Old super socket 7

well i got a old super socket 7 today and was wornding what was teh fastest cpu made for them i know it will hold both AMD and Intell. thanks for yalls help

O and i was the first to post in the new part of the forum

The fastest CPU made for the Super Socket 7 was the AMD K6-III 450mhz. It's pretty much equivalent to the P3-450, and is often faster in many instances. The fastest Intel CPU made for Socket 7 was the Pentium MMX 223mhz; there were faster MMX non P2 CPUs, but these were notebook only.

In RAW mhz the K6-2 550 was the fastest SS7 CPU made. The K6-3 450 was fast but no way was it comparable to a P3 450.

Are you sure the 223 was the fastest SS7 chip intel made? I hold in my hand a rare P266 MMX.

very cool *Rpkole goes to hunt down a AMD K6-III

This just came up at AOA.

The fastest official speed for any Socket 7 CPU is 550 MHz. AMD improved the performance of the K6-2 by adding 256K level 2 memory cache to the CPU. This was the K6-3. Since CPU's spend 90% of their time using 10% percent of their instructions, L2 memory cache speed is very important. If the memory cache is on the motherboard (as it is with all Socket 7 CPU's other than the K6-3, and the laptop K6-2+ and K6-3+) it can only go as fast as the system bus. If it is on the CPU then it is equal to the CPU's speed.

Though none of them would offer a huge performance increase, a standard K6-3, or either of the mobile (AMD only sold them to be used in laptops) K6-+ series would give you a noticeable boost in overall performance.

A K6-3+ 550 is the best Socket 7 CPU ever made. But they are very rare, so you might as well forget about that one. The K6-2+ are much easier to find, and are identical other than only having 128K L2 cache rather than 256K.
You have to be careful though, not all Socket 7 motherboards will support the mobile CPU's. You need to be able to go at least as low as 2.2 volts (most of the + series are rated for 2.0, but they seem to be able to tolerate 2.2 without problems) for the core, and you need BIOS support.

Here is a good compatibility list, http://compatlist.k6plus.com/ .

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http://www.aoaforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25754

More information on the K6-+ series here, http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1406

Tebore isn't imagining things. Sandpile shows a 300 MHz P55, http://www.sandpile.org/impl/p55.htm . I think these were only for laptops, and are very rare. Not too long ago Compugeeks had some 266 P55's for cheap.

K6III + 450, I think they may have made a few 550s in the same core. They will do 600 easy & can go higher if you mobo has the bus for it(some had 133mhz settings)

Which board did you get. Some where pretty cool with maybe 2m on board cashe which will work kinda like L3 if you use a CPU with L2.

repo man11 said:

Tebore isn't imagining things. Sandpile shows a 300 MHz P55, http://www.sandpile.org/impl/p55.htm . I think these were only for laptops, and are very rare. Not too long ago Compugeeks had some 266 P55's for cheap.

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Rare indeed especially the desktop version. I have a P266 MMX pulled from a desktop.

You best bet would be to get a K6-2+ 550MHz. The + indicates ondie L2 cache. The +'s were actually made for laptops but will work in desktop boards and have a much better performance than those with no ondie L2.

I heard rumor that there werre actually a very few K6-2 600's produced but I have never seen one. Also incase you didn't know, if you set the multi to 2X on a K6-2(3) it will use it as 6X .

Tebore said:

Rare indeed especially the desktop version. I have a P266 MMX pulled from a desktop.

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Extremely rare indeed, I've heard of them, but I've only seen them in notebook form. I think I saw an advertisement a long time ago where a Compaq PC was based on a P266 MMX, and possibly a 300, but I don't remember it clearly. Also, I meant 233, not 223, darned typos.
As for the K6-III, they were comparable in many cases, but I guess I should have mentioned that they were terrible for gaming due to the older video drivers not using the 3d-Now! instructions.

I had a k6-III that I bought on these forums and it would post at 100x6. I benchmarked it against a 233 mhz pentium pro (I have two), and the pentium pro beat it most of the time. I was very surprised, but anyway I sold the k6-III to someone else after that.

Aslan said:

Extremely rare indeed, I've heard of them, but I've only seen them in notebook form. I think I saw an advertisement a long time ago where a Compaq PC was based on a P266 MMX, and possibly a 300, but I don't remember it clearly. Also, I meant 233, not 223, darned typos.
As for the K6-III, they were comparable in many cases, but I guess I should have mentioned that they were terrible for gaming due to the older video drivers not using the 3d-Now! instructions.

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Compaq advertised them? Cool cuz that's where I pulled my chip from.

K6-3s have to have proper BIOS recognization, or they will be beat by Ppros. The bios has to be able to recognize the prefetch, the larger cache, the board must have a 100FSB, a 1024k on motherboard cache to get full potential. 3Dnow! must also be recognized.

Quailane, the Pentium Pro is Socket 8. So that would mean a different motherboard. Really comparing apples and oranges.

