Thanks, I found that very funny. Yes, the memories!
You guys must not remember these from the mid to late 90's. They had an absolutely catastrophic failure rate. I had a nice box full of dead ones.
The thing was, way back then, enthusiasts, like myself would be changing/upgrading a computer, even if it worked perfectly, every year or two (sometimes even multiple times a year, if I remember correctly).
Because the speed, hard disk capacity and sometimes other stuff, typically doubled every 1.5 to 2.5 years (approximately). So if extreme overclocking, burnt out the hardware in 3 years, rather than the 10..20 years+ it could have lasted, who cares. Second hand (technologically obsoleted stuff, even after only a few years), was not worth much in those days (if I remember correctly).
I.e. If they (Cyrix cpus) had a short lifespan, it was not necessarily a total showstopper (but I'd much prefer reliable/longlasting chips) as regards buying them, as their low cost, made them easier to buy, and they would be partially worthless, if a few years old, due to technological obsolescence.
But by today's standards, such a poor life expectancy would be considered really bad. Someone who is not too bothered with getting the fastest/latest/greatest stuff, could probably buy a desktop PC today, which could last them 5..10 years.
We use to have performance doubling (and HDD capacity increases), of every 1.5 to 2.5 years.
Nowadays (for cpus), we are lucky, if we get 10% in a very good/lucky year.
Broadwell (which has taken something like 1.5 years or so to arrive), is going to be, what, 2% faster than Haswell, possibly more, as I'm not sure if the desktop parts specifications, are released yet and/or if desktop parts have been reviewed.
EDIT: I don't know how fast Broadwell and Skylake are going to be (Desktop). So please ignore my figures above, until the proper results come out. I put 2% down, as I needed to say something, to put it into perspective. I think Intel are claiming up to 5% (Broadwell), but I interpret that as 2% in real life/practice. (my opinion).