I thought maybe the madness had passed...

But it hasn't. I recently purchased a used laptop, and I have a K6-2+ 450 running at 475 in it. I plan on trying to pick up a K6-2+ 550 if I can.

I really thought the prices on them would have dropped by now. But look at this. Over $150.00 for a K6-III+ 550!

That is almost as much as I paid for the laptop!
I never really thought I'd get one of those (but it would be nice).

Things are worth what people are willing to pay I suppose. But there is a K6-2+ 550 for 1/3 the price. The only difference is 128K L-2 cache.

One hundred dollars more for an additional 128K ?

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

K6 III 550, unlike the lower rated AMD chips was not available in great quantities.

Did you know that AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Thoroughbred (not Barton) exists too? You can't buy it anywhere, not on eBay, not in the shop but some collector somewhere in 5 years may think it's worth $150.

333 FSB (not 400 FSB) 3200+ exists as well. Only available in certain OEM machines though and at 2333 MHz is the highest officially clocked Athlon XP ever.

May be worth similar $ in 5 years to people like the ones who bid on the auction you provided.

Believe me, I understand how rare the K6-III+ is. But when you consider the relatively small increase in performance the additional cache has vs the enormous price difference, it hardly seems worth it.



That is just one benchmark, the performance difference will vary.

The bidding is now up to $172.50, with 3 days to go! Will we see someone pay $200.00 for a 550 MHz CPU?

You've brought up the idea of a collector. Are there now people collecting CPU's? No dumber than the things a lot of people collect I suppose. The one that boggled my mind the most was finding out that there are people who collect strands of barbed wire. Now there's an exciting convention for you!

I don't think they're buying them for performance as they can get a modern AMD mobo-CPU combo that can outperform the K6-III+ 550 many, many times over... for a lot less $.

The reason the k6-III 550 is so expensive is that it was recalled by amd. I read it at tom's hardware guide. The 450 speed ones were the only ones available in quantities. I just sold one (k6-3 450) to a guy on these forums for $20 shipped. I doubt it is even worth that.

*EDIT* Who collects old computer hardware for so much money? Judging by the fact that any pentium 1's and previous generation chips should be free, $170 for a k6-III 550 is completely retarted unless you are completely blinded by the fact that you want to upgrade some old comp or have a chip that you "feel" is special in some way but really isn't.

Quailane, you're thinking of the standard K6-3. The K6-III+ was the mobile CPU, and is identical to the K6-2+, with the exception of additional cache. Neither of the plus series were released for desktop use, and found their way into the open market through unofficial channels.

There are still Socket 7 die hards out there. If someone is buying for a desktop Super 7, he is of course insane to pay so much for one. If they are looking for a last upgrade for a laptop, it is still hard to justify. It may be the best Socket 7 CPU ever made, but that still doesn't say much.

But the price on them (K6-III+ 550) has been holding steady at around $100.00 since I first found out about them several years ago. I'd just assumed that as their obsolescence increased, their price would start to reflect it. Rare doesn't always mean valuable, and it really shouldn't in this case.

It was only a little over a year ago I saw someone pay over $125.00 for an FIC VA-503+ baby AT super Seven motherboard on Ebay.