and broke down pretty often.

    • @agcouper
      @agcouper 3 роки тому

      I almost bought one, but then my friends talked me out of it.

    • @bricefleckenstein9666
      @bricefleckenstein9666 2 роки тому

      @@AlexeiVoronin They weren't that bad *IF* they went into a motherboard with proper support for them *AND* if they were configured correctly.
      They had weird supply voltages though, and a LOT of folks over-volted them.

  • @masonwheeler6536
    @masonwheeler6536 4 роки тому +11

    Cyrix will always hold a fond place in my heart. Back in the 90s, when I was still in high school, I built my first PC (cost much less than buying one) with a Cyrix processor. Sadly, by the time I needed to build its replacement, they weren't around anymore.

  • @HyperTextCoffeePot
    @HyperTextCoffeePot 7 років тому +11

    Just sent this video to my dad. He was on the Cyrix chip design team from 1992(ish) all the way through the VIA acquisition. I remember having a viewing party for The Eraser when it came out on video.

    • @AngelosDoundis
      @AngelosDoundis 7 років тому +2

      I'd love to hear his stories and comments.

  • @shahzadahmed466
    @shahzadahmed466 4 роки тому +21

    I used Cyrix MII in my first ever computer. Eventually fried it through overclocking, while playing Settlers III. Good old days 😁

    • @SaraMorgan-ym6ue
      @SaraMorgan-ym6ue 11 місяців тому +1

      shame Cyrix is gone they gave you options and choice for computers that now they are gone you no longer have and that's a tragedy😭

  • @praecorloth
    @praecorloth 5 років тому +11

    I started out on a 386. That computer's motherboard and CPU were upgraded to a Cyrix 486dx2 80MHz. We stayed on that CPU until the Pentium II, as the Cyrix would pretty much crush any Pentium that it came across (y'know, at LAN parties :) ). Part of that was memory. We had a boatload of memory for the time since the board could use 30pin and 72pin memory. We had 12MB if I recall correctly. X-Com Apocalypse and Descent 2 ran great on the machine! :)

  • @hblaub
    @hblaub 6 років тому +45

    Intel introduced "Branch Prediction", and now that's a security risk due to Spectre bugs! So we should have stayed with our dear Cyrix CPUs ;-)

    • @NovaDoll
      @NovaDoll 5 років тому +5

      But now we have ryzen

    • @dootvevo7511
      @dootvevo7511 5 років тому

      Yeah, I prefer ryzen.

  • @kuruption1983
    @kuruption1983 4 роки тому +21

    I watch this video once every 3-4 months. Incredible narration, perfect music... Just amazing. I wish you created more of these videos.

  • @SpaceCadet4Jesus
    @SpaceCadet4Jesus 4 роки тому +66

    There's a certain feeling (now lost) in those days when news in computers was exciting and everyone was scouring the ultra thick Computer Shopper magazine for any advantages. I installed a few Cyrix processors and was waiting for their greatness, but quietly they just vanished.

    • @mihailmilev9909
      @mihailmilev9909 2 роки тому

      Sounds magical

    • @mihailmilev9909
      @mihailmilev9909 2 роки тому +2

      I probably wasn't even born then or very young so idek what ur talking abt but it sounds enchanting, as nostalgia usually is

    • @stevenbjerke2825
      @stevenbjerke2825 2 роки тому +4

      I had a while where I felt like I lost that magic as well, but it has changed. It can now be found in the poorly named "maker" hobby. IoT, Automated model aircraft, wearable tech, Machine Learning. This excitement is a wave, and you gotta keep riding it otherwise it will move on without you. Before computers it was Radio tech, and engines, it just keeps moving.

    • @SmallSpoonBrigade
      @SmallSpoonBrigade Місяць тому

      Yes, from what I can tell what happened is that they got sued more or less into oblivion and then merged with National Semiconductors. Which is a shame because the processor extensions they had were pretty good and it was mostly the lack of good floating point that most of the other chipmakers also had which was the problem. But, for the deep discount over what Intel was charging for their Pentiums, it was worth it.

  • @lannylanuel7714
    @lannylanuel7714 7 років тому +38

    I used to so look forward to getting the "Computer Shopper" multi hundred paged magazine and spooging over all the new tech where I learned about cyrix and stuff. Computer Shopper out shined all the other mags even with it's phone book paper pages.

    • @bothellkenmore
      @bothellkenmore 6 років тому +5

      That was some nerd porn back in the day. It's what ultimately led me to build my own system, as I'm sure many here :)

    • @solardarkside455
      @solardarkside455 6 років тому +1

      I agree, I had stacks of "Computer Shopper" magazines and would sift through EVERY page, just like some kid who's face would be pressed against the glass outside a candy store.

    • @danduryea
      @danduryea 5 років тому

      +@Umh Chud - "Alice and Bill" tech section

    • @n3Cr0ManCeD
      @n3Cr0ManCeD 5 років тому +1

      Ahhh. Those were the days. 56k modem ads. "Budget" systems for under $2,000. $4000.00 laptops. Articles claiming Dell and Gateway would never sell a sub-$1000 desktop. CRT monitor ads. 2nd, 3rd and 4th tier OEMs. Yes, those were the days.
      Also....
      "Hacking" AT modem commands for faster speed.
      Usenet
      BBS
      "Shotgunning" modems
      Making fun of people who used AOL
      Overclocking that had real world uses, not just bragging rights.
      You could have a desktop case in any color as long as it was beige.

