Via's pitch, accordingly, is centered on cost. Cyrix III was designed as a low-cost alternative to Intel's Celeron processor. Cyrix III uses the same 370-pin socket as Celeron. In many cases, retailers can pair Cyrix III chips with older motherboards that they can no longer use with Celeron chips, Havey said. Analysts say low prices alone won't boost Via's fortunes, unless it can show performance comparable to competing chips.
Any challenger does.
The latest campaign comes in advance of Via's plans to launch new and improved versions of the Cyrix III that approach the 1GHz mark. Via announced a new 700MHz Cyrix III chip late last week. Cyrix III chips have a 128KB Level 1 cache and offer front side bus speeds of 66MHz, 100MHz, and 133MHz. Samuel2 adds a 64KB Level 2 cache for greater performance, but lowers cost and power consumption over the current chip, thanks to a newer 0.15-micron manufacturing process. The new chip, based on Centaur's C5B core, should debut at approximately 750MHz in March, Havey said.