Mystery wrote:

Would you mind running 3DMark99max with the Voodoo2 again in 640 and 1024 and postig the results?

Just gave it a shot: results are almost identical for all three resolutions. So the CPU is unable to keep up with the V2's, which is not a really big surprise ofcourse 😀 I might try Quake2 later on. I've never heard of Daikatana before, but I'll check it out.

Tetrium wrote:

I think your mobo supports all 8 Super 7 multi's

Sounds tempting... 🙄 I'm not really familair with CPU's and overclocking on Socket7 boards. The mobo manual doesn't speak of any multiplier higher than 4.5x, but the guy here http://k6plus.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&fil … iewtopic&t=1758 is using a 6x multiplier with this board?! Also, how would I know what voltage settings to use or find out the fastest multiplier / CPU speed support?
I noticed the K6-2 CPU's are really easy to find, so I might actually consider that, if it's not too risky. I've attached the manual of my mobo, maybe someone would like to take a look and me help me out a bit? 😊

laxdragon wrote:

I had a thread about it posted years ago.

Looking nice! I really don't understand how you managed to resize the icons. The manual states it's only possible for icons without border - "what?!" I can't find such icons in QuikMenu.

@mOBSCENE:
My results are very similar to yours. The Voodoo2 is a little bit faster, but it's not much.
So the SLI setup gives you higher resolutions without losing performance and a slightly better overall performance. However, there are a few older 3DFX games that won't work with a Voodoo2 card, so that's a slight drawback. But it's only a handful of games.

The 3DBench results are pretty good though. I ran a couple of tests with my 233MMX (3DBENCH CPU Benchmark Database) and even with a V³ 2000 I could barely get above 140 (indicating a CPU limitation). A Riva128 produced the same results. Your speedsys CPU score however is normal, so I'm wondering where you got the ~25% performance gain.

The 6x multi is actually the easiest to find: It's exactly the same as the 2x multi!
K6-2's made with the CTX core (which otherwise is a minor revision of the standard K6-2 core) accept the 2x multi, but accept it as 6x instead of 2x.
Basically, put a K6-2/400 in your rig (with correct voltage), set multi to 2x and you receive 6x! That's the short story

The voltages of K6's are written on the metal heatspreader, so that's very easy to find 😉

There are 2 potential troubles though:
1) Your board might not like K6-III's (because of their relatively big power draw compared to K6-2's and Pentiums)
2) Your BIOS might complain about not recognizing the CPU, which iirc wasn't THAT much of an issue for Socket 7 as it used jumpers. Folks, correct me on this one if I'm wrong! 😉

You should try to find out if your board supports 2.2v for the CPU. It could be undocumented. I'll go do some googling for you 😉

Tetrium wrote:

The 6x multi is actually the easiest to find: It's exactly the same as the 2x multi! K6-2's made with the CTX core (which otherw […]
Show full quote

The 6x multi is actually the easiest to find: It's exactly the same as the 2x multi!
K6-2's made with the CTX core (which otherwise is a minor revision of the standard K6-2 core) accept the 2x multi, but accept it as 6x instead of 2x.
Basically, put a K6-2/400 in your rig (with correct voltage), set multi to 2x and you receive 6x! That's the short story

The voltages of K6's are written on the metal heatspreader, so that's very easy to find 😉

There are 2 potential troubles though:
1) Your board might not like K6-III's (because of their relatively big power draw compared to K6-2's and Pentiums)
2) Your BIOS might complain about not recognizing the CPU, which iirc wasn't THAT much of an issue for Socket 7 as it used jumpers. Folks, correct me on this one if I'm wrong! 😉

You should try to find out if your board supports 2.2v for the CPU. It could be undocumented. I'll go do some googling for you 😉

Or check if it supports 1.9v and try a K6-2+ or K6-III+.

Thanks for the info mOBSCENE

Going through a box at work I found a STB Velocity 128 AGP equipped with a Nvidia Riva 128ZX, I haven't confirmed if it has 8MB of ram yet. Been wondering if it would be better than a Matrox G200A or a Number Nine Revolution 3D in 2D performance. Wouldn't beat a TNT2 but unsure if a TNT2 would be good on a S7 board as some mobo's had issue with AGP voltage.

I posted a thread over in marvin about my mainboard and choices, hope the guys can help me out.

RogueTrip2012 wrote:

Thanks for the info mOBSCENE

Going through a box at work I found a STB Velocity 128 AGP equipped with a Nvidia Riva 128ZX, I haven't confirmed if it has 8MB of ram yet. Been wondering if it would be better than a Matrox G200A or a Number Nine Revolution 3D in 2D performance. Wouldn't beat a TNT2 but unsure if a TNT2 would be good on a S7 board as some mobo's had issue with AGP voltage.

I posted a thread over in marvin about my mainboard and choices, hope the guys can help me out.

