UK accuses Cyrix/IBM of false advertising

The UK Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint against Cyrix/IBM and its reseller Time Computer Systems, claiming the companies advertised a 233MHz chip as a 300MHz part.

The complaint cites Time, a subsidiary of Granville Technology Group, for advertising a processor called the IBM/Cyrix MII-300. The compaint was issued by a consumer who tested the chip, and clocked it at only 233MHz.

The manufacturers claim that the '300' in the name was the MHz-equivalent Performance Rating (PR) of the chip. However, the standards body determined that "because naming chips after the MHz clock speed, as Intel and AMD did, was so commonplace in the industry, the Authority considered that readers were likely to infer that the true MHz clock speed of the advertisers' processor was higher than it was."

The story appears at The Register's web site, http://www.theregister.co.uk .