Old schoolers: Athlon K6-2 question

okay, just found a working K6-2 processor/heatsink... tempted as i am to use the HS as a GPU cooler on my 9800pro, what can i expect to accomplish with this guy with regards to folding?

i'm also considering building a free computer for a friend... can this run windows xp do you think, or should i stick with 98 for this little guy?

think it can play gunbound (http://www.gunbound.net)?

thx ahead of time

Folding will be slow. They usually run pretty hot. I have had many, ranging from 233mhz to 400mhz. All I can say is that @ 400mhz, they took about a day longer than a Pentium 133, which took 25hrs/WU @ SETI. They run pretty hot too, even if you have ok cooling. I could run XP on the 233mhz machines with 128MB ram, but it was pretty slow, Win98 would be better suited.

I'm running some K6-2s as web boxes, which they manage quite well still. I used to fold on them, they'd do a big work unit in 2 weeks, 20 points or so @450 Mhz. However, lately, they have been getting superhuge gromacs work units that they can't complete in the time given, so I'm not folding on them. However, there is a new version of the folding client available that I have not tried on them, supposedly it will give the smaller work units to the slower CPUs. Anyway, most people consider them not worth the power for the amount of folding they do these days, unless it's a rig that's going to stay on anyway.

For an OS, I'd go with windows 98SE, It's not really that the K6-2 isn't fast enough, it's the the motherboards that you are likely to find are going to be difficult to get a decent amount of RAM onto. A lot of them only support a maximum 64Mb bank size, and a lot of them only have a couple of DIMM slots, which leaves you scouring classifieds for weeks to find a pair of 128Mb double sided DIMMs which actually work to get the 256Mb you really need to be able to do much on XP. On 98SE However, you can happily run it on 64Mb with one browser window and care, it runs very happily on 128, and it's almost obscenely joyful on 256
Gunbound minimum specs are ...
*Minimum System Requirements* CPU : Pentium 300A Main Memory : 64MB Video Card : i740(with 3D accelerator support) Video Memory : 8M+ , DirectX8.0 support required. O/S : Window 98 ?Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher.

So a K6-2 being a little slower than intels, I think of them as 50 Mhz slower, so if your K6-2 is a 350 or better you're good. For graphics I'd recommend finding a TNT2 or Voodoo3 or better to put in it. I wouldn't go too much better than a GF2MX however, otherwise you'll be having AGP power problems. A fast K6-2 at 550 and a GF2MX400 is capable of playing even some quite modern games, albeit at low resolution.

regards,

Road Warrior

i'm also considering building a free computer for a friend... can this run windows xp do you think, or should i stick with 98 for this little guy?

Click to expand...

I think you can fold with it, but running WinXP is hard, your cursor will be moving at 3 fps........

thanks for the advice guys

i'll try to put it to good use

heh, i saw a 500mhz k6-2 on newegg for $16. What kind of mobo can you run with this? Looking to build a cheap comp for fun, maybe for some browsing.

They were pretty good for office and surfing and what not. The FPU performance was bad though, so gaming won't be as fast as a PII/celeron. Once upon a time I overclocked my 350 to 375. Thus overclocking begins.

what mobo did you run it on?

hehe, i have a 533mhz k6-2 compaq as my secondary comp, it SUCKS. (so im making a replacement intel rig )

Don't remember exactly what MB but it was a Gigabyte with either Sis or ALi chipset. To change the multipliers etc you needed to actually move the jumpers. No softmenu OC.

good news (i think)... just found 7 more of these puppies, w/ mobos attached !

@MadOnion: PM me if you're serious about wanting one

I'm currently trying to acquire a 5-prong (the big kind) keyboard to test them tho ^^

I have a few K6-2's.... btw, concerning the title... they aren't Athlon's at all.

If you can get ahold of a K6-2+ or K6-3 they are a little better. They have 128 or 256kb respectively of ondie L2 cache with significantly helps thier performance. The normal K6's have the L2 cach located on the motherboard so it runs at the bus speed. If you have an older 66MHz FSB K6-2 you can helps its performance but dropping the multi and raising the FST to 100MHz( if the motherboard supports it). This will help a lot as it gets the L2 cache working faster.

I have 3 K6-2's folding, one is the + variant, it is a little faster folding, but not a big deal. IF you want to play around, they have an IHS attached to them and if you remove it you can cool the die much better. All mine are uncapped

Chixofnix said:

good news (i think)... just found 7 more of these puppies, w/ mobos attached !

@MadOnion: PM me if you're serious about wanting one

I'm currently trying to acquire a 5-prong (the big kind) keyboard to test them tho ^^

Click to expand...

You can get a converter from *EDIT*: [PS/2] to that 5 prong connector.
Also, if you're gonna have 128MB or more RAM I'd really recommend Win2k Pro if you can get it/have it. As its way better than 98"anything". I had all versions of 9x you could dream of and all sucked and were highly unstable, once I went 2k, all problems were magically cured.

For old keyboards, try the Sally Ann, Value Village, Goodwill etc, they usually have tons round here, $3 each.

update... turns out the lab i work parttime at has a bunch of these 5prong keyboards gathering dust - boss says i can borrow one for a few weeks ^^

sorry bout the title... meant AMD ^^

We stil have an old k6-2 550 running at 600 on a fic az11e motherboard, its been running for like 6 years without a hitch. Sadly now days its only good for word processing or checking email, in its day we ran quake 3 and everquest on it and it did fine

You can turn it in to A SmoothWall box ( www.smoothwall.org ) it is a really good firewall/router that is what i did with my old K6-2 550Mhz

hey that looks neat... so your computer is turned into a super-protective router, essentially?

use win2k instead of XP.

Chixofnix said:

hey that looks neat... so your computer is turned into a super-protective router, essentially?

Click to expand...

Yes that is what Smoothwall is a very good Hardware Linux Based firewll/router very easy to setup you will need a HDD for it 1gb or bigger and two network cards and some RAM