I don't know about performance, but I know everything else of the time looks washed out and mushy compared to a Matrox card. Their image quality in 2D has always been beyond superb. I'd pass on using a Number Nine Revolution 3D because their chipsets were extremely buggy and slow and it won't be any use at all for running non-Glide 3D games (I'd still grab it for a wall hanger, though, because they are pretty rare nowadays). You'd be better off with an nVidia card as their OpenGL performance has always been great and D3D pretty good.

@Tetrium: that makes some sense 😀 Thanks for clearing it up. So with a multiplier of 6x and a reported stable FSB on this board of 75Mhz, I should probably be looking at any K6-2 450+ and underclock it if necessary.
How does the on-die L2 cache of the K6-2+ effect cacheable RAM range on the mobo? (which is 64MB now with 512KB L2 cache). Or is the mobo L2 cache somehow "converted" to L3 cache when using a K6-2+?

According to http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm: The K6-2+/III+ CPU core is designed to run on 2.0V but also runs well on 2.1V - and my mobo supports a 2.1V setting.

@Mystery: perhaps this is due to PCI / AGP card? Although I would expect the AGP version to perform better. Or it might be due to different BIOS cache settings, I disabled all caching (except CPU caching).

The K6-2+, K6-III and K6-III+ basically make your cacheable area limitless 😉
The K6-III desktop model seems to be hard to find but the mobiles can be had cheaply (I know one seller who sells K6-3+/400 ATZ 1.6v (can be oberclocked/overvolted) for under €10 each).

Yes, the motherboard cache will become L3 when the CPU has L2 cache. The 3 CPU's I mentioned are the only chips btw that have L2 cache.
I'm not sure about the BIOS though, I haven't had the time to actually try one of the mobiles in a rig before. My only Super 7 rig has the desktop K6-III (the only one I ever saw in the flesh).

@Tetrium: limitless... I like the sound of that! Is this the seller you know? http://cgi.ebay.nl/AMD-K6-III-400-SOCKEL-7-BO … =item2eb6e486b0
This one has a quite low TDP, looks promising to run at 6x75 @ 2.1V.

If you can go with a K6-3, go for it. They are awesome cpus. Even if you had to underclock one down to 300-350 mhz to get it to work you'd see a nice boost over the Pentium 233 with your SLI config. Just to give you a idea of how well they perform at 400mhz:

I keep a K6-3 400mhz in my main Dos/Win 98 dual boot system paired with a Rage 128 for 2D stuff, and a Blackmagic Voodoo 2 for really early Glide and 3D stuff that wont benefit from my faster Banshee system. Thing runs really cool, and is nice and fast for running the early Win 95/98 3d based games from 1998 and prior. The K6-2 and K6-3 match really well with Voodoo cards performance wise. 3DFX and AMD were a excellent match back then. If you can get one going, I seriously doubt you will regret it.

mOBSCENE wrote:

@Tetrium: limitless... I like the sound of that! Is this the seller you know? http://cgi.ebay.nl/AMD-K6-III-400-SOCKEL-7-BO … =item2eb6e486b0
This one has a quite low TDP, looks promising to run at 6x75 @ 2.1V.

I understood these models are less likely to hit 600Mhz, but I still think they are a good buy because of how cheap they are and the fact that these are NOS. I've bought uhm...more then one chip from him 😁 and all of them were in perfect working order, these are like new! 😁

Edit:I forgot to add, yup that's the one! 😁

Damn! That thing is faster than a P2. I knew K6-3s were special but I never woulda guessed they beat P2s- well you learn a new thing everyday here, do you?

Does the K6-3's prowess extend to other programs/ games as well or just a few specific ones like Q2?

It's just as fast as a Pentium 2 only because it's using 3Dnow!
I suggest you stay with what you have or if you want a speed upgrade get yourself a K6-2 400, which is just as compatible as the Pentium 1. Later CPUs tend to cause problems under DOS, thus some games will produce error messages, not run at all, have problems etc.
Great machine overall 😁

Just order a K6-III+ from eBay ! 😁 + some extra memory (2x128MB) Those benchmarks looking good indeed!
If it results in one of my games being incompatible, I will look into the K6-2(+). Thank you all for your advice!

I will keep this topic updated on the progress 😉

I still have yet to produce any error messages on my K6-3 build myself. Have a list of games that do that specifically on hand by chance? If its just really old stuff from 91 or prior, wont matter much to me anyway, because I would run that stuff on either my Pentium 1 or K6 166 instead.

F2bnp wrote:

It's just as fast as a Pentium 2 only because it's using 3Dnow!

Dont be bitter. 😜 Who cares if it is. The fact is, it could do it on stuff. It was also a awesome overclocker to boot. As far as 3dnow goes, quite a bit of games started making use of it. Even without it, it was a decent performer with Voodoo cards gaming wise and in general aps.

(Unreal wasn't using 3DNow at the time if I remember right)

To me K6-III will always remain special in a way. It's one of the best Socket 7 CPU's ever made.
Slot 1 was a radically new design which AMD "trashed" with it's K7.
Yup...Socket 7 is special in a way, at least that's how I look at them. They were the first "branch" that really made it to the mainstream market.

