The Last Adversary of AMD and Intel (PCGH Retro, May 30)

…1979: On this day, the company Capsule Computers is founded in Japan – but it is known by its short name: Capcom. The developer soon launches some of the best-known and most successful arcade machines and video games, including the Street Fighter, Mega Man and Resident Evil series; Capcom is also bringing some of them to the PC – and in cooperation with Valve, the Japanese even released the first playable title with DirectX 10 support in 2007, the Lost Planet demo.

…1997: Intel is not alone: ​​other manufacturers also offer x86 processors, including AMD and Cyrix. With the 6×86, the latter have a very competitive processor on offer, which will receive a successor on May 30th: Compared to its predecessor, the 6x86MX (code name MII) offers the instruction set extension MMX (called EMMI here), an enlarged L1 cache and other improvements; at 133 to 233 MHz (in an IBM version also 250 MHz), however, it cannot keep up with Intel’s new Pentium II. Cyrix loses market share and the new parent company National Semiconductor is much more interested in the small Media-GX chips, so that the further development of the desktop division comes to a standstill; the 6x86MX “successor” MIII is nothing but a renamed MII. Via later took over the developer and launched the Cyrix III, their last x86 product, which, however, only played in the low-end market. So the 6x86MX remains the last serious competitor for AMD and Intel.