What is AMD AM5x86?
| PROCESSOR SPECIFICATIONS | ||
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| Manufacturer: | AMD | |
| Model: | AM5x86 | |
| Year: | 1995 | |
| Transistors: | 1,900,000 | |
| Microns: | 0.35µ | |
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This is the chip that put AMD onto the map as official Intel competition. While I am mentioning it here on the 486 page of the history lesson, it was actually AMD's competitive response to Intel's Pentium-class processor. Users of the Intel 486 processor, in order to get Pentium-class performance, had to make use of an expensive OverDrive processor or ditch their motherboard in favor of a true Pentium board. AMD saw an opening here, and the AM5x86 was designed to offer Pentium-class performance while operating on a standard 486 motherboard.. They did this by designing the 5x86 to run at 133MHz by clock-quadrupling a 33 MHz chip. This 33 MHz bus allowed it to work on 486 boards. This speed also allowed it to support the 33 MHz PCI bus. The chip also had 16 KB on-die cache. All of this together, and the 5x86 performed better than a Pentium-75. The chip became the de facto upgrade for 486 users who did not want to ditch their 486-based PCs yet. The Am5x86 processor incorporates advanced features to achieve 586 performance. The Am5x86 CPU runs clock quadrupled at 133-MHz with a 33-MHz external bus--ideal for the latest PCI peripherals. High-performance features such as a unified 16-Kbyte (K) cache using write back technology minimize the time the x86 core must spend waiting for data or instructions, thereby accelerating all business and multimedia applications. |
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