Two New Chips Join the 300MHz Club -- New low-cost chips from AMD
and Cyrix are good news for economy-minded buyers-and bad news for
Intel.
By Jonathan Blackwood and Owen Linderholm
The 300MHz CPU fraternity has a couple of new members, as Advanced Micro Devices
(AMD) and Cyrix Corp. introduce low-priced Socket 7 processors. The two companies, still
relentlessly nipping at Intel's heels, hope their latest offerings will swipe a portion of the
value-priced-systems market from the chip behemoth's clutches-which should translate to
cheaper systems for you.
We tested two PCs that use the new chips: The CyberMax ValueMax B8 is based on Cyrix's
chip, and the Polywell Poly K6300MX contains the AMD processor. Both of these low-priced
systems offer good performance-roughly equivalent to 80 percent of an average 300MHz
Pentium II system's performance for around 70 percent of the price. The bottom line: Although
neither of the systems could keep up with 300MHz Pentium II-based systems, they easily
beat PCs based on Intel's new Celeron chip, with an equivalent low price.
A Look Inside the Chips
AMD and Cyrix have steadily built credibility along with market share-although their
strategies for doing so differ a bit. Tell AMD how well its K6 processor compares in terms of
performance or price with Intel's MMX-enabled Pentium or its new Celeron processor, and
you're likely to be met with protest. AMD prefers to compare the K6 with Intel's Pentium II
line. In reality, the K6's performance exceeds that of the MMX Pentium and the Celeron, but
it can't keep pace with the Pentium II.
Cyrix made a run at Intel's high-end processor dominance in 1996 but has since regrouped
and rethought its position. By concentrating on Socket 7 processors for lower-end systems,
Cyrix met with more success.
New alliances have also aided both companies. AMD, which has had problems meeting
demands for its K6 processor as it moved to a 0.25-micron process, struck a deal to have
IBM produce K6 chips. And Cyrix gained chip-fabrication capability for the first time when it
was acquired by National Semiconductor Corp. Now, AMD and Cyrix are moving forward with
their respective chip technologies.
The 300MHz K6 powering the Polywell system examined here represents a simple clock
stepping. In other words, it's the same K6 as before, with a slightly higher clock multiplier.
But by the time you read this, AMD's new K6 3D chip should be available. It introduces a
group of 21 instructions, similar to the MMX instruction set. The K6 3D's instruction set was |
