boot (October 1996)

Source: http://www.megalextoria.com/wordpress/index.php/2017/03/09/boot-february-1996/

It seems like through out most of the 1990s there was always a new CPU coming out or just around the corner. On the cover of the October 1996 issue of boot alone there are several mentioned including the first 166MHZ Pentium laptop, the P200 (Pentium 200), the P55C and MMX (the same thing really), the AMD K6, the Pentium Pro and the Cyrix 686. That's a lot of CPUs.

The Pentium 200 would be the fastest clocked classic Pentium CPU (before MMX) and was relatively rare and expensive compared to the Pentium 166. The Pentium Pro was Intel's first attempt at a successor to the Pentium but it was only faster if you were using 32-bit applications (which most people were not yet) and was quite expensive. The Pentium 200 and subsequent MMX Pentiums were more of a stop-gap and marketing solution to maintain pace with competitors such as Cyrix. The Pentium II and III were essentially just improved Pentium Pros that came later. The Pentium II added MMX instructions, and increased L1 cache but the L2 cache only ran at half processor speed. The Pentium III added SSE instructions. Clock speed, bus speed and caches increased as newere interations were released.

The Cyrix 686 was an interesting processor. When it was released, it was much faster than Pentiums at the same clock speed for certain things. Cyrix processors excelled at integer processing and 16-bit applications. However, if you were for some reason a heavy floating point user or made significant use of 32-bit applications, Intel processors were generally better. Cyrix processors, like AMD processors would later, gave you a lot more bang for your buck. However, Cyrix's moment in the sun only lasted a year or two. While Cyrix processors may have been faster clock for clock for some operations, they could not scale up in frequency the way Intel processors did. Over the next few years, Intel progressed from 200 MHZ to 300 MHZ to 500 MHZ and beyond. Cyrix could not keep up.

AMD was not much of a factor at this point but that would change soon. The first truly competitive K5 wouldn't come out until the following year and by then the superior and more popular K6 was on its way. With the K6 which would be released in six months or so, AMD picked up where Cyrix had left off, producing a chip that was competitive with the Pentium II but at a much lower price. Since then the only real contendors for x86 CPUs have been Intel and AMD. Cyrix also released Pentium II competitor (the M2) but because of the aforementioned scaling issues and an inferior FPU it was relegated to the bargain bin.

Besides CPUs, this issue also had a cover story on multimedia (the buzzword of the day) and a review of Quake among other things.

Thanks for stopping by and check out some of my other recent retrocomputing posts below!

Home Computer Magazine, Volume 5, Number 5 (1985)
https://steemit.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/home-computer-magazine-volume-5-number-5-1985

Sound Blaster AWE32 PnP (1996)
https://steemit.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/sound-blaster-awe32-pnp-1996

Montgomery Grant ad (Commodore 64, etc., 1988)
https://steemit.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/montgomery-grant-ad-commodore-64-etc-1988

Amiga Plus (June/July 1989)
https://steemit.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/amiga-plus-june-july-1989

Atari 1040ST
https://steemit.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/atari-1040st

boot (December 1996)
https://steemit.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/boot-december-1996

Computer Gaming World (November/December 1982)
https://steemit.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/computer-gaming-world-november-december-1982

boot (January 1997)
https://steemit.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/boot-january-1997

Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition (PC/DOS 1996)
https://steemit.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/duke-nukem-3d-atomic-edition-pc-dos-1996

Commodore Educator 64
https://steemit.com/retrocomputing/@darth-azrael/commodore-educator-64