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BIG-O-2 said:OC master what are the chances of the HP unit my sis has of running a 500mhz K6 of any veriaty?
And will I get some more performance with a 500 K6-2?
The chip right now is a 333 K6-2 I think.
minoukat said:Upgrading that CPU will make a good difference, depending on the applications she's running. If all she's doing is listening to MP3s and some Word and Excel documents, then no, it's not really worth it, unless you can find it really cheap. If she's into some kind of gaming, or she's watching videos, or doing graphics or video editing, then do change it, it'll only make the computer better. As for getting the best of the best, watch out not to get tricked with the high pricing. True, a K6-3 is good, but when you must pay in the 50-80 $$ USD for it, then you'd better buy a cheap Duron CPU and mobo, which could later be upgraded to a faster CPU, while using the same mobo. Cuz the K6-X family didn't scale too well in the higher MHz, while the K7 starts at 500 or 600MHz and continues to over 1.8GHz (I can't count the 2400+ and above, cuz they're not widely available yet).
Be sure her motherboard supports 100MHz FSB CPUs. Some K6-2s are running on a 66MHz FSB, and sometimes, these 66MHz FSB coming from OEMs come shipped with a cheaper older mobo that doesn't support the 100 or more FSB.
A good place to find some deals on K6-2 processors are these forums. From time to time, you'll see someone post a k6-2 offer with a good price, say about 20-30 bux or less for a 500+ MHz chip. Just be sure to shop around, and not jump on the first deal you see, cuz it may not be the best one.
OC-Master -- sorry to say this, but a Duron mops the floor with a K6-3+ in almost everything, because of the advanced system bus, the enhancements in the K7 architecture over the K6's, etc.
UPDATE : linkages to support my statements : (I'm sorry to link to such a disgusting site) http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/99q1/990223/index-04.html this is a K6-3 benchmark, compared to a K6-2, Celeron, Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 (Katmai).
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q2/000619/duron-08.html Sorry, couldn,t find a direct comparasion between a K6-3 and a Duron![]()
OC-Master said:
Those benchmarks reflect the performance of the K6-2 and K6-3 processors, not the K6-3+ processor. the K6-3+ processor has only one disadvantage over first generation Durons, which is the FSB. The K6-3+ actually has more memory to play with, hence its got 256KB of L2 cache and a L3 cache which i believe is 512KB on the P5A mobo. So actually, the K6-3+ should be noticeably faster than a Duron 600.
But just make sure you got the K6-3+ clocked at 600MHz to make things fair
OC-Master
demon-eater, you are wrong about the on-die L2 cache for the K6-2 as they have none. The only K6 series that have on-die L2 cache is the K6-3, which has 256k of on-die L2, and the 2 mobile procs that AMD came out with towards the end of development of the K6-x series. Those are the K6-3+, with 256k of on-die L2 and the K6-2+, which has 128k of on-die L2. That is probably what messed you up about the L2 cache on K6-2. Both the K6-3+ and K6-2+ were the only K6-x series of procs to be built on the .18 micron process; they were used by AMD to proof the process for Athlon. BTW, the K6-2+ and K6-3+ were built for mobile use and are picky on what mobo they will run in, but if your board supports them they give good performance. I found that they are roughly comparable to the performance of a P3 of roughly the same speed and might be slightly faster than a Celeron of the same speed in a lot of apps.