AMD K6-2 vs K6-2+ vs K6-III+ Comparison

[@QuadTubeChannel]

I had a K6-2, K6-III and K6-III+. One thing I noticed when switching to the K6-III was general I/O performance. In short, it went through the roof! A very noticeable difference thanks to that huge (at the time) 256 kb on-die cache. Everything seemed to load that much quicker. As for games, I'm not so convinced seeing as the K6-III has the same FPU unit as the K6-II. Perhaps that was down to the actual games I was playing.. God it's been so long I can barely remember. But I do certainly remember having an awful lot of fun with these CPU's, especially games like Quake, Carmageddon, Project IGI and Interstate '76. I also had a lot of fun - and learned an awful lot - by fiddling around with jumper switches in order to 'over-clock the bus' etc. Happy days :)

[@DhinCardoso]

2024 and this video still relevant ♥ TY

[@AetiusPraetorian]

The only K6 I had was a K6-233. Loved that little cpu, used to swap it with my Pentium 233MMX and run bench marks. The K6 bested the P233 in most tests easily. My next upgrade was an AMD Thunderbird 1.4ghz 266mhz FSB, great cpu as well.

[@Mr_Meowingtons]

ease to clock the K6 233 to 250 or even 266. i had one at 300Mhz

[@warrax111]

was it on s7 or ss7 motherboard

[@xpgamer5410]

my first pc had a k6-2 333mhz good memories. love your videos you got yourself a new sub.

[@forevercomputing]

I had a K6-2 3D Now - would only run at 170MHz even with the QDI board set to 300

[@TheVanillatech]

I bought a couple of K6-III+ CPU's from an eBay seller in Germany about 5 years ago. They were K6-III+ 350Mhz CPU's and he was selling over 200 of them brand new for £8 each. Wish I had bought a lot more.. Anywho, I built one into a SS7 gaming rig, applied a nice Pentium 3 Skt370 cooler, OC'ed the K6-III+ to 500Mhz and installed a couple of VooDoo 2's in SLI. To be honest, Screamer 2 and Quake II ran very nice but when I tried to play Gunman Chronicles (based on the HalfLife engine, which is technically iD Tech 3 with extra features) it brought the computer to it's knees. Not entirely sure why, I was expecting much better. Some games worked flawlessly, some struggled a great deal. I quickly figured out the system didn't have enough processing power to warrant a pair of V2's so I removed one with no visible difference to framerate. Maybe I should try them in my P3 1Ghz machine if I ever get the time. The specs of my SS7 build : K6-III @ 500Mhz 256MB SDRAM PC-100 ABit SS7 Motherboard (I forget the model) VooDoo 2 8MB Maxi Gamer 3D2 6.2GB IDE HD DVD-ROM 1.44" Floppy Aureal 3D Vortex PCI Soundcard Windows 98se + DOS 6.22

[@LawnMowersThingsThatMakeNoise]

I have one that he was selling :-)

[@TheVanillatech]

@Interlace I never figured it out. I checked and double checked every setting possible, in synthetics and other games, my K6-III+ machine was there or thereabouts on the money. Just with that certain game. It *could* be driver related or some software issue. Bit of an anomoly. But yes, the Pentium 3 and even the Pentium 2 are much faster clock for clock than the K6-III in 3D floating point. But theres no taking away from the K6-III in terms of the sheer age of the SS7 platform compared to SLOT1, performance in 2D games is stellar and those little chips really do overclock like champions. To correct my 7 year old comment, they were K6-III+ 400ATZ CPU's at 400Mhz, not 350Mhz as I originally stated.

[@TheVanillatech]

@Interlace I didn't know those command line variables, all the literature I read online and never came across them. Thanks for the heads up, worth a try! I was trying different combinations of FSB and multipliers, different amounts of RAM, disabling and enabling onbaord CACHE ... nothing seemed to work. I have one of the best motherboards ever made for the SS7 platform, the one everyone raves about in forums, so I figured that wouldn't be an issue.

[@TheVanillatech]

@Interlace Lets see if the proof, is in the pudding, as they say! I was an advocate of the K6-2, back in the day. Built many a gaming PC for co-workers and friends out of the system. I never owned a K6-3 back then, I got lucky and managed to snag a dual CPU P2-400Mhz server in a huge metal case, which served me well for years. But I still have faith! Realize their sought after items now, but I'd like to be able to justify, to myself, the hype. So far I'm left questioning! Shit even a P2-233Mhz has the balls to run Screamer 2 smoothly in 3Dfx mode, and Carmageddon 3Dfx too! Here's to drinking with bow legged women! All the best to you, Sir! (I'll find him for 3, but I'll catch him, and kill him, for TEN!)