    • @danduryea
      @danduryea 5 років тому

      +@@n3Cr0ManCeD - Trident video cards, ISA, 512K, to handle Silent Service II.

  • @andythedishwasher1117
    @andythedishwasher1117 2 роки тому +55

    It just occurred to me how powerful it would be to download every video on your channel, rip them to VHS tapes, and time travel with them back to 1990 Silicon Valley. Could you even imagine?

    • @scottcol23
      @scottcol23 2 роки тому +11

      Just bring a Ryzen 9 7950x and a x670 MB, a i9 12900k and z690 mb, a WD Gen 4 4tb m.2 a RX6900XT a rtx4090. Drop them off at their respective manufacturers and go back to present times to see how much you disrupted the progression of tech. Oh and don't forget a Displayport to vga adaptor... Lol

    • @andythedishwasher1117
      @andythedishwasher1117 2 роки тому

      @@scottcol23 lmao less accessible on my budget, but that would certainly be an effective strategy.

    • @keithw4920
      @keithw4920 2 роки тому +9

      @@scottcol23 Wont come back. Have to stay to buy Amazon, Apple around the early 2000s, Bitcoin in the late 2000s, short the banks in 2008 and GME in the 2020s.... then I can tell Bro Musk : Feck orf, imma paying 45b for Twitter and imma blocking your account.

    • @scottcol23
      @scottcol23 2 роки тому +7

      @@keithw4920 Those are worthy pit stops to make lol I was mining bitcoin in 2012 when the price of one coin was about $18. at the time I had 3 Radeon HD 5770's and was getting one BTC every 3 days... Man do I wish I had just known to keep those coins...

    • @keithw4920
      @keithw4920 2 роки тому +1

      @@scottcol23 I had my card out in 2009 wanting to buy some of this new fangled blockshit. Didnt go thru because I couldnt understand the white paper much. Might have sold em at 10 bucks or so though, it would still have been a >10000% profit.

  • @giantm2323
    @giantm2323 7 років тому +32

    Need more clips from "Secret life of machines", maybe commentary eps? I've always loved that show

    • @Cytotron
      @Cytotron 7 років тому

      Secret life of machines. Loved that theme song~! Also the show was very good too.

    • @seeingeyegod
      @seeingeyegod 7 років тому

      yeah why was that clip even in there? What did that show have to do with Cyrix?

  • @cburgess7
    @cburgess7 5 років тому +241

    In an alternate universe, it's AMD vs Cyrix... in another, it's Intel vs Cyrix... in this, it's AMD vs Intel

    • @peesinyourass
      @peesinyourass 5 років тому +25

      In another All of Em are competing In another There is a Monopoly of Processors That can be the one of the 3

    • @LiEnby
      @LiEnby 4 роки тому +18

      Why not Intel vs AMD vs Cyrix?

    • @7838-h2d
      @7838-h2d 4 роки тому +7

      There can be only one.. but there's always 2

    • @aaadj2744
      @aaadj2744 4 роки тому +21

      And GPU competition back then were Voodoo vs NVIDIA vs Radeon vs Matrox

    • @surject
      @surject 4 роки тому +12

      @@aaadj2744 ...vs Tseng vs ELSA vs Cirrus Logic vs Hercules vs 3DLabs vs Trident vs Diamond vs V7 vs Orchid...

  • @SmokeyDaRoach
    @SmokeyDaRoach 5 років тому +45

    I played WoW at 10 - 14 fps when I was younger on my eMachine and had no problem with it. I was just happy to be playing WoW lol!

    • @louistournas120
      @louistournas120 5 років тому +6

      Did you play 18 h a day and you poop in a can?

    • @nonegone7170
      @nonegone7170 5 років тому +12

      @@louistournas120 Come on now, that was uncalled for.
      Chill out, dickwad.

    • @thedevilsadvocate5210
      @thedevilsadvocate5210 4 роки тому +2

      And ate hot pockets

    • @Baalaaxa
      @Baalaaxa 4 роки тому +1

      @@nonegone7170 What you mean? Many of us did. Some of us still do.

    • @deathbydeviceable
      @deathbydeviceable 4 роки тому

      @@nonegone7170 simp

  • @BillyDhillon
    @BillyDhillon 7 років тому +19

    I use to sell Cyrix processors when I built an sold low-cost PCs. Good times during the K5 and Cyrix days.

  • @Steamrunner
    @Steamrunner 7 років тому +149

    Cyrix. That's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.

    • @anonymousinc6330
      @anonymousinc6330 6 років тому

      Thank Christ.

    • @ChristopherSibert
      @ChristopherSibert 6 років тому +2

      I had a Cyrix CPU as a child, I loved it!!!

    • @anonymousinc6330
      @anonymousinc6330 6 років тому +1

      @@ChristopherSibert the one and only I ever had was very short-lived. Needless to say, I was not impressed.

    • @mvicksdog
      @mvicksdog 6 років тому +9

      I haven't gone by that name since, oh before you were born.

    • @HelmetVanga
      @HelmetVanga 5 років тому

      ever heard of Semiconductor ?

