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> This has always not always been impossible, as AMD, NEC, Via, and others, have done so in the past

Was VIA ever competitive performance-wise with Intel or AMD? They’ve always been a weird bit of trivia, for my whole life… and I’m not so old but I’m not very young.

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IIRC there was a old computer history blog talking about the various processors, and there were specific times when the Cyrix and VIA were competitive (including price/performance) - if you were talking about processors that were actually available to buy and use.

AMD/Intel were always winning on paper but there were times when a CPU would be launched and simply unavailable.

Cyrix before the VIA buyout was competitive on integer performance.

VIA (via Centuar, the CPU design firm), focused on low-power, lower-performance chips. They only used Cyrix for the name, and not for very long.

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