[@random007nadir]

Back when the K6-2 was nearly new, a local PC store sold me a fake CPU. Had an official looking barcode label covering old markings and someone had gone to the trouble of etching new fake model details. Once I removed the label it revealed it was a 256 not 450 model. Apparently fake clocked CPU were pretty common back then. The retailer denied all knowledge, insisted the barcode label I removed was vital to a refund, but gave me a newly released K6-III to replace it to shut me up. I should have reported them to the police. Two weeks later the shop was empty and up for lease and the company never heard of again.

[@sl9sl9]

Yes ''fake'' CPU's were quite common then. In fact this is the reason why Intel started locking the multiplier on their CPU's after the original Pentium, because some retailers were selling lower clocked Pentiums as higher clocked models and Intel was getting a lot of returns/complaints as a result. AMD chips were not locked so this practice continued for a while, but largely died out after the Super Socket 7 era.

[@kaneCVR]

Great video (as always). Two small notes - if you use a motherboard with a VIA MVP3 chipset or a late revision ALi Aladdin V you will be able to cache 512MB of ram if your board has 2MB of L2 cache - there will be no slowdown. 2nd, using a VIA chipset board you get up to 10-15% better performance when disabling on-motherboard cache. ALi boards do suffer a performance hit tough - I've also confirmed that in my testing (tested on an Asus P5A).

[@phillycheesetake]

What about MVP4 chipsets, are they as good as the MVP3?

[@kaneCVR]

@@phillycheesetake The MVP4 chipset is a version of the MVP3 with no AGP slot and built-in graphics.

[@QuestionQuest]

MVP4 also has nice PCI clock divider they allows you to overclock system bus to 133 MHz and higher if the mobo has appropriate clock generator

[@tomtravers7127]

First off... loved the video! Brings back lots of nostalgic memories! But I would like to point out about the cache of the K6-2 and K6-III CPU's. The K6-2 had a dual cache design. It could use either the on board CPU cache or motherboard cache. Usually, the one that offered the highest performed the best. The motherboard cache was for compatibility with older Socket 7 CPU's that had lower on board cache. The K6-III was the first AMD CPU to offer a tri-level cache design. It utilized a dual cache on die like the K6-2 but forcefully used this PLUS what was available on the motherboard. The motherboard cache would be a variable L3 Cache for the CPU. So, choosing a motherboard with higher on board cache would yield the best performance when paired with a K6-III CPU. From here on, the Athlon thunderbird inherited much of the K6-III design. The only major difference was exploding IP cores (not the type of explode that you think of when you hear the word). When the core overheats, at a certain temp it makes a *pop and the core is dead. The competing Intel Pentium 4 (that came late to the game to compete with the Athlon Thunderbird) did not have this safety feature and I remember another students computer catching fire due to a dirty CPU fan and the Pentium 4 overheated. AMD was "stuck" on this marvelous design for a very long time basing future products off of the the Athlon XP and its successor, Athlon 64 design until some key personel from the K6-III and Athlon design team came back for Zen. During this time, Intel made huge improvements and became the leader in single core performance until recently. My college system was updated from a K6 233 MMX to a K6-III 350MHz 3DNow!, then to an Athlon XP 2200+ within a 3 year span. the latter required a board upgrade in the process but the rest of the components made the shift. My GPU went from Voodoo Rush -> Voodoo 3 -> TNT2 -> GeForce 2 MX440 -> GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. The 5950 died due to cap failure. Wish I still had the card now that I am capable of repairing this. I still have my TNT2 and Voodoo 3 but sadly gave away the Voodoo Rush after upgrading the first time. Thanks for the trip down memory lane! Great video! I'm subscribing!

[@AshenTechDotCom]

would have liked to see the quake 3dnow path benchmarked... im pretty sure exe's for that came out for both quake 1 and 2... and i remember it smoking the people i knew running celerons at the time... even most p2 owners i knew were impressed as hell at how well 3dnow worked... and how many games started supporting it....

