3 ms·

Wow, Cyrix. There's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

RetroTechie 3y ago
Yeah. Super Socket 7 was a great platform. Plugging cpu's from different manufacturers into a common socket, a choice of 3rd party chipsets, wide range of cpu speeds / TDP / price, and good longevity. These days sockets are shortlived & each manufacturer has their own. Or cpu's (and even RAM) soldered directly onto a board so you can't upgrade anything.
- krylon 3y ago
  Yeah, that sucks. Used to be, one could just replace a single component to upgrade one's PC, soon you could no longer just replace the CPU, you needed a new motherboard, which also required new RAM. We lost something there.
- jonathanlydall 3y ago
  3rd party chipsets not always a good thing. I remember consistently having reliability issues with Windows 98 when installed on systems with VIA chipsets, but almost no problems with Intel chipsets. Gigabyte motherboards if it makes a difference, and yes, the chipset drivers were installed.
- rasz 3y ago
  Not only CPUs, but also multiple Chipset manufacturers all supporting same Socket 5-7-SS7. Performance delta between worst (some VIA, async cache) and best (TX, Pipelined) chipset/cache configuration was up to straight 50% https://dependency-injection.com/early-pentium-chipsets/ https://dependency-injection.com/early-pentium-chipsets/ and thats before you picked CPU and graphic card :o Wild times.
krylon 3y ago
My first PC had a Cyrix "P166+" running at 133MHz. That CPU used almost twice the power of a Pentium running at the same clock speed, yet many PC vendors put the same fans on both. As a result, under heavy load, my PC would crash rather often, leading me to curse audibly until somebody pointed out the power vs fan issue to me and recommended I get a bigger fan. So I did. After that, it ran pretty stable. Cyrix made a trade of in that CPU, the integer performance was far better than that of a Pentium at the same clock speed, the floating point performance lagged far behind. I got that machine in the summer of 1996, and then all my friends started playing Quake, which made me sad. Playing Quake (let alone Quake II) on that machine was more like staring at a slideshow. A 3dfx card was way outside my budget, unfortunately.

Yeah. Super Socket 7 was a great platform. Plugging cpu's from different manufacturers into a common socket, a choice of 3rd party chipsets, wide range of cpu speeds / TDP / price, and good longevity. These days sockets are shortlived & each manufacturer has their own. Or cpu's (and even RAM) soldered directly onto a board so you can't upgrade anything.

krylon 3y ago
Yeah, that sucks. Used to be, one could just replace a single component to upgrade one's PC, soon you could no longer just replace the CPU, you needed a new motherboard, which also required new RAM. We lost something there.
jonathanlydall 3y ago
3rd party chipsets not always a good thing. I remember consistently having reliability issues with Windows 98 when installed on systems with VIA chipsets, but almost no problems with Intel chipsets. Gigabyte motherboards if it makes a difference, and yes, the chipset drivers were installed.
rasz 3y ago
Not only CPUs, but also multiple Chipset manufacturers all supporting same Socket 5-7-SS7. Performance delta between worst (some VIA, async cache) and best (TX, Pipelined) chipset/cache configuration was up to straight 50% https://dependency-injection.com/early-pentium-chipsets/ https://dependency-injection.com/early-pentium-chipsets/ and thats before you picked CPU and graphic card :o Wild times.

krylon 3y ago

My first PC had a Cyrix "P166+" running at 133MHz. That CPU used almost twice the power of a Pentium running at the same clock speed, yet many PC vendors put the same fans on both. As a result, under heavy load, my PC would crash rather often, leading me to curse audibly until somebody pointed out the power vs fan issue to me and recommended I get a bigger fan. So I did. After that, it ran pretty stable. Cyrix made a trade of in that CPU, the integer performance was far better than that of a Pentium at the same clock speed, the floating point performance lagged far behind. I got that machine in the summer of 1996, and then all my friends started playing Quake, which made me sad. Playing Quake (let alone Quake II) on that machine was more like staring at a slideshow. A 3dfx card was way outside my budget, unfortunately.