  • @EarmonkeyMusic
    @EarmonkeyMusic 4 роки тому +27

    Man... I used to build PCs back in college in the early-mid 90s and loved the Cyrix processors for business-type systems. They were cheap and definitely capable for your typical student/business user (who wasn't playing Quake)

    • @SaraMorgan-ym6ue
      @SaraMorgan-ym6ue 11 місяців тому

      yeah it's a shame they no longer exist they gave us options and choices for our computers they will be missed

  • @Videoman2000
    @Videoman2000 7 років тому +212

    You should do a similar video about 3dfx and the voodoo card.

    • @igrewold
      @igrewold 7 років тому +14

      man you brought back sweet memories.
      I had the 5500 model, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_5

    • @Cervan
      @Cervan 7 років тому +23

      voodoo, man i havent heard that in a long time.

    • @BrianGreigRWD
      @BrianGreigRWD 7 років тому +11

      Videoman2000 check out LGR Tech Tales. He does a great video on 3dfx and Voodoo.

    • @igrewold
      @igrewold 7 років тому +2

      +MR cool man, what OS are using? Linux?
      Remember playing Blood 2?! ;D
      www.bundlestars.com/en/game/blood-ii-the-chosen-and-expansion

    • @igrewold
      @igrewold 7 років тому +1

      +MR That was one helluva game, along with System Shock 2 and Dues Ex,
      www.bundlestars.com/en/bundle/fps-heroes-bundle
      I still remember its music, esp. this one: ua-cam.com/video/RyD4r4AR6Xo/v-deo.htmlm

  • @robertf981
    @robertf981 7 років тому +6

    Thanks for the history of Cyrix. Back in the 70's, Jerry Rogers hired me to work in the microprocessor design group at Texas Instruments in Houston, and Kevin McDonough was my supervisor. We worked on the TMS9900 and TMS320 families of chips. In the early 80's I and co-workers would spend our lunch times discussing how one could start a company to compete with Intel. We had agreed that math co-processors would be the way to go. Systems were often being shipped with empty math co-processor sockets which a new company could sell into. With a successful track record in co-processors, one could move up to main processors.
    The discussion of Quake was interesting as I was reading about its' technique for implementing fast floating point reciprical square root.
    Like others I drove by the Cyrix building on US 75 in Richardson for years.

    • @perrymason9942
      @perrymason9942 4 роки тому

      I grew up there and a parent still lives very close by. The building is still there folks! Just not the Cyrix sign...*sob*

  • @Ni9kye
    @Ni9kye 4 роки тому +15

    I remember building a duel celeron rig and installed NT just to play doom omg the good old days

  • @MugenNiFukuzatsuna
    @MugenNiFukuzatsuna 7 років тому +94

    Gotta love that buttery smooth 13fps gameplay.

    • @josephfrye7342
      @josephfrye7342 6 років тому +1

      i guess that's how it looks like way back then.

    • @redseagaming7832
      @redseagaming7832 6 років тому +9

      SomeFriendlessBastard 13 FPS makes 30fps look great.

    • @bootcampassistant3301
      @bootcampassistant3301 6 років тому +9

      Human eye can’t see more than 1 frame per second.

    • @infiltr80r
      @infiltr80r 6 років тому +5

      I think that was just their marketing crap, no-one thought 13fps was smooth back then. I was gaming in that era fanatically and I always wanted 20fps.

    • @Thomes-Maisling
      @Thomes-Maisling 5 років тому +2

      @@infiltr80r Exactly. 13fps was never good

  • @braddeicide
    @braddeicide 7 років тому +47

    My modem is running an AMD Geode, I didn't know it was a Cyrix.

  • @JodyBruchon
    @JodyBruchon 5 років тому +6

    Terminal Velocity, Fury3, and Hellbender were all really great flying shoot-em-up games.

  • @Rouxenator
    @Rouxenator 7 років тому +9

    Dude!!! I love this, CyrixInstead has to be the most epic CPUID ever! Thanks so much for making this, I am a huge AnythingButIntel fan. Had me a couple of these and some AMDs back in the day.

  • @eclap78
    @eclap78 7 років тому +9

    I was an Amiga boy until late 1995 when I built my first gaming PC. It was a Cyrix 6x86 P133+ based rig with a 1m S3 Virge gpu. A few months later I added a Voodoo 3Dfx. Those were the days. The Cyrix was great in many ways, often beating Intels. In some games though, it was lacking severly. And yes, I'm looking at you, Quake. Still, Quake ran great under Glide and looked amazing.
    The upgrade to 450mhz Celeron was my next step. And a big one it was. Still, I never forget my first PC CPU, the Cyrix 6x86 P133+.

    • @si4632
      @si4632 6 років тому

      the amd k5 was superior you fool lol

  • @eviltigz
    @eviltigz 5 років тому +15

    My first PC had a 586 Cyrix chip. Was okay, ran some games like Terminal Velocity very well.

    • @DoubleMonoLR
      @DoubleMonoLR 2 роки тому +1

      They were very snappy in windows from memory, it really just seemed to be (some) games where they suffered.
      I can't remember ever buying an Intel cpu, though I have been given several PCs/laptops with them.
      The AMD x2-3600 was probably my favourite, even though it wasn't a particularly fast model. It was more than fast enough for what I wanted, and seemed efficient and reliable. I even ran the much maligned Vista on it, and loved it, though it was several years old by then, so was more like Windows 7 but with the prettier Vista interface.