[@AshenTechDotCom]

with a decent board you can get 600, the major issue back then also became heat, the cooler options where alot less mature then what we have now. we tested a clip mount water block and thick 120mm radiator, we managed 675 stable, it was still working as of a couple years ago last time i asked him about it and he got a bug up his arse to get it working again, the cooler was an AIO that was strangly made to support super7 and 370 boards and apparently is still working very well, more then is ever needed on 370 or super 7, oh, hes also got 2 of the same cooler on a pair of 466 celerons on an abit board that we re-capped, with far higher quality caps(he actually used audio quality caps because he already had all the values needed or ones that where higher capacity but would work.. anyway, those are clocked to 140+mhz fsb(from stock 60 or was it 66...lol......) we managed after going threw 8 chips, to find a pair that both would do 1ghz the other chips all went into other builds back then..that system he still runs as it was back then windows 2000, but he also has a cf card(512gb), its split so he has a more modern linux build that he had help building specifically for the old system to get the most out of it and be able to play most windows/dos/etc games from the point and click desktop... apparently its worked out very well for him, hes got a 3000 series agp card in it....the best agp card you could get...mostly because he got 2 of them in systems somebody traded in when his kids went off to college and wanted laptops... and...why wouldnt he use it? hes also got the same board, with adapters and celeron 1.4ghz tul chips, those he overclocked to 147fsb(from stock 100) with the same water coolers... (he bought a case after buying 2 from the seller on alibaba, and finding they did exactly what he wanted...hes not gotten anymore or been able to find more..and wont sell or trade the ones hes using..even on systems hes only fired up ones a year lol.... ) you can clock the k6-3 higher, one big tip though....these are VERY old chips, if you want to bet best results you need to carefully remove the ihs(metal cap) and replace the thermal compound, do not leave it off you will crush the die if you dont have a shim, its not worth it, but, some decent TIM makes a HUGE dif in my exp, we learned this later in the k6 series life, its not super easy to delid them, but its also not super hard, just some what i assume is high temp silicon glue holding the ihs down by the edges, (flat rim you gotta scrape up, clean off, apply compound, and, i just use a small dab of super glue in 3 spots so, if i feel the need years down the line, i can remove it and re-apply goop) i cant stress this enough, the big issue that kept the clocks down on these was temps, the same became true for some intel chips, the chips could safely take the volts needed for higher clocks..at least 600-650, if they had better cooling. the though of a copper plate rather then aluminum with liquid metal rather then cheap white chalk TIM, and a decent in box cooler could have allowed them to sell 600-650mhz chips(forums had people selling replacement IHS's stamped from copper, that...worked far better then the stock, and the fellow included a little bubble pack of arctic ceramic the few times i helped use one...the results where pretty clear, same cooler, we could take a 350 the guy had from maxing out at 475, just a hard wall, to hitting 550, the only thing changed out was the ihs and tim, and at that point it wasnt the chip holding it back from a bit more clock, the board, though very nice, was known to have some issues in the setting ranges needed to get 575-600, and, for his uses, it wasnt needed, the 35usd he spent on the ihs kit was, in his view worth it, he got that k6-3 cheap because everybody wanted the 400-550mhz versions, the 350 was the same silicon.. not even very hard to overclock to the same settings if you had a decent board.... often if you have a balky chip, pop the top, replace the tim, and test...you may find you easily get past the sticking point once the whole die is getting properly cooled.... thanks for the video, good times with this old stuff, and so many board where out there....some amazing....some horrific....some..amazing if you knew what to do...but horrific if you are a casual...

[@AmstradExin]

What about the option of having 75mhz FSB with a K6-III? I got one to work at 450 on my SIS-AGP board.

[@raven4k998]

it would probably be between the 100 and the 66 mhz cpu in performance

[@alvaroacwellan9051]

Now I re-watched this video and I just can't understand why MS-DOS performance goes down when the memory exceeds the cacheable limit. MS-DOS (at least without EMM386) isn't supposed to do any remapping so it would just fill the memory up from address 0, thus stay in the cacheable range no matter how much memory's up there. What this board might do with its memory ranges? I'm stumped.

[@InfiniteClouds]

Are these Quake benchmarks @ 300x200?

[@lloydieization]

Looking Into one of these board - some brief reading suggest the earlier ALi 1542 chipset is basically limited as Tag RAM (512KB usable as L3 cache) was disabled/broken until revisions G and above chipsets came out thus the issues with ram above 128MB RAM...

[@bytesaber]

At 10:17, would it have been useful to see MB cache disabled when using 128MB? I did not see this pointed out. Only when using 512MB, you disabled MB cache. Since you clearly show that crossing 128MB can effect all CPUs, it would be interesting to see what happens to the CPUs with onboard cache, at 128MB, with MB cache disabled.

