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Cyrix Cx486
The Cyrix Cx486 was an x86 microprocessor designed by Cyrix. It primarily competed with the Intel 486 with which it was software compatible, would operate in the same motherboards provided proper support by the BIOS was available and generally showed comparable performance. The chip also competed with parts from AMD and UMC.
Due to Cyrix being a fabless company, Cyrix used Texas Instruments, SGS Thomson and IBM which had their own foundries to manufacture their processors, though this was done under a contract that allowed each company to build and sell Cyrix-designed processors under their own branding.
As a result, there were many versions of the Cx486 and the manufacture of them differed slightly depending on which company had built them, though equivalent chips generally perform near-identically enough that the end user would not notice any difference between them.
The contract with SGS-Thomson outlived the Cyrix Cx486 processor's lifespan in the mainstream market by over a decade with SGS-Thomson still producing industrial solutions built upon the Cyrix design into the late-2000s.
The Cyrix Cx486 was available with different features, clock speeds and voltages over the duration of its production.
Introduced in May 1993, the Cyrix Cx486S, codenamed M6, was designed to be compatible with the Intel 486SX and like the Intel part, did not have a floating point unit onboard which was of little concern to an average user at the time due to most games and applications using purely integer-based code. The processor did, however, sport a 2KB Write-back cache and a special "Write-Burst" signal which offered a slight performance boost in certain applications provided the motherboard was capable of utilizing the feature. The processors were labelled "FasCache" to emphasize this feature as most processors used slower write-through caches.
Users could upgrade the processor to 486DX specifications through use of an accessory, the Cyrix Cx487S which was an x87 Floating Point Unit coprocessor which fit between the CPU and the socket on the motherboard.
The table below lists the models of this CPU that were produced.
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Cyrix Cx486 AI simulator
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Cyrix Cx486
The Cyrix Cx486 was an x86 microprocessor designed by Cyrix. It primarily competed with the Intel 486 with which it was software compatible, would operate in the same motherboards provided proper support by the BIOS was available and generally showed comparable performance. The chip also competed with parts from AMD and UMC.
Due to Cyrix being a fabless company, Cyrix used Texas Instruments, SGS Thomson and IBM which had their own foundries to manufacture their processors, though this was done under a contract that allowed each company to build and sell Cyrix-designed processors under their own branding.
As a result, there were many versions of the Cx486 and the manufacture of them differed slightly depending on which company had built them, though equivalent chips generally perform near-identically enough that the end user would not notice any difference between them.
The contract with SGS-Thomson outlived the Cyrix Cx486 processor's lifespan in the mainstream market by over a decade with SGS-Thomson still producing industrial solutions built upon the Cyrix design into the late-2000s.
The Cyrix Cx486 was available with different features, clock speeds and voltages over the duration of its production.
Introduced in May 1993, the Cyrix Cx486S, codenamed M6, was designed to be compatible with the Intel 486SX and like the Intel part, did not have a floating point unit onboard which was of little concern to an average user at the time due to most games and applications using purely integer-based code. The processor did, however, sport a 2KB Write-back cache and a special "Write-Burst" signal which offered a slight performance boost in certain applications provided the motherboard was capable of utilizing the feature. The processors were labelled "FasCache" to emphasize this feature as most processors used slower write-through caches.
Users could upgrade the processor to 486DX specifications through use of an accessory, the Cyrix Cx487S which was an x87 Floating Point Unit coprocessor which fit between the CPU and the socket on the motherboard.
The table below lists the models of this CPU that were produced.