  • @williamhoodtn
    @williamhoodtn 7 років тому +11

    Still use the AMD Geode LX800 in systems my employer sells today (PC-104 based). So glad it's not Intel. The story reminds me of my days at Commodore. Good job sir!

    • @johnfrancisdoe1563
      @johnfrancisdoe1563 7 років тому +2

      williamhoodtn Yeah, for low power jobs, the Geode series beats most other x86 chips, including some Atoms. There is something really nice about running an x86 utility system on less than 10W and with no cooling or heatsinks. May need to switch to an ARM system for the next upgrade.

  • @infamousacidrain
    @infamousacidrain 7 років тому +26

    Intel really destroyed them when they released those Celeron’s with no cache that could be overclocked from 300 to 450mhz. Cut them off at the low end.

    • @VitasLoWang
      @VitasLoWang 6 років тому +2

      only the first Celeron 266MHz Covington had no cache. The next one 300A Mendocino had some cache which made it significantly faster then Covington.

    • @solardarkside455
      @solardarkside455 6 років тому +3

      When the Celerons first came out, we had a customer who would buy a handful at a time, because he was attempting to overclock them to break the 1GHz barrier that hadn't been broken yet. He was able to reach 900MHz without any problem, but kept burning up the processors as he neared the 1GHz mark.

    • @SuperVstech
      @SuperVstech 5 років тому +3

      @@solardarkside455 I had a customer... a rich customer that bought the cryogenic PC case to get it over 1ghz... odd to hear the refrigerator startup before the PC did...

    • @indridcold8433
      @indridcold8433 5 років тому +1

      Those ugly things can still be found.

  • @wrh195330161
    @wrh195330161 4 роки тому +11

    I was almost a Cyrix owner, almost. A long time ago, so long that most of it is blurry, I decided to give up my TI 994a and my Commodore 64 and get on the PC bandwagon. I initially was going to purchase an Amiga but my friends had all moved on to 286 machines a year or so ahead of me and I was stuck in the past. It was time to catch up. Instead of just going down to the computer store and buying something in a box, I decided to order a computer built more to my specs. I got a copy of Computer Shopper and started comparing ads for computer builders. I settled on a company out of Texas that offered all kinds of options. I called them and had a lengthy conversation about what I was going to do with the computer, it was a good talk that ended with a list of components that would be my first PC. On that list was a Cyrix 386, the heart of my computer. A couple days later the guy calls me back and asks if I'd be willing to go a couple hundred dollars more for some upgrades? We talked it over and I agreed to the new parts list and on that list was an AMD 368 that was faster than the Cyrix, I also received a free monitor and an extra mouse as it was hard to find those items in black. My black computer got comments from almost everyone and after a year or so of owning it I sold it for more than I paid. Since then I've owned nothing but Compaq and HP computers all with AMD processors and a lot of them were and are black. Those early computer days were amazing, so many different components, so much change. I really enjoyed this video. I had always wondered what had happened to Cyrix, the processor I'd almost owned.

  • @Retr0Rewind
    @Retr0Rewind 7 років тому +6

    Excellent video. Took me back to my teenage years :) I remember the Cyrix Chips well. Also love the end music :)

    • @MrJest2
      @MrJest2 7 років тому +1

      +Retr0Rewind - Teenage years? Hell - it took me back to my early 30s. :-)

  • @mintydog06
    @mintydog06 6 років тому +18

    12:18 I love how it says "CyrixInstead" I actually upgraded from a P120 to a Cyrix II which was 200mhz I think.

  • @goguhu
    @goguhu 4 роки тому +10

    If I recall correctly (but perhaps I had another copro), the Cyrix 387 was totally different than intel's as it was a stack based FPU instead of the Intel register one ... pushing and poping FP onto the CPU. I think I ended up hand coding Mandelbrot calculations on that CPU.

  • @therealxunil2
    @therealxunil2 5 років тому +38

    I had a magnet on my fridge that said something like "Cyrix: Anything else is half fast."

  • @richardvaughn2705
    @richardvaughn2705 6 років тому +11

    The last cyrix CPU I had was a 1.0ghz. They were around during the times of the intel p3. I think by then cyrix was part of via though.

  • @bitset3741
    @bitset3741 4 роки тому +5

    This was a pretty cool time to be gaming. The thing with Quake was that it was hand tuned for the Pentium cpu. Most of that tuning was broken with the 3rd party cpus, and some of it even with the PII, but the PII was fast enough to run it without the optimizations. I have read Michael Abrash's Black book on programming, as well as other books back in the day on Pentium architecture optimization.
    Good times! There are people doing some of that now, but with GPU's rather than CPU's. Still good times :)
    (well not for other things...stupid corona virus)

  • @amphetamineblue4172
    @amphetamineblue4172 7 років тому +10

    My second PC had a Cyrix 233 chip ( big upgrade from my previous 486 DX33 ! ). Back then they were loads cheaper than Intel chips, and still worked pretty well

  • @picklerix6162
    @picklerix6162 6 років тому +9

    I remember a computer hardware engineer once told me that Cyrix had some really good CPU's but said that it was very difficult to get technical information from Cyrix.