[@mushroomgods4707]

loved my k6's matched a voodoo, then moved to tnt and tnt2

[@AncapDude]

Had an K6-3 450 with a TNT2 back in these days and it was an awesome Quake 3 machine. Still have those components and the K6 will come back to life soon, but propably with another GPU 😊

[@nicomputerservices2669]

I would think that since the cache-able area of ram on that MB is only 128MB then that is why you are not seeing a big difference at 512MB when you turn the MB cache on and off, since as far as I know Windows 98 loads programs from the top of memory down (so into the non-cacheable area of memory) your programs are not benefiting from the cache anyway hence no big performance increase/decrease from turning the MB cache on or off. I bet if you were to test at 128MB ram and turn MB cache on and off you would see nearly the same results as what you see switching from 128 to 512 with cache on because when you are testing at 512 you are effectively running without the cache since none of those games are being loaded into the lower 128MB that is cached anyway. Great video by the way! Thanks for all the hard work you do to benchmark and test so many components and make so many great videos. You are an asset to the vintage computer community!

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks for the kind words! It's always nice for others to interpret the data, sometimes I don't see what's right in front of me because I'm to close to it all :) Someone else pointed out that he also saw reduced performance by using 2 sticks of RAM instead of one. So I looked into this and it's correct. At least on this motherboard using a single 256 MB stick is faster than two 128 MB sticks. The performance lies in-between the 128 MB and 512 MB results.

[@MrMilli]

About the motherboard cache. That was interfaced through the chipset. So the type of chipset had an influence on the performance. There was also size difference, 128kb up to 2MB. There was also a difference in cache type: write-through and write-back with write-back being the fastest of the two. So it's possible that for someone with a different motherboard than yours, to get better performance with cache disabled on a K6-III+. But honestly, I doubt it. Maybe on a very badly optimized board.

[@raven4k998]

yeah a bad motherboard would make the on chip cache for better performance but a high quality motherboard would be the same either way

[@AshenTechDotCom]

they will do 600+mhz, the big issue was, what cooler could they use/include that would deal with that much heat? 650 is about where we found the good ones topped out. one way to get an extra 50-100mhz is to delid and use a shim/shims to protect the die..i dont recommend it unless you are sure your not gonna damage the die.. but... i have seen a buddy get 3 to 750mhz rock stable using a swiftech cooler that mounted threw the board(the board he has, was one of the first i have seen with 4 mount holes around the socket for non-clip cooling... i think it was also used by some OEM that just slapped a hunk of finned alum on it and used case flow to keep it cool, but the bios on the retail ver has decent oc support...and can take 133fsb stable...) the only k6 i personally de-lidded was one that i was given by a buddy that always ran stupid hot even with a very good cooler... i figured "what the hell"....cut my finger getting the lid off... zero thermal paste under it... i was gonna use normal past but a buddies father whos an eng talked us into letting him make a copper cap, and use some low temp solder powder stuff he used at work, the heat of the cpu melted the stuff, and, the new shim spread heat quite well, the cooler we used on that one was just a Thermaltake Tr2M2, it still hit 650 on that cooler... the same cooler works well on socket A and 370 as i remember... not the best by any means but the TMD fan was actually really good... as long as you didnt try and take it apart to figure out how it worked...(i got a stack of failed ones from a buddy who worked at frys, he dumpster dove for them as a gift to me..every one was clearly opened by somebody who broke one or both of the small wires in at least one place...i fixxed them all... over 20... we used those fans on a custom computer case a friend made from hard wood, it wasnt quiet, but it wasnt really loud either but, it was an amazing looking rig by the time we got done...it got him his sr project an A+++++(think it was 5 pluses) the teacher who was down on his idea to build a pc, and make the case by and from wood.. (we used a board tray from a case he already had, but the rest, he spent 6mo making... he used ironwood, and hand carved and rounded the edges, no nails, just wood and glue, dove tailing and some other methods.. the thing was a carpentry master work(according to his uncle, the carpenter who helped him, but only in the "use this tool" "sand it with this" way.....he already knew how to make boxes and cabinets... but even john(the uncle) was impressed by the workmanship and effort put into that thing... he had always wanted a good gaming computer back then and... it was not the best possible but... it was amazingly good for what it was.. and that case.... well actually the whole system, hes had since highschool, upgraded to the max(he got it an all copper cooler but used the tmd fan from the tr2m2, and got it the best highest capacity ram he could, videocards the best the platform will support..cant remember what but we spent a few months researching what to get and it came down to 3 options 1 very hard to find, the other 2 less so..but sometimes more expensive... he used an awe64 i traded him(isa), 2x matrox m3d (powervr pcx2) cards, yes they will work in something like sli if the boards pci will support the bw needed... the ones we had would without issue.. up to 4 infact we found..hehe... dual voodoo2, and...fml i cant remember what he went with as the main gpu/gfx card.... either way.... he almost got it a k6-3 but, started reading some people have issues with them in the board hes got, depending on the bios revision the board has... and... the sad part is the bios revision number didnt get updated properly so you cant be sure what bios you have... or even if the newer bios will work on your board till you flash it... (hes got an extra bios chip, he just wants me to do the live flash for him when i visit because...hes scared of touching parts in a powered system... even though hes watched me do bios chip hot flashes many times....even flashing firmware to the rom chip of his dads RV computer, using an old motherboard thats bios was on the same kind of rom(volts and socket)...found out what tool to use, and the rom file from an ftp, took it like 20min to fully flash and verify.. the rv computer then nolonger had a slew of errors due to a date that was out of range... also all the hidden features the computer had, showed up on the LCD and HUD(all the gages and such are part of the screen that makes up the insturment panel/dash... ) anyway... i have fond memories of the k6-2, very fun chips to overclock... and... the results could be quite impressive on a decent board... again the big issue with higher clocks was temps, that alumnium lid and cheap "turns to chalk" thermal paste under it... was just..not the best option/ solution for the higher clocked/specked chips... i can say, its not that hard to delid them, and worth it to replace the thermal goop under the lid.. temps will drop and give you that extra headroom.. just tack the lid back down with some super glue at each corner...so you can pop it off again if you need to replace the goop again...

