Cyrix looking forward to a better year end

"We made money for the first half of the year but what happened in the second quarter was we were seeing fairly vicious price cutting of the 6x86," Sherry said. "Although shipments were pretty strong they weren't quite enough to make up for that." The 166MHz 6x86 which cost $125 in April now sells for $70, for example.

Sherry remains optimistic about the rest of 1997. "We're really bullish about the second half of the year. We'll sell hundreds and hundreds of thousands of processors and the production rhythms that we predicted are correct."

New chips should help the Texan firm return to black ink. Cyrix is shipping its 166MHz and 200MHz 6x86MX in volume and recently delivered 166MHz and 180MHz versions of its MediaGX. A 200MHz Media GX and a 233MHz 6x86MX are scheduled for the October-December quarter.