The K6 series was always plagued with poor FPU operation speed when compared to their Intel counterparts. The on die L2 cache of the K6-3 greatly helped performance, but it couldn't fix what was a problem of the CPU's architecture.

But a K6-3 (or either of the K6-+ series) on a good Super 7 motherboard makes a good basic computer. I put one together for my cousin (my aunt has it now) using a K6-2+ 450 @550. With a Chaintech 5AGM2 (Via MVP3) motherboard, it has enough power to play DVDs. But just barely.

K6-3s have to have proper BIOS recognization, or they will be beat by Ppros. The bios has to be able to recognize the prefetch, the larger cache, the board must have a 100FSB, a 1024k on motherboard cache to get full potential. 3Dnow! must also be recognized.

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Well this is the motherboard I used, and still have, with the most recent bios.
http://www.soyo.com.tw/products/proddesc.php?id=32
The board came stock with a k6-2 400 that I still have sitting around. I pulled it out of my stepdad's old computer when we got a new one in 2001.

Hmm, the soyo website doesn't say anything about any motherboards supporting k6-2+ and k6-3's. This one shows that my motherboard supports them though.
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

repo man11 said:

This just came up at AOA.

http://www.aoaforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25754

More information on the K6-+ series here, http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1406

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THe K6-3s I dont recommend, they run hot and you should use a good heatsink (700mhz-1ghz p3 grade), they also are 250nm procs, the mobile +s are all 180nm procs and overclock much better (600, k6-3s dont really), also the +s have guarenteed working powernow (unlike athlon platform which requires chipset support, the K6 powernow doesnt require chipset support) where u can dynamically (with a menu) switch from 2x-6x. There are also "P mobiles" availble, these are +s with powernow turned off, but with the L2 cache and 180nm. But price wise and findability, just get a +. All the cpus have the same L1 cache BTW.

K6-2 no L2, 250nm, no powernow
K6-2 P 128K L2, 180nm, no powernow
K6-2+ 128K L2, 180nm, powernow

K6-3 256K L2, 250nm, no powernow
K6-3 P 256K L2, 180nm, no powernow
k6-3+ 256K L2, 180nm, powernow

Also the +s/180nms/ps dont work on the 430vx (personally confirmed), there is a chipset problem I read. Maybe also the 430fx, because it is older than the 430vx, the 430s, after vx should work.

EDIT

Also if your going to use 124mhz or 133mhz you MUST disable the MB's L2 cache, because those external L2 cache chips dont like the high FSB, and were not rated for going that high, I would stick to 112 max. Also look for undocumented FSB jumpers if u dont see the FSB setting u like.

I always thought that k6-3's were good and everything, but I was really disappointed, considering I bought both the pentium pros along with their motherboards for the same price I paid just for the k6-3 processor, and the pentium pros had it beat.

Quailane said:

Well this is the motherboard I used, and still have, with the most recent bios.
http://www.soyo.com.tw/products/proddesc.php?id=32
The board came stock with a k6-2 400 that I still have sitting around. I pulled it out of my stepdad's old computer when we got a new one in 2001.

Hmm, the soyo website doesn't say anything about any motherboards supporting k6-2+ and k6-3's. This one shows that my motherboard supports them though.
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

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You're using the bios provided for that board from the second site you linked right? Users actually took time to optimize the BIOS for some boards. Back in the day I got a 10% increase in bandwidth and FPU for my K6-2 500 just with a bios flash and a bit of fancy tweaking.

A little history:

With 3DNow! support shows the K6-3 400 to be one of the fastest processors we've seen, even eclipsing the Intel P2-400 in almost every application we tested with.


One area in comparing the Intel Katmai CPUs and the AMD K6-3 CPUs that really is no comparison concerns their expected prices. Most industry analysts believe that the high end Katmai, the 500MHz variant, will debut in late February at a price point somewhere between $700 and $760. The slower 450MHz Katmai CPU is expected to debut on the same day as its faster partner, albeit with less cost, somewhere between approximately $525 and $600.

The AMD K6-3 400 CPU we tested for this article is expected to debut at the price we listed above, which is between $325 and $375. The higher speed K6-3 450 if able to be produced in the necessary yields, is estimated to cost between $425 and $500 at the time of its introduction.

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http://www.sharkygames.com/hardware/amd_k63/f.shtml

How about those prices? Todays state of the art is tomorrows trash.

K6-2 450s and 500s are pretty good workhorses so long as you're not installing like Win2k Server on them. I've got that going on my 500 right now. Man does that suck. But 2k Pro? No problem. Linux? Well...I wouldn't. But that's me.

If you want to get kinky you could look into some Cyrix processors. Big ole stamp on the back of 'em that let's everyone know they were made in Canadia. And they're heavy as all get out too. I've got a few of them. Except I think I left them in my apartment in Minnesota. I'll have to grab them on a return trip there sometime. They're so cool.

I still have a box with my K6-III 450 in it. It was a nice little box for the time with a Voodoo 3 AGP card in there.