Cyrix 486SLC - Checking out an interesting and confusing CPU family from 1993
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 มิ.ย. 2024
- Join me for a look at an interesting CPU from the early 1990s.
The Cyrix 486SLC (and my Texas Instruments versions) were interesting choices for consumers during the 386SX era.
In this video we will go over a bit of the chips history, some of the market factors at the time and then dive in to some benchmarks and gaming tests.
I'm keen to hear your feedback as always so please leave your comments below
If you'd like to donate to future projects - my ko.fi link is below.
ko-fi.com/techdistractions
Shoutout to / @thesoundcarddatabase
Timeline
00:00 - Introduction and Project
02:09 - 386SX Line of CPUs
02:50 - Cyrix 486SLC & Legal Drama
04:00 - Market Background 1993-1994
05:28 - Iterations of the 486SLC
07:07 - Finishing the build
08:30 - Boot and Benchmarks
10:15 - Gaming Tests
16:09 - Conclusion and Crystal Dream II Demo - เกม
I had one of those clip onto your CPU versions for upgrading an existing computer, it did work as advertised to some extent. The performance improvement felt a bit underwhelming, it was not what I was expecting, live and learn. :_)) / thanks for the video.
5:15 the XT upgrade would require a new keyboard, probably at least 1 HD floppy 1.2 or 1.44 hence they cut on the qty of ram to keep the same price
I too was considering the keyboard. Switchable ones were around in the earlier days but maybe there was an allowance for this. The floppy is interesting, depending on the board used I'm assuming a multi I/O might also be required.
Ahh I vaguely remember the early 90's computing days. It was around late '91 the first time I built my own PC to replace my Tandy 1000SL. I was 17 and didn't know much yet and went with many of the recommendations of the clerk at the computer shop I bought the hardware from. I built an AMD based 386DX40 machine with 4 megs of ram. A connor 300ish MB hard drive. Generic IO board. A Sound Blaster sound card. Some generic CD rom (though I may have added that later) Some generic MOBO. Some generic 9600 baud modem for going on local BBS. And some generic VGA card. They were selling the Mobo, ram, cpu, I/O card with a 1.44 floppy in a desktop style case as a DIY starter kit where you could then choose your add ons. It was a nice system for the time. I remember how excited I was to go home and stick all my new parts together and start up some games and see how fast my new modem was compared to my Tandy with a 2400 baud modem on my favorite BBS. It was also a nice upgrade to go from Tandy graphics and sound to VGA and a sound blaster. Can't remember what I paid for all that but it was A LOT! Strange how fast PC stuff moved in the 90's. Around 4 years later in 1996 I went back to that same computer shop and bought a used computer from them with an AM486 DX2-66. 8 megs of ram running a dubious copy of Windows 95 with a 1.2 gig hard drive. An S3 video card. ESS sound card, faster modem and so on. A complete working multimedia setup but for me the attraction was it was Internet ready and capable. All this for $300.00. Less than 1/3 what I paid for all that other stuff just 4 years prior. But of course it was already an aging 486 in the days of the Pentium and Pentium hype was everywhere. My little 486 was a good intro to the web.
Am386DX40 - a seriously good chip despite its delay to the market.
I hear your story about the generic parts - for many it was a case of making sure you had VGA and a soundblaster, let the rest sort itself out :-)
@@techdistractions Honestly some of those parts may not have been generic. I'm only recalling them as such because it was so long ago. After all I was 17 when I built it and now I'm 50. And it was my first build so I was less personally involved in the part selection than the clerk was simply due to lack of knowledge. No Internet back then. Had to rely on what little knowledge I gained from the few PC magazines I subbed to back then. I know many more details about the parts of the later builds I did. Even the used 486 I bought in early '96. As with anything my knowledge grew with time and experience.
I'm not too far behind you and gosh, I remember trying to buy parts for my first "build" - we had to put a lot of trust into sales staff! I was about 15 or so when my friend and I took a train into the city to the retail store.
I have plans to re-create that build actually, I've been considering doing some video projects on my recollections of builds gone by.