  • @therealpbristow
    @therealpbristow 2 роки тому

    Thankyou so much for this lovely trip down memory lane! =:oD
    I bought my first PC in the mid-90s: A very, *very* cheap 2nd hand 386 system with a 100MB harddrive and 2MB of RAM , that I then started gradually upgrading as funds permitted. My initial rule of thumb for upgrading the processor was "when I can get a significant speed -boost for £10 or less, I'll bite!". I progressed upward from my original 486sx33 through 66Mhz, then 100, then 133, that last one being (I think) my first Cyrix chip. And the more I learned about the tussles between Cyrix and Intel, the more determined I became to never buy another Intel chip, so long as they were the market leader and calling all the shots.
    Over time the price I was willing to pay for each upgrade increased, especially once I moved out of the Civil Service and into a private sector job (with a resulting 25% jump up in salary! =:oo ). My policy changed to "when I can get twice the power for about the same amount I paid last time, it's time to upgrade"; And eventually the "best of the underdogs" was no longer Cyrix, or VIA (I think I bought *one* of their chips?) , but AMD. Every CPU I've bought since the early 2000s has been an AMD (and most of them 2nd hand!). Yeah, even this disastrously power-hungry FX-8350 (which over the years has probably cost me in energy bills more than 10 times the price difference to have got an equivalent Intel processor, *and the necessary change of motherboard*, back at the time I bought it! =:o1 ).
    Alas, thanks to burnout I've gone from that lavish private-sector IT-job salary to barely scraping by on the wages of a 3-days-per-week retail-worker. But one day, hopefully Real Soon Now(TM), I'll finally enter the Ryzen age (Probably a 2nd-hand Zen 2)! This FX-8350 system will probably be "downgraded" to its old, less power-thirsty Athlon II chip, and become my backup server (which only needs to be booted up for a few hours per week anyway.)
    Thanks again. [SALUTE]
    =:o}

  • @FlashTwoSix
    @FlashTwoSix 4 роки тому +6

    What a great revisit of history. I love Cyrix and owned a handful of their processors. I was always a fan of their underdog status

  • @Jimbaloidatron
    @Jimbaloidatron 7 років тому +20

    PR ratings were a nightmare because so many times I saw people think it was the actual MHz and configure their motherboards accordingly and then suffer instability of the overclocked system.

    • @yrly59e
      @yrly59e 7 років тому +1

      With the right voltage and cooling I got them above the PR ratings. They were cheap enough to risk it.

    • @krashd
      @krashd 7 років тому

      Didn't either Intel or AMD do something similar to mislead folks by using model numbers that mimicked clock speed? I remember buying something 20 years ago and the guy said "It might have 266 on it, but that's not the speed"

    • @Jimbaloidatron
      @Jimbaloidatron 7 років тому

      Rob Fraser AMD

  • @Khranok
    @Khranok 3 роки тому +2

    I didn't know Doug Dimmadome, owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome used to also own a CPU company. Fascinating.

  • @TheRedCap
    @TheRedCap 7 років тому +103

    I actually have a computer that has an IBM-branded Cyrix 6x86.

    • @jari2018
      @jari2018 6 років тому +1

      I still have non mx 166L ibm cpu, worked when last used - upgraded to Amd 300 k6 3d now - then programs could use the code on the ibm for additional speed - eg like a variant like 3d now code.

    • @lucasrem
      @lucasrem 6 років тому +4

      the blue IBM branded heatsink, please don't remove that!
      Is it in a clone case, or still have it running in the original branded casing, then you have a collectors item that is good for some collectors and tech freaks.
      1997, a logical system for some still underdog...

    • @TheRedCap
      @TheRedCap 6 років тому

      I still have the blue heatsink, but I think it's in a clone case unfortunately :(

    • @russ9034
      @russ9034 6 років тому +4

      who fucking cares?

    • @combineelite689
      @combineelite689 6 років тому +5

      Russ rude.

  • @microtasker
    @microtasker 5 років тому +54

    I was so hammered in the '90's that i'd forgotten all about Cyrix, even though I owned 2 of them.

    • @YagiChanDan
      @YagiChanDan 4 роки тому +19

      Shit a brick.....are you saying the '90s were real? I thought it was a dream. Can I F9 and go back for another crack at the totty I missed?

    • @Michael_Smith-Red_No.5
      @Michael_Smith-Red_No.5 4 роки тому +5

      I know the feeling. I've two ex-wives I don't remember meeting.

  • @stoney5137
    @stoney5137 4 роки тому +2

    Such a great walk down memory lane. I remember in my very first IT job, I ordered a fleet of of the 6x86 based computers.

  • @jpyper
    @jpyper 7 років тому +24

    I've always been interested in other CPU manufacturers. At one time, I was interested in Transmeta. The Wikipedia entry on them leads it to be a but bleak at best. If I recall, Linus Torvalds moved to the USA to work for them while continuing on working on him Linux kernel. Could you do a video on Transmeta please?

    • @sbrazenor2
      @sbrazenor2 7 років тому +5

      I had a Sony Vaio C1 Picturebook back in the day, that ran a Transmeta Crusoe. It wasn't the fastest thing on the planet, but it was able to run for like 8-10 hours per battery charge (Especially with the extended battery.) Those chips were mainly made for low power, passively cooled, and portable applications. In short, you wouldn't be playing any good games on it.

