Cyrix CPUs
Contents
Cyrix
Cyrix Socket 5/7 CPU's tended to have good windows performance, but a bad FPU and most tended to get (very) hot. Also most Cyrix CPU's tend to be very poor overclockers.
6x86
Cyrix's first Socket 7 CPU. This CPU is rather slow (particularly for playing games) and produces a lot of heat.
6x86L
Cyrix's attempt to fix the heat issues, though it was only moderately succesfull at doing so
6x86MX/MII
This is basically a 6x86L with MMX instructions and a larger cache. Later renamed to Cyrix MII, this was also Cyrix's last processor line for Socket 7. As these CPU's were clocked (slightly) higher, the heat problems re-emerged. The heat problems were only fixed when a 2.2v version of the MII was released.
The Cyrix Socket 7 CPU's are generally not recommended for use in a retro build as there are better alternatives available. The most notable exception to this rule are the 2.2v parts of the MII which runs a lot cooler and are even somewhat overclockable. One note is that Cyrix CPU's support Linear Burst, which may accellerate it's performance by as much as 10%, though Linear Burst was never made available on Intel chipsets.