Cyrix Cx86 for Dirt-Cheap PCs

Despite the conventional wisdom that PC prices go nowhere but down, entry-level computers have been stuck in the $1200-to-$1500 range for a decade and have actually doubled in price since the early 1980s. Now that IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and others are promoting economical network computers, some PC vendors are exploring ways to make sub-$1000 systems without sacrificing Windows compatibility.

Intel is taking a wait-and-see attitude. Cyrix, however, is jumping in with the Gx86, a highly integrated, low-cost PC-on-a-chip that allows a full-featured system to sell for about $800. Buyers would get a PC with Pentium-1 20 or Pentium-133 performance, 16 MB of RAM, a hard disk, a six-speed CD-ROM drive, a modem, and input devices.

To make this possible, the Gx86 integrates several functions that normally require extra chips. It has built-in SVGA graphics, a PCI interface, and 16-bit Sound Blaster emulation. It also has a unified memory architecture (UMA), which buffers the screen data in main memory instead of in a separate frame buffer. UMA can degrade performance, but Cyrix says the Gx86 avoids this by integrating the video logic with the CPU.

The CPU core is a stripped-down version of the Cyrix 6x86. It sacrifices superscalar pipelines and speculative execution but still predicts branches and retains a 16-KB cache. Although the Gx86 probably would not do as well as a Pentium-120 or Pentium-133 when running a CPU-level benchmark, Cyrix claims the efficiencies of high integration allow the chip to deliver that level of overall system performance. (BYTE has not yet tested these claims.)

Cyrix expects to introduce the chip by the e nd of this year and says that several "top-tier" system vendors will ship Gx86-based PCs in early 1997.