Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by genxy 80 days ago
I wonder in an alternate timeline, if Cyrix had worked with Carmack to get a patch for Cyrix, how the outcomes would have changed.
1 comments

Cyrix was physically incapable of pipelining FPU instructions. Without Pentium Quake would have had to wait two more years for commodification of CPUs delivering similar floating point performance.

https://thandor.net/benchmark/33

Quake needed March 1994 Pentium 90-100 to deliver ~smooth 25fps. Cyrix released similarly performing 6x86MX PR200 in May 1997, AMD K5-PR166 January 1997. Quake was unfeasible till ~1998 at the earliest to be able to sell playable game.