The New VIA Cyrix III: The Worlds First 0.15 Micron x86 CPU

Content Creation Performance - Windows 2000

Once again, we are disappointed with the Samuel2 based Cyrix III's performance. The processor does not seem very capable of handling the intensive Content Creation Winstone 2001 benchmark suite, even though these are the applications likely to be applied in a business situation.

The Cyrix III with the Samuel2 core falls behind the lower clocked and bus speed limited Celeron 566 MHz by 43%. The Duron 600 MHz, which also holds a clock speed disadvantage, manages to dominate the Cyrix III by performing 82% faster.

SYSMark 2000, a benchmark we have been using for quite some time now and runs a variety of applications independently, can give us a view of how a system reacts in the less stressful situation that does not involve multitasking. In the case of the Cyrix III, things do not look good.

The Samuel2 based Cyrix III could not complete the SYSMark 2000 benchmark because the processor would not complete the MetaCreations Bryce 4 test. Bryce 4 is a image creation utility that allows a user to create 3D scenes and landscapes for use in web content and movies. Unfortunately, the Cyrix III consistently hung when the benchmark attempted to use this application.

We can narrow the problem down to the Cyrix III itself, as the same Cyrix III ready motherboard was used to test both the Cyrix III chip as well as the Celeron chip. VIA did note that our sample was "pre-production" but gave no warnings about improper performance. All we can do is hope that this problem is alleviated before the "final" processors hit the shelves or else VIA will have quite a problem on their hands.