    • @Megalomaniakaal
      @Megalomaniakaal 7 років тому +3

      In short (considering they were low power, passive cooled) they were tablet pc chips, far ahead of their time, lol.

    • @ydoomenaud
      @ydoomenaud 7 років тому +3

      The main draw for Transmeta was that the CPU's entire structure was firmware rather than hardware and thereby potentially flashable to a new CPU altogether. You can see why Intel and AMD hated the idea of software upgradeable hardware.

    • @Archimedes75009
      @Archimedes75009 7 років тому +2

      ydoomenaud I think also the idea was to stop supplying power to parts of the cpu not working, to save on power consumption. At the time I thought they were going to kill ARM ...

    • @Megalomaniakaal
      @Megalomaniakaal 7 років тому +1

      ydoomenaud, so it was a field programmable gate array then.

  • @markgx86
    @markgx86 4 роки тому +3

    What a great account of the Cyrix history. I worked there from 1992 to 1999 and what a ride that was!

  • @terrytraxson6996
    @terrytraxson6996 3 роки тому +1

    Thanks for creating this video. I have been a Cyrix fan since the first computer in our household in the late 1990's. It was a IBM Aptiva computer, and had the 6x86L chip in it. The PC came with integrated graphics, I think it was an AMD Mach 64 chip or something of the like, I can't remember for sure. We had a few memorable games on this system, some ran well and some not as well as hoped but still loved it, beat the 386 and 486 processors at the local libraries. The first system I built was with the Cyrix MII 433 PR chip, and it was a great processor for anything but gaming, but it didn't help that I had sourced a 3D labs Permedia 2V graphics card to go with it :(. I think it had 64 MB of memory. I still have the system stored somewhere. Watching this video makes me want to dig it out and try to boot it up in Windows 98 for old times sake. Thanks for the memories!

  • @rodpad
    @rodpad 7 років тому +37

    I had a Cyrix 150 and it was awful seeing friends with Pentium 75's absolutely smashing it in Quake, even with a Voodoo card.

    • @FjordYeti
      @FjordYeti 7 років тому +2

      i had the same one, "150+" @ 120mhz. was useless :( still have the CPU itself but nothing else

    • @a64738
      @a64738 5 років тому

      Difference got MUCH larger with Voodo card then without compared to intel. For some reason intel just ran much better framerates when combines with graphics accelerator card.

  • @ArixZajicek
    @ArixZajicek 6 років тому +7

    6:20 - 400MB drive costs 1337.86, best number ever 👌

  • @kens97sto171
    @kens97sto171 4 роки тому +1

    Worked at a electronics store at that time. We had several Cyrix machines for sale. A rep from them came one day and was answering questions, and handed out some goodies
    I got a Cyrix CPU without the black ceramic.. imbedded in clear Lexan. Had that for years... Was so cool.
    Miss those days.. so much was going on... Every day seemed exciting.

  • @scarakus
    @scarakus 7 років тому +11

    Memories are still vivid in my mind, as the story still continues today... AMD vs Pentuim. I prefer AMD.

    • @ytanonymity3585
      @ytanonymity3585 4 роки тому +1

      I wish Cyrix been revived one day by one company who really want to innovate the new processor and make a comeback for Cyrix in modern CPU market share... Then I would like to give it a try on Cyrix instead of AMD and Intel someday. Currently, I use Intel by the way

  • @TheJamieRamone
    @TheJamieRamone 7 років тому +86

    Damn, I remember a time when there were many processors in the market aside from AMD and intel! And not only Cirix, but also VIA, Centaur, and Transmeta. Loved reading about every new one in PC Magazine, being endlessly dazzled by the benchmarks. A new processor seemingly every other week, blowing all the previous ones out of the water (till the next one came out). It seemed the sky was the limit 2 the improvements in performance. And now we got only 2 choices and every new processor of each company is worth a kidney...shit!

    • @slipknotboy555
      @slipknotboy555 7 років тому +10

      Jamie Ramone That last part - Intel, yeah, for sure - but not AMD. AMD's killing it right now; one can buy a brand new unlocked 8c/16t CPU for ~$300 today (R7 1700)*.
      As you'll probably recall, Intel's 7700k (4c/8t) was ~$350, and their Broadwell-e 8core ~$1000. Intel has cut prices (finally), after feeling threatened by AMD in the desktop market, but not as low as AMD's.
      *And an unlocked 6c/12t from team red only runs about ~$200, and a 4c/4t ~$100 (although I'm not sure I'd recommend the latter; maybe, though)
      Unrelated to most of your comment, but just wanted to put that out there

    • @TheJamieRamone
      @TheJamieRamone 7 років тому +3

      Oh, yeah, the latest AMD processor IS cheaper. I do agree with that. And if they manage to start a price war with intel and keep them cheap 4 a while, I'd b very happy. Still, I think 300$ is expensive.

    • @slipknotboy555
      @slipknotboy555 7 років тому +5

      Jamie Ramone Yeah, that's fair. And I also agree with the rest of your comment - more companies in the x86 desktop game again would be nice (and if they were cheaper, of course, which would probably happen as a result)

    • @mememaster147
      @mememaster147 7 років тому +12

      Do you remember when one of the 3 factories on the planet that produced memory modules burnt down? Suddenly all the prices for RAM in magazine ads were POA and organised gangs were stealing lorryloads of RAM. It was bizarre.

