Cyrix M-II 300

• AMD K6-2 333, Cyrix M-II 300, Intel Pentium MMX 233

• FIC VA-503+ Motherboard

• 64MB PC100 SDRAM

• Western Digital Caviar AC35100 - UltraATA

• Matrox Millennium II AGP Video Card (4MB)

• Diamond Monster 3D-2 Voodoo2 Graphics Accelerator (12MB)

The Pentium II comparison system differed only in terms of the processor and motherboard in which case the following components were used:

• Pentium II clocked at 300MHz (66MHz FSB), 333MHz (66MHz FSB), 400MHz (100MHz FSB)

• ABIT BX6 Pentium II BX Motherboard

The following drivers were common to both test systems:

• MGA Millennium II Drivers v4.07.00.700

• DirectX 6 SDK

All tests were run at 800 x 600 x 16-bit color

Solid business application performance, what more can you expect from a processor whose sole existence relies on strong performance under business applications?

Horrible video playback scores, don't expect the M-II to be great for a DVD system, you would be better off buying an external player for your TV than running a Software Decoder off of an M-II.  The Cinepak, Indeo, and MPEG-1 playback numbers are terrible for a 6th generation processor.   While many will argue that the M-II was only running at 233MHz, you must remember that Cyrix is selling the processor as an M-II 300 and as you can clearly see the performance of the M-II isn't at the level of a 300MHz processor as far as video playback is concerned. 

Are Quake 2 and Turok playable on the M-II 300?  Sure, provided you are willing to spend an additional $220 on a Voodoo2 accelerator to achieve that playability.  This is more proof to the fact that the M-II is not an entertainment processor, games don't mix with Cyrix...not yet at least.   For surfing the net and typing up documents, the M-II is a $95 wonder, for fragging in Quake, it is a wonder that you're considering this $95 processor.