What r the advantages and disadvantages of using Cyrix and AMD against Pentium?

[Tacruza]

What other alternate processors r available in the market that can be used instead of the Intel Pentium processor? What r the advantages and disavantages of using such against Pentium(The performance differences and criteria).

 

[DataFly]

Whatever you do, don't buy a Cyrix as they are better used as fire starters than as CPU's.

Anyway...
An AMD K6 series CPU is slower than a Pentium III but faster than a Pentium II in some areas. The AMD Athlon "classic," which can be found in Slot A cartrige format only, is about on par with a Pentium III at an equivelant clock speed, though it is faster in some areas and slower in others. The newer Athlons, often dubbed Thunderbirds and normally found only in Socket A format, generally outperform their predecessors and Pentium III's, though they are most likely not operating as fast as they are capable because they aren't getting data from the rest of the computer as fast as they need it, which should be fixed soon when motherboards supporting faster memory are available.

Intel's own Celeron line of processors is slower than the Pentium III at a similar clock frequency, mostly because Celerons communicate with the rest of the computer slower than the Pentium III does.

Each of these processor types, with the exception of the Celeron and some PIII's, has a uniqe interface with the motherboard.

 

[Peter]

On older boards that don't have 2.2V, the Cyrix MII at 2.9V is about the only choice you have for a cheap and simple update. The -300 speed grade, running 66 MHz bus, 3.5x multiplier, and 2.9V, runs on many old mainboards.

If you have 2.2V support and/or bus frequencies higher than 66 MHz, K6-2 are the faster way to go - but they're more expensive than the Cyrix chips.

So it all depends on what you want. If you're after faster home office work and internet browsing for as little money as possible, then see if your mainboard can take a Cyrix. If you're after faster gaming, and don't have a mainboard capable of taking a modern graphics card as well, then you'd better forget about changing only the CPU.

Regards, Peter