[@matsv201]

I have a question.. When does it stop being nostagia PC? Supersocket 7 computers got all the SIMD and other stuff we are use to today... Well it don´t have dualcore (i think there was double socket 7 around)

[@ellenorbjornsdottir1166]

the music is pretty... where'd you get it?

[@danielgarrido691]

Hi, grat vídeo!. One question, what would be better?, K6-III 450 (no +) or K6-2+ 570? Thanks :)

[@philscomputerlab]

Close call, one has double Cache, but slower clocks. They might perform very similar.

[@danielgarrido691]

​@@philscomputerlab but, wikipedia says that K6-2+ have double cache, that's not correct?: K6-2+ (180 nm) L1-Cache: 32 + 32 KiB (Data + Instructions) L2-Cache: 128 KiB, fullspeed K6-III "Sharptooth" (K6-3D+, 250 nm) L1-Cache: 32 + 32 KiB (Data + Instructions) L2-Cache: 256 KiB, fullspeed

[@philscomputerlab]

@@danielgarrido691 ???

[@danielgarrido691]

​@@philscomputerlab sorry, I meant that the K6-2+ has L1 and L2 cache, while the K6-2 only has L1 cache, you meant that the K6-III has 256kb of L2 cache while the K6-2+ only has 128kb, Right? (sorry for my English)

[@philscomputerlab]

@@danielgarrido691 You said K6-2+

[@TheUntamed101]

I have a rather nice baby at super socket 7 board I am hoping to max out the memory on (va-503+). But I don't know what I am looking for to find out the maximum cachable memory is. How do you determine this information?

[@lordmmx1303]

I ran 400mhz K6-II in Fujitsu Siemens desktop computer that supported 233mhz max cpu's. It worked very well :)

[@simbin.]

Is it possible to get this CPU 3:58 in the US?

[@twoquickcapri]

What voltage are you running on the K6-III+?

[@philscomputerlab]

It was 2.2 V but likely a lot less is needed for 550 operation. Personally I'm not into over clocking, it was mainly for this video and because I didn't have a faster model.

[@jeremygeorgia4943]

Some motherboards had a 100 Mhz setting. You could then do a 5.5 multiplier. Those systems would fly. The board I used to have also had a 2 MB onboard cache. It would improve performance, but it also depended on the application. The K6-III+ was a laptop processor, so it ran VERY cool. One time, I decided to see how fast the chip heated up & how hot it got. I started the machine, with my finger on the top plate. I was expecting to need to turn it off rather quickly, but it never got hot. It barely even got warm.

[@firelightyear]

How good is the software emulation on the AMD K6-2?

[@DJGrounded]

the k6-3 laptop cpu uses less wattage and voltage and some desktop motherboards support the laptop cpu's. id go with 133mhz fsb and 133mhz memory but 66mhz memory will work as well. the big gains (gaming) depends also on the video cards bus speed and the gpu's speed and what type of memory is on the video card. alot of times old benchmarks were optimize for pentium cpu's. also cyrix cpu's were pretty awesome cpu's. thank you for uploading this video. p.s. the unreal game is an awesome benchmark!

