Cyrix stands up to Chipzilla with 1GHz Samuel

Competitive, but not necessarily cheapest

VIA Cyrix, long derided by Intel as a mere imitator, plans to hit 1GHz with its Samuel 2 Celeron rival. Having dumped its plainly daft PR ratings (Certain Intel insiders really got hot under the collar over that one), it now plans to go head to head with Celery on performance.

VIA's director of marketing, Dean Hays, told The Reg that the Socket 370 Samuel 2 - already sampling - would launch at between 733 and 800MHz in Q4, with a 1GHz part to follow. The current Cyrix roadmap shows an 800MHz Samuel 2 due in Q2 2002, but Hays intimated that that plan was almost certain to change.

The first Samuel 2s will be made using a 0.15 micron process and feature 128K L1 cache and 64K L2, but Hays said the latter figure would definitely increase in the not too distant future.

Samuel 2 is pin compatible with Celeron but will run at 133, 100 and 66MHz FSB, unlike the 66MHz Intel parts. The Cyrix part is designed to be more thermally efficient than Celeron, and the company expects them to find a home in notebooks as well as value segment desktops. A PowerNow/Speedstep equivalent, Dynamic Power Switch, is also featured. ®