I'm glad my first pc was a 386dx40. I was coming from a Commodore 64 and my dad found a used system with 4mb of ram and a 130mb hard drive in fall 1993. I added a soundblaster pro and a 420mb drive in 1994 before upgrading to a 486 dx2/66 in late 94 or early 95(same case, different mb), which got upgraded again before I went off to college in fall 95 to a dx4/100 and 8mb of ram. I upgraded a lot back then, way different than today where I run nearly 10 year old hardware.
Dx40 with a sound blaster pro - classic! What was the first game you jumped to try out??
@techdistractions Funny thing is I don't remember, but I stayed up until 4am. I only had Doom, Wolf3d and Lemmings at the time and didn't get a modem until a few months later and had to swap floppies with friends. I remember playing Doom a lot and didn't know any better at the time the framerate was horrid until I went to one of my friends house. He had a brand new Gateway dx2/50 and I was in awe that the gun swayed back and forth on his machine lol. I even first watched Second Reality on that same setup once I did get my modem.
I still have the same sb pro and it's in my k6-2 600mhz machine alongside a gus ace.
ah yes the good old floppy swapping - love it
My first PC was an 486DLC-40 based system. So i strongly believed, that i had a real 486DX. But Sim City2000 was so sluggish to play and only the later upgrade to a Cyrix 486DX4-100 solved that problem and was i huge step in term of performance. Many years later i learned about that cyrix 386 on steroids and suddenly everything made sense why it was possible to place a real 386 into the socket and why SC2000 was so slow. But it was always my first PC and i rebuild such a system with a TI486DLC-40 and a fpu together wie 8MB RAM and my beloved Soundblaster16 which i never sold.
so cool you kept your SB16 :-)
That Cx486DX4-100 was a lovely chip too! My first "family PC" was the Cx486DX2 but in the form of the IBM Blue Lightning.
Holy cow. This video helped me realize once again just how old I am. I remember buying a Cyrix CPU back then... I was so happy about the performance boost.
haha that moment when you load doom and realize the minus key and low detail is your future..
The good old days, when there was actual competition in the tech arena.
agreed - that's one of the biggest sources of nostalgia for me as I've gone through a few of these video projects. The industry was just as interesting as the hardware and advancements in tech.
Thanks for the credits !
Thank you for an incredible resource and website 🏆
I used some sort of a Cyrix 386 to 486 upgrade to spruce up my 386SX 16 MHz Packard Bell, and it was a cheap way to get a few more years out of that system, as it boosted both the instruction set as well as the clock it ran on. Eventually saved up enough for Micron 200 MHz Pentium Pro, and let me tell you that was a mistake. Should have gotten the 233 MHz Pentium MMX like my brother, as that was half the price, and a lot less trouble, and much easier to upgrade, whereas the Pentium Pro was suoer picky on memory...needed not just same memory stick, but also same stepping, as otherwise it wouldn't work. It was a real pain and waste of money, let me tell you. Working like 1000+ hours at minimum wage as a teenager to get it it sure hurt. (Cost me like 4 to 5 times what I spend on a car in high school.)
ouch - yes we live and learn! I remember looking at various magazines and thinking I was missing out on the Pentium Pro - glad I waited a little :-) The 233MMX was an absolute classic.
@@techdistractions It sure was. Pretty good value for the money too, unlike the Pentium Pro, which had some great features, but due to their rarity most software never used them. I used it for years, had to justify the expense, and ran NT 3.51 at first, and Linux later. It was an OK experience, unless you tried to upgrade, but not worth the purchase price. When I bought a top of the line 17 inch MacBook Pro in 2011, it was only three fifth of the price, and even less adjusted for ten plus years of inflation, and I got way more use out of that thing as well.
Once you go SB32 + 4Mb RAM you never go back! And this includes the SB Live Models. Nothing like decent on hardware acceleration etc. Something required due to ISA BUS limitations hehe
SB Live was awesome - I remember getting one when I moved on to the Pentium 3 and really noticed the difference in Windows games :-)
Was 9 when this chip came out and the oldest sibling so we didn't quite need a computer for a few years yet.
Could definitely see myself falling for the 486slc, expecting to run maxxed doom and then some. And then the disappointment.