[@192168117]

Bought a amd k6-2+ and a p3 both with 450 mhz. Which one to pick for my retro pc ?...and which graphicscard...? i have elsa gloria synergy a8 8mb and 3dfx voodoo 1 with 4mb i think - but prefer to go for Nvidia Tnt2 or maybe Geforce 2gts or 3ti...oh men why am i spending my money on old stuff like that xD

[@warrax111]

go with pIII, unlesss you dont need slow down k6-2 to 200 mhz or something. k6-2 can be lowered by multi, p3 not. k6-2 can be slowed down to 50 mhz fsb, and x2 multi, so 100 mhz if need. if you take slot 1 with good case, you can switch CPU on slot 1 easy for unlocked P2 or Celeron 266/300, if you need to slow down CPU to emulate slower systems.i heard all CPU p2 and celerons before august 1998 are down-unlocked. you can swap CPU easy thanks to Slot 1 if good case present, from Celeron 266, through PII 400 , to PIII 450 to PIII 1 ghz (fastest slot 1 P3), if needed. only advantage of ss7 and k6-2/ k6-3 is easy slowing throu multiplier software, dont need to restart comp. You can downclock Celeron 266 or unlocked PII down to 66mhz x 2, so 133mhz minimally, iif you need slow down. (only on good motherboard) Otherwise, faster P3 is always better.

[@192168117]

@@warrax111 yeah I will play around lil bit and keep the best System. For now it's p3 500 with 128mb ram 10gb IDE Hdd geforce 3 ti200. Got two Socket 370 Boards with Celeron 433 and 466 which i have to test out.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

GAAH! I just want a K6-III(non +) AHX 400MHz for my* IWILL P55XB2 Socket 7 board. *bought new in Sep.1997 with a K6 200MHz, 2x16 MB of EDO RAM and a ViewTop Tseng Labs ET6000 with 4.5MB of MDRAM! ^EDIT: Also First Build....and yes! ..there's a difference. Just about two weeks of agony - if I remember correctly (NO internet at home/near....WEST Jutland 1997)

[@InfiniteClouds]

Is the purple (K6-III+ 400 66FSB) the one the featured in your 4 in 1 DOS build? If so what is the other K6-III+ in your chart? Is it just the 450hz/2volt version? It seems to be quite a big drop off from the green/red. I'm curious if any K6-2+ or III+ chip worked for your 386/486/Pentium hybrid or if it had to be the 1.6 volt version. Thanks Phil!

[@philscomputerlab]

It has to be a + chip, these are mobile with multiplier you can change live. If it's a 2+ or III+ doesn't matter much at all.

[@mrbrad4637]

I could have really used this video back in 2001/02 I was given a heap of old PC parts, including (from memory) a K6-2 550mhz and a k6-iii 450+ and I had no idea which was the fastest chip to use in my build... I believe I went with the k6-iii+ cus it sounded newer and better even with the lower clock speeds... Looks like my decision was a good one.. It was a somewhat collectable chip the k6-iii+ 450mhz in particular even back in around 2008 or so as I sold it on eBay for more than I thought it was worth and there was considerable interest in it from memory.. when back then I only thought of it as obsolete... Wish I kept it to be honest

[@TheVanillatech]

I bought a bunch of K6-III+ CPU's from a German ebayer many years ago for (I believe) around £9 each. Used two in retro rigs over the years, which I still have, but I kept the others in their original packaging. About to list a few on eBay as I've been on a mission to downsize my collection lately. Seemed wrong to have them sitting there doing nothing all these years. The other two OC'ed happily to 500Mhz (and beyond) and never a hiccup. Great little Windows 95 era CPU's.

[@TechieZeddie]

I didn't realize there was a certain amount of system RAM was being cached. Does the Coppermine Pentium 3 have this behavior too? If so, how much memory is cached? I ask because I just built a Windows 98 SE PC around a 440BX motherboard with a P3-650 MHz Coppermine. Thanks for the informational video!

[@philscomputerlab]

Nope, the Pentium III doesn't have any such issue. This video only applies to the CPUs shown.

[@joselemusjr6451]

so cacheable mem comes down to the mother board l2 cache amount? say running a k6-2 500mhz with a mvp3 mobo with 1mb l2 cache. or does it fall on the chip. sorry for the confusion.

[@philscomputerlab]

It's just that at some point, CPUs started having the L2 on the CPU.

[@joselemusjr6451]

PhilsComputerLab ah ok yeah your right. did some research my board can do upto 256mb

[@NightSprinter]

Just curious, Phil, for an Epox P5VP-A+ motherboard what's your suggestion for safely pushing my K6-III+ 450ACZ past 400MHz? I remember hearing about some cards not liking running on an out-of-spec bus speed.