    • @MrTweetyhack
      @MrTweetyhack 7 років тому +2

      You've never heard of PowerPC and SPARC?

  • @pikuma
    @pikuma Рік тому

    Great one. Thanks for taking the time to make this video! :)

  • @rodmunch69
    @rodmunch69 7 років тому +4

    The 586, at the time, seemed like a much bigger deal. Everyone I knew had one, literally everyone. I didn't recall the run of the processors being that short but they were a great value. You're correct about Quake really dragging them down - BUT there was a savior right around the corner, that was Voodoo. I remember being absolutely amazed at how good Quake looked and ran once I had a Voodoo card, and that 586 was suddenly an even better deal since they were super cheap, and if you were going to get a Voodoo card anyways, it was a great combo when it came to price.

    • @djhenyo
      @djhenyo 5 років тому +1

      With zero doubt, many or perhaps even most of the people you spoke to claiming to have a 586 were either lying to save their ego and/or ignorant as ants because they figured it was the next evolution from 486 even if they actually had something slightly better but just didn't know the official name.

  • @chiguazo
    @chiguazo 4 роки тому +8

    Best processor I've ever bought was the AMD Athlon, I couldn't afford a Pentium 3 so I settle with the AMD Athlon and I never regretted it specially when the sales person tried to sell me the cheaper Intel Celeron instead but I wasn't fool by the Intel logo. "Intel inside, dummy outside"

    • @psions555
      @psions555 3 роки тому +1

      My favourite CPU was the athlon t-bird I had at school. I was the first kid in my school to crack the magical 1ghz barrier with a simple dip switch setting , nerd flex! Wasn't stable for too long though, but more stable than the disastrous 1.13ghz p3. Now I'm sitting here typing this on a phone with a 3.1ghz processor lol

  • @mindright9771
    @mindright9771 5 років тому

    Wow! Talk about a walk on memory lane! Those were some exciting times in tech back in those days. I was working as a purchasing agent for Computerland back in the 80's and early 90's. It was probably some of the most fun I had ever had in the PC market. Great video!

  • @homosapiensisnotme
    @homosapiensisnotme 4 роки тому +12

    Cyrix, brings me back to my junior high school computer lab in the late 90s. I hope all is well for that girl I had a secret crush on.

  • @overkillaudioinc
    @overkillaudioinc 7 років тому +95

    There is also an odd twist missing from this story. I worked for a company in Dallas TX that was hired to evaluate the building that Cyrix had formally owned. A story told to us, that I had read about in the paper, was that Cyrix was far behind on getting their chip out. they had been telling their investors it was almost ready and it was going to blow everyone away. one day Masked men with automatic weapons came through the front door. rounded everyone up, and stole the designs for the new chip. This lead to Cyrix adding a lot of security camera equipment to the building. which we noticed on our walk through and when asked about it, was told this story.
    As we walked through the abandoned building. there were cases of processors holding doors open. x-ray images on the walls, blue prints and designs around and a whole lot of graffiti expressing the then soon to be former employee's anger and frustration with VIA and presumably the whole situation going on. there were prototype processors laying around. tons of chips with covers off so you could see the insides, full desks of stuff people just up and walked away from. It was as if one day, they building had just been locked and that was the end. which might have been what actually happened. this was about 1999 or maybe 2000 when we were there so they had to have closed, at least the then former HQ sometime prior to that. It was just the most bizarre thing to be walking through this abandoned company with everything just left there like some post apocalyptic scene.

    • @krashd
      @krashd 7 років тому +26

      There are similar scenes when most companies go under, one day you just can't pay the workers any more or the company that bought you for your name and IP don't want to pay workers any more and so tools have to be downed and work stopped and left as-is at that moment in time. The DeLorean factory in Northern Ireland had to be placed under armed guard when it closed because fans of Back to the Future kept trying to steal half-assembled DeLoreans.

    • @YAUUN
      @YAUUN 6 років тому +14

      I think the armed guards at the former DeLorean factory had more to do with the Troubles then Back to the Future fanboys. IIRC he managed to piss off both the Provos and the Unionists.

    • @alexa.davronov1537
      @alexa.davronov1537 5 років тому +4

      Well that's very sad story. Thanks for sharing it with us.

    • @Outdoorshuntingshooting
      @Outdoorshuntingshooting 5 років тому +2

      That was a scene from terminator 2. lol, seriously though I sold Pc;s for a living back in the day and I well remember the launch of this processor, I supported it as a product as a viable alt to intel. interesting to read this story.

    • @HA7DN
      @HA7DN 4 роки тому

      Also, the armed man was muttering something about some "Connor, John"...

  • @ThomasGrillo
    @ThomasGrillo 4 роки тому

    Really enjoyed this video! I've still got a couple of IBM 6x86 P-120s on a shelf. Loved the bit of trivia, at the end, too. Thanks for the video. :)

  • @jpviegas
    @jpviegas 7 років тому +29

    Yup, back in the day I needed to play Quake at decent speed, since I couldn't aford a Pentium so I got a 586 instead. The performance was so disappointing that it stings to this day...