ProfessorProfessorson wrote:

I still have yet to produce any error messages on my K6-3 build myself. Have a list of games that do that specifically on hand by chance? If its just really old stuff from 91 or prior, wont matter much to me anyway, because I would run that stuff on either my Pentium 1 or K6 166 instead.

F2bnp wrote:

It's just as fast as a Pentium 2 only because it's using 3Dnow!

Dont be bitter. 😜 Who cares if it is. The fact is, it could do it on stuff. It was also a awesome overclocker to boot. As far as 3dnow goes, quite a bit of games started making use of it. Even without it, it was a decent performer with Voodoo cards gaming wise and in general aps.

The K6-III looks like it does well in synthetic benchmarks but falls behind in actual games where the performance really matters more (unless you like sitting around running benchmarks all day). It makes me wonder why bother building a K6 based rig at all these days when you can get parts for a Pentium II system that run games faster cheaply enough.

sliderider wrote:

It makes me wonder why bother building a K6 based rig at all these days when you can get parts for a Pentium II system that run games faster cheaply enough.

Same here. Like almost every other AMD CPU the K6 series is behind to no end. But in the end it's not as fast as the Pentium 2 and you can get those cheaper most of the time. So why the hell bother?

Well, because we're PC nerds and we love old hardware 😁
The K6 series make for a nice and faster alternative to the Pentium MMX and they also grant you AGP (although making it work properly is a HUGE hassle).
AMD made some awesome processors back then (especially the Athlons that arrived later) but I find that it suffered from really poor motherboard designs. And it is such a shame really 🙁

F2bnp wrote:

Same here. Like almost every other AMD CPU the K6 series is behind to no end. But in the end it's not as fast as the Pentium 2 a […]
Show full quote

sliderider wrote:

It makes me wonder why bother building a K6 based rig at all these days when you can get parts for a Pentium II system that run games faster cheaply enough.

Same here. Like almost every other AMD CPU the K6 series is behind to no end. But in the end it's not as fast as the Pentium 2 and you can get those cheaper most of the time. So why the hell bother?

Well, because we're PC nerds and we love old hardware 😁
The K6 series make for a nice and faster alternative to the Pentium MMX and they also grant you AGP (although making it work properly is a HUGE hassle).
AMD made some awesome processors back then (especially the Athlons that arrived later) but I find that it suffered from really poor motherboard designs. And it is such a shame really 🙁

Isn't it easier to love old hardware that runs faster and without so many bugs, though?

Incidentally, I had a K6-2 533 machine for a long time and have a Slot A Athlon 600 waiting for a case in front of me and a Thunderbird slot A 900 in need of a suitable motherboard because it won't work in the motherboard I have now. Picked that thing up for a song or I wouldn't have it. Was $14 shipped and I had a $9 ebay bucks credit that paid for most of it. Those Slot A Thunderbird Athlons are expensive now. 😁

sliderider wrote:

F2bnp wrote:

Same here. Like almost every other AMD CPU the K6 series is behind to no end. But in the end it's not as fast as the Pentium 2 a […]
Show full quote

sliderider wrote:

It makes me wonder why bother building a K6 based rig at all these days when you can get parts for a Pentium II system that run games faster cheaply enough.

Same here. Like almost every other AMD CPU the K6 series is behind to no end. But in the end it's not as fast as the Pentium 2 and you can get those cheaper most of the time. So why the hell bother?

Well, because we're PC nerds and we love old hardware 😁
The K6 series make for a nice and faster alternative to the Pentium MMX and they also grant you AGP (although making it work properly is a HUGE hassle).
AMD made some awesome processors back then (especially the Athlons that arrived later) but I find that it suffered from really poor motherboard designs. And it is such a shame really 🙁

Isn't it easier to love old hardware that runs faster and without so many bugs, though?

Incidentally, I had a K6-2 533 machine for a long time and have a Slot A Athlon 600 waiting for a case in front of me and a Thunderbird slot A 900 in need of a suitable motherboard because it won't work in the motherboard I have now. Picked that thing up for a song or I wouldn't have it. Was $14 shipped and I had a $9 ebay bucks credit that paid for most of it. Those Slot A Thunderbird Athlons are expensive now. 😁

Slot A retro rigs seem to be few and far apart, I never even saw one in the flesh over here.
One "could" argue that it's better to get a s370 Coppermine, it's faster, cheaper and more stable 😜
But like F2bnp mentioned, often us retro...whatever we are 😜 build a Super 7 rig because it is the ultimate Socket 7, like I did. I could've build a Slot 1 easily, but I wanted Super 7...because I think it's awesome. It's awesome how they managed to get such performance compared to what Socket 7 (or 5) was intended to be: Up to 200Mhz, then Slot 1!

And thanks to AMD (and to a lesser extend the other CPU manufacturers) Socket 7 was stretched to 50% more FSB (in some cases even 100% more), a virtually limitless cacheable area, AGP and 600+Mhz, triple that which was intended by it's own designer, the big Intel.