[@philscomputerlab]

You just raise the multiplier, no need to touch the bus speed!

[@NightSprinter]

Gotcha. Guess I'll have to do so via software, as the jumpers go no higher than 4.5x

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea there is software for DOS and Windows AFAIK that can do this.

[@rhuwyn]

So in this video you cover K6-2, K6-2+, and K6-III+. But what about the K6-III (non-plus). How does it compare?

[@philscomputerlab]

+Brandon Bridges Same thing!

[@rhuwyn]

+PhilsComputerLab sorry Phil I didn't quite understand what you mean. are you saying a k6-3 (non plus) is effectively the same performance as a k6-2+ or k6-3+

[@philscomputerlab]

Not the 2+, but to the 3+ yes.

[@byteframe_primarydataloop]

you didnt start with hey guys

[@SkalabalaK6]

Hey Phil :D I want to add a SSD to my GA5AX 5.2. I would like to know what will be the best performance wise. IDE to sata or PCI bootable sata card? If I go with IDE sata then I might get a better FSB overclock(K6 2 533) as I am running 125mhz and 130mhz for benching. I think I saw on VOGONS that you went with IDE to sata.

[@philscomputerlab]

+Schalk Jansen Why? I get the idea, but this is socket 7 board. The processing power is extremely limited, The OS also doesn't support TRIM. I might have an alternative for you though, I'm working on a video about some very fast retro storage option which should be online in a few weeks.

[@SkalabalaK6]

I know its stupid idea but I am obsessed with my K6 and if I can do something to make it load 2 seconds faster I would do it :) I got rid of all my other nostalgia because it was getting out of hand :p Even the dual P2 had to go :(

[@philscomputerlab]

Fair enough. You will like that video I'm talking about :D

[@SkalabalaK6]

+PhilsComputerLab Where is this video? :D :D

[@philscomputerlab]

It should be online next week :D

[@mermacyinp633]

Unreal or Unreal Tournament does have more fps if you use a old nvidia tnt 2 card running in Open gl , the opel gl is faster than ( a lot )on a Geforce 200 mx ( which is faster in directx ) bur You need to tweak settings and somewhere when nvidia added the directx 8 support the card became slower ( or unreal added support ?) -I think they came with the 12.something drivers -the drives earlier than 12 might be faster or 12 is -the later are not.Anyway with the default open gl drivers (dark) I did have playble framerates in 1024x786 maybe round 60 fps

[@shadowman_390]

Excelent and interesting video. Not a fan of the background music in general though.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

If at Socket 7 6x66: AMD K6-III(400MHz AHX) ≤ K6-III+ ?

[@911Salvage]

The ALi Aladdin chipset is incompatible with some GeForce2 cards. I remember getting lower performance on 3DMark and OpenGL Quake III when using a GeForce2 with said chipset.

[@philscomputerlab]

+Mouldy CPU Yes good point!

[@sl9sl9]

Both ALi and especially VIA chipsets had hellish compatibility problems with most AGP graphics cards for years (but not 3DFX cards), as did the entire Slot A Athlon platform. It was a nightmare as consumers could not find this out before purchase, and tracking down the cause of random ass BSODs was very difficult. These days you buy a graphics card and it just works, what a nice thing!

[@starwatch1968]

K6 III + Voodoo 3 💪😍

[@AshenTechDotCom]

motherboard cache with K6-3 can make a difference, slower cache and some types of cache, will slow down some processes, others with multi-mode or the correct modes, can boost perf... the boards we ended up on back then had very good fast onboard cache, that actually boosted performance in some workloads, without hampering others.... one board a buddy had... its onboard cache was great for k6-2, but k6-3...not so much, and you couldnt actually disable it... (disabled...didnt disable it..when the k6-3 was installed...intel or k6-2..or older..it would disable it...bios bugs....) the k6-3 was a chip i always wanted back in the day... but my k6-3 would do 650 with a decent, if a bit loud cooler...

[@psycho0815]

Now compare them to the PII and III as suggested under the PII vs PIII clip...

[@philscomputerlab]

My time is limited, but I will get to that at some point.

[@theangel540]

Not the best chipset ( ;-) ) ... A VIA MVP3 board with more cache ram will change the result

[@Utroz]

I have a K6-III+ 450 ACZ 2.0V and I always ran it at 112fsb x5 =560Mhz 2.0V (tried up to 2.4V and still couldn't hit 600Mhz. I still have this chip, I even de-lidded it.