    • @raafmaat
      @raafmaat 7 років тому +3

      i have the same experience, i bought a cyrix chip back in the day that i could barely afford, only to find out it was useless for me and it took me 4 more years to finally be able to buy an actual good gaming PC :(

    • @CaffeinatedTech
      @CaffeinatedTech 7 років тому +2

      Yeah I did the same thing. Ended up replacing it with a used Pentium 120. Then the 686 came out saying "pentium compatible" etc. Just rubbed salt in the wound.

    • @tenshi7angel
      @tenshi7angel 7 років тому +1

      +raafmaat
      Ouch 4 years.

    • @OlegLecinsky
      @OlegLecinsky 7 років тому

      Hahaha. I remember buying Pentium-100 (after getting rid of my AMD 486DX2 machine) just to be able to play Quake at decent FPS. Couldn't afford a Voodoo card though.
      For some time upgrading my hardware used to be driven of by id Software releasing a new title. I've bought a Verite video card at Quake II release - Voodoo II was still too expensive.

    • @1pcfred
      @1pcfred 6 років тому +1

      The Cyrix CPU worked OK until you got the chain gun. Then it would go pop, ... pop, .... pop I could count the time between bullets. That's the moment I remembered thinking, I got to get a Pentium.

  • @bc454irocz89
    @bc454irocz89 3 роки тому +8

    As a former cyrix employee i can say it was a fun place to work

  • @potardo9851
    @potardo9851 Рік тому

    Thank you for making this video. I had never heard of Cyrix and I ran across a Cyrix MII 366gp in my Socket 7 Amptron PM-585LMR family motherboard I was using to replace my 1993 Canon's i486's system with. Had to look it up for it's history and I was pleasantly surprised to find this.

  • @NoOne56488
    @NoOne56488 7 років тому +7

    I had a 6x86 266Mhz Cyrix(M2) and for the time it was fast, faster than most intel cpus at the time for gaming(what my friends at the time had anyway). That PC lasted me a fair while back then. ( Next PC would be a Celeron 566 )
    The Cyrix naming was a bit weird at the time, since in Australia you had the M2 that went from 233@200Mhz , 266@233Mhz and i think even 300@275Mhz? Too long along to remember. Sad to see this company go the way it did, who knows what the market would be like today if Cyrix was still around.
    These M2 chips where better with Windows 98 since Windows 95 was really bad for gaming. 98 handled gaming a lot better due to being a multi threaded OS.

  • @rogercruz1547
    @rogercruz1547 5 років тому +14

    I'm curious to know the trajectory of Macromedia...

  • @Miss__Understands
    @Miss__Understands 4 роки тому +7

    Wow, I always wondered what happened to Cyrix!

  • @Great.Milenko
    @Great.Milenko 7 років тому +20

    so in a way we have cyrix to thank for the intel celeron, and every budget PC component since.

    • @supermasterPIK
      @supermasterPIK 7 років тому +1

      No celeron = no affordable computers...
      Not everyone had $1800 to buy a top computer...
      Even the aptiva from IBM (Which also didn´t have super CPUs) could cost even $3000.

    • @adawg37
      @adawg37 7 років тому

      And that's not counting inflation. Closer to 10k now.

    • @fartonaut2291
      @fartonaut2291 7 років тому

      Intel celery*

  • @dj-murasame
    @dj-murasame 6 років тому +4

    Thank you! I have been thinking the same when I see kiddies complain nowadays. I remember having only 7fps in Quake and being happy when we got 20fps. 30fps is good and 60 fps is great. Everything else is just bonus.

  • @Kevintherubiconjeep
    @Kevintherubiconjeep 4 роки тому +3

    This popped up in my feed. Some great memories revived of those days.

  • @thorndavidvideos
    @thorndavidvideos 7 років тому +7

    Great video, Thank you.
    Speaking of wars, I agreed with all that you have mentioned... except for the XBOX ONE vs PS4, that war was over before it started, lol.

    • @thevancouverguy
      @thevancouverguy 7 років тому +2

      Ya, Microsoft never had a snowballs chance in hell in winning that war.Inferior specs and poor game support. If it wasnt for them doing one thing right, where Sonys still hasnt pulled their heads out of their ass, they wouldnt even compete at al. And thats supporting 4K Bluray, and it costing less then 4K bluray standalone players were initially. Even now they are pretty on par price wise, and so why get only a 4k bluray player when you can get an xbox one that does that and play games for roughly the same price. Boggles the mind why Sony continues to hold out on enabling that support. Besides for that, Xboxs have always so so technically inferior by such HUGE HUGE margin spec wise they are like comparing competely different generations of consoles. Like comparing a 386 (Xbox in the analogy) to a Pentium II (Playstations). Usually have the performance power of playstations. Even the new model coming out is half as powerful as powerful as a PS4 Pro

    • @thorndavidvideos
      @thorndavidvideos 7 років тому +1

      You are correct. It boggles my mind with Microsoft, their direction with the Xbox One (stupid name, btw) was completely nuts. I'm not sure if they can recover, the Xbox One X seems to be powerful unit but, the better game library is with the PS4, right now anyway.

    • @adawg37
      @adawg37 7 років тому

      Idiots...
      Microsoft isn't close to losing, and Sony hasn't won. If you fact check, Nintendo has the best selling product. IJS...