One of those "a little bit of knowledge is dangerous" products. The history of computing is full of these haha
Thanks, it was interesting. Also made me remember that here (in my country) Cyrix 6x86 was pretty popular in 1996-1998. And kudos for Wacky Wheels, it's a just one of several tests but I always have a soft spot for that simple silly game, heh.
lots of love for wacky wheels !
First PC we had was a similar cyrix 486dlc-40, ended up taking it to college with me in '95 😄👍
aw nice!
I've got the same soundcard myself, never actually used it beyond making sure it works due to having received an ESS 1868F in the same box of parts. At least it doesn't make FM soundtracks appear to be playing from a kids toy, the way the AudioPCI does. That's my bar for terrible FM synth.
Even if I get my 386DX-40 PC working, I'll still have no need for it due to my Aztech soundcard with genuine OPL2. But hearing it playing the readme track from Doom II: Hell on Earth - video: AS Media Sound As 16 (OPTi 82C931) - I'd call the FM synth good quality.
It gets the job done better than AudioPCI that's for sure!
HINT into tech history... Lucky Star and Gold Star merged to form Lucky Gold Star, or LG... Side note, MSI is the abbreviation of Micro Star International
I was of the understanding Taiwanese “Lucky Star” is not related to the Korean “Lucky” electronics group.
There were so many little tech startups during the 80s and 90s out of Taiwan and I considered doing a short little piece on Lucky Star was they were one of the ones that sprung up quickly but died just as fast.
"Mixed feelings" pretty much summed up computing in the '90's. Regardless what we had, or where we were in life everything changed with DOOM. We then had to beg, borrow, or work for that 486 with 4 megs of ram just to have our hat in the ring. Yes, this same system would be doable, and enjoyable for most as not everyone could commit a few thousand for a system with a few hundred will be a lot less painful. Besides, there was never a right time to buy a computer in the '90's, nor did a person keep it very long before the desperate need to upgrade something kicked in.
Did you think about putting the FPU in and re-running the tests?
I would if I had a suitable co-pro :-) While benchmarks will look better and maybe the odd demo, it wont help the gaming too much.
One thing I love about TH-cam is that all this stuff that was available in the 90s that child me could never afford but only dream of touching is now online for me to experience.
I used to think the Cyrix logo and this chip were the neatest things. I didn't know then what I know now but it doesn't matter: This is cool stuff. No mixed feelings here! 😂 ❤❤
I don't currently have a PLCC based x87 and I reckon if I had one it would've been a substantial boost over the emulation.
I never did figure out back in the day. But, I always stayed clear of 486slc processors. I hated them. But I loved 486dlc processors. I'm sure or know part of it was the quality of motherboards they are installed in. It was all a budget thing back then.
SLC was pitched at OEMs selling SX boards which were already cost-reduced and probably not too different to the 286 era. I agree though, as a youngster if I saw my board versus a premium DX board I know what one I'd choose!
I really wished I had some strange stuff from back in the day. I remember this one board used a v20 chip and was sold as a crazy fast xt board. Really chip compare to the then mainstream 386sx board. All of them had to be sent back due to freezing or dying. Payed with a next gen processor. I remember this one crazy board with a strange clock speed like 83mhz or something like that on a 386 chip. Ran crazy fast with dos and windows 3.1. After about 1 month it started locking up and dying. It ran so fast it had a tiny fan on it. We ended up replacing the board and used a standard intel processor. Most of the boards that was tried used soldered in processor. Shared video ram. Etc. To bad they didn't work. Just keep going back to intel. @@techdistractions
I hear you - Intel was the safe bet for many years.
Thanks for sharing your story!
I actually have a computer with an IBM -486SLC2-75- 486BL3-75 I'm trying to rebuild!
oh wow - that is awesome :-) very lucky having that one
@@techdistractions Slight correction: 486BL3. Still a lucky find from what I hear. Very similar concept design processor.
wow lots of love for that chip anyway, did it come out of a valuepoint by any chance?
That is the worse CPU that I ever had the chance of owning. It would crash on Demos like there's no tomorrow, and I did change memory etc to find what the heck was causing it only to conclude it was the stupid CPU. Good for invoicing and stocks software but that's it. All else will end crashing badly. Piece of JUNK.
...👏👍🖖