[@AshenTechDotCom]

delid is key if you want any hope of the 600, i have seen a few hit 650, but only a few, 600..you need excellent cooling, and verygood TIM under the IHS and OVER it..if possible a copper ihs(lid) or just a shim and direct die contact with a good water block, well it was quite possible just... not something amd could do within the limits they sat for the chips, most need a bit more power and produce enough extra heat any box cooler wouldnt be able to cope... anyway, getting 550-575 out of most of these chips becomes pretty easy with a decent board and a delid-re-goop in my exp... but, you gotta have very good cooling to hit 600+ and a good board, good everything really, it can be down to making sure you have the right memory modules with the right chips on the right board for some reason... but...i have seen one of these hit 675 and remain stable no matter what test was thrown at it.

[@mxthunder2]

would have been interesting to do all 4 (adding in a regular K6-3) @ 450MHz, i think thats the highest frequency all 4 were made at.

[@Elios0000]

my first pc build was k6-2 400Mhz....

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice, I bet you have good memories :)

[@Elios0000]

lots oh you should do a video on lesser known Voodoo Rush chips had one in a Pentium 120Mhz

[@philscomputerlab]

Ah the Rush :) I think that's one of the few Voodoo cards I don't have. I do have the Banshee and I'm quite fond of it.

[@Elios0000]

oh a great card to pair with a Voodoo2 setup that was lesser known at the time too was the Intel i740 it was nearly as good as the Matrox cards in 2d for dirt cheap

[@SparkyOne549]

My first was a dx4-100 then I upgraded a few years later with the k62-500, was a huge upgrade at the time.

[@Atari8man2011]

Check out the FIC VA-503+ AT Motherboard it has 1 mb on cache on the motherboard and gave me better performance with a k6-2 550

[@DJGrounded]

some other things to consider (newest is not always best!) motherboard revisions, bios revisions, cpu drivers, defragging the hard drive, chipset drivers, video drivers, quality of the memory,sthe quality of the sound card being used can also speed up the system. dont forget the y2k patch. in benchmarks the k6's had a much faster cycle rate than the pentiums of the time (the k6 patch) therefore for each clock cycle a pentium is about 1-3 steps behind. itd be way awesome to get a hold of a scsi board as well. p.s. have you tried windows 2000 or XP or maybe even linux ((mandrake (mandriva)) was pretty simple to install?

[@jaygames1980]

I had a 550 it out did my k6-iii

[@Samopal.VanoZz]

Ehh.. i played myth and myth 2 on it. And doom, and a lot of quake..

[@christopherhurley2570]

I'm not sure if your ram timings are getting set more conservatively or if your 512MB are slower chips than your 128MB setup but you shouldn't be taking a performance hit. Maybe its the chipset on the motherboard setting more relaxed timings when the banks increase but you might consider overclocking / tuning / tightening up your ram timings in bios to get that performance back

[@zilog1]

fun fact, you can just move one of the resistors over to another place to basically clock the cpu of a k6-2 to a k6-3 :p

[@dallesamllhals9161]

Show me the 256KB cache

[@kret9803]

If You have been using a motherboard with 2MB of cache, the results of K6-2 with 512MB RAM and L2 cache enable will differ a lot. So Your investigation of the RAM impact on efficiency is true only for this specific motherboard, and not for super socket 7 in general.

[@WuTangWyatt]

whats up with australians and old windows? i swear 70% of the videos on virtualbox I've watched have been by australians

[@SparkyOne549]

Read their “about” section before you judge. I suppose you also think that kangaroos are jumping around his business, and maybe you also they’re using old mb and cpus because there’s kangaroos hopping on a treadmill to create electricity. Btw, why would you click on a k6 video anyways if you’re not into “old windows”

[@NikolasOldSchool]

I used my old k6-2 to hold my soap, by the time the pins became lose and fell out.

[@tofuguru941]

For anyone interested, I spotted a SWEET find! I was going to attempt a K6 II+ cache mod myself, but then I saw a listing on eBay of someone that does this mod... They've sold many and have great reviews. SOLID performance. I got mine doing 633mhz @ only 2.2v (115fsb) They still have a listing up. Item # 165591645766 It's basically a K6 II+ 570 turned into a K6 III+ 570. 256k cache! If anyone is interested, I'd probably snag one before this person runs out of em. I've basically maxed out my SS7 build now! And yes, definitely DISABLE the motherboard cache if you have 128 or 256k L2 Cache on the CPU. Motherboard cache is less stable when overclocked. Especially if you're trying to push your FSB. Example, my system won't work with 120fsb if I have the motherboard cache on. But with it disabled, I can run 120fsb x 5 multiplier (600mhz) which BOOSTS mem bandwidth!! Undoable with onboard cache on!