Very cool!

Currently also mucking around with a K6-III+ machine.

nice test, and its awesome to find so many k6-3+s. so far i've only got 3 of them(450acz, 500acr and 500anz) and the price is not very satisfying.
do you still have time with them? i feel that the 3dnow version of quake2(3dnow software renderer) is the toughest test for k6-2/3 cpus, several of my overclocked ones that passed other tests failed in it, so maybe you can give it a try.
does the GA-5SMM have sis chipset? that seems to have inferior memory performance than the mvp3 and ali5, and prevents the cpu from running at maximum load possible. but well, this doesn't mean i would question the fairness and credibility of your conclusion.

noshutdown wrote:

nice test, and its awesome to find so many k6-3+s. so far i've only got 3 of them(450acz, 500acr and 500anz) and the price is not very satisfying.
do you still have time with them? i feel that the 3dnow version of quake2(3dnow software renderer) is the toughest test for k6-2/3 cpus, several of my overclocked ones that passed other tests failed in it, so maybe you can give it a try.
does the GA-5SMM have sis chipset? that seems to have inferior memory performance than the mvp3 and ali5, and prevents the cpu from running at maximum load possible. but well, this doesn't mean i would question the fairness and credibility of your conclusion.

Too bad I don't have Quake2... Does it work on the demo version?
The reason I chose GA-5SMM is that it's the only board I have that offers voltage lower than 2.0V. Yes it's much slower than P5A-B but the latter can't accept the cooler master heatsink.

I found little performance difference between running a K6-III+ at 400 compared to 600 MHz. Or put another way, if the system struggles with something at 400 MHz, clocking it at 600 MHz is not really making an impact.

I like setting the FSB to 66 MHz and then controlling the multiplier from 2x to 6x for wide compatibility with games.

lazibayer wrote:

Too bad I don't have Quake2... Does it work on the demo version?
The reason I chose GA-5SMM is that it's the only board I have that offers voltage lower than 2.0V. Yes it's much slower than P5A-B but the latter can't accept the cooler master heatsink.

it shall work with the quake2 demo version. unfortunately quake2demo has only a few maps so it can't play the intensive crusher and massive1 benchmark demo.

noshutdown wrote:

lazibayer wrote:

Too bad I don't have Quake2... Does it work on the demo version?
The reason I chose GA-5SMM is that it's the only board I have that offers voltage lower than 2.0V. Yes it's much slower than P5A-B but the latter can't accept the cooler master heatsink.

it shall work with the quake2 demo version. unfortunately quake2demo has only a few maps so it can't play the intensive crusher and massive1 benchmark demo.

That's a shame... Is there any intensive demo that uses map from the demo version?

The cooler and compound

How do you read that chart?

sliderider wrote:

How do you read that chart?

each number indicates how many cpus are stable at that voltage.

sliderider wrote:

How do you read that chart?

It's easy 😉

He's bought 15 ACZs and 13 APZs CPUS. Almost all work at 6x100=600MHz but the voltage is different. From the chart you can see what voltage is necessary for the cpu to work at 600MHz. You can see that APZ series is better as it needs less voltage.

Oh, OK. I was wondering what the columns of numbers were.

sliderider wrote:

Oh, OK. I was wondering what the columns of numbers were.

Thanks for pointing out the confusion. I will edit my post.

noshutdown wrote:

lazibayer wrote:

Too bad I don't have Quake2... Does it work on the demo version?
The reason I chose GA-5SMM is that it's the only board I have that offers voltage lower than 2.0V. Yes it's much slower than P5A-B but the latter can't accept the cooler master heatsink.

it shall work with the quake2 demo version. unfortunately quake2demo has only a few maps so it can't play the intensive crusher and massive1 benchmark demo.

I tried installing 3.14 demo version, then 3.20 point release, then 3dnow patch. Now I get

ERROR: Couldn't open demos/demo1.dm2

every time launching quake2. Any clues? I am running XP btw, and I tried 95/98 compatibility mode without luck.

I don't think the demo version contains the time demo.

philscomputerlab wrote:

I don't think the demo version contains the time demo.

The error popped out right after I launched quake2 before I timedemo anything.
I guess quake2 plays demo1.dm2 every time it starts? I am totally new to quake2.
The demo version does contain a tiny toy demo, q2demo1.dm2, but far not intensive to prove anything.
The FPS "jumped" from 41.5 to 41.9 after using 3dnow patch 🤣
Anyway, I need to start selling those chips to fund my other projects 🤑

I also found little benefit with the 3dnow patch. I used the one from falconfly which says "fastest for K6".

What's your next project?

The chip to keep is the K6-III+ 400 1.6V. There is a seller on eBay Germany selling them for 20 Euros. They overclock very well but are fast at the stock 400 MHz anyway. 1.6V is very low and so it runs cool and quiet.

Nice job!

I own four 400 Mhz K6-3+ from the German seller.
Some time in the future I may speed bin them and in that case I will necromance this thread and post the results here.

The first one did 600 MHz at 1.9V so I diddnt bother to test the other 3.
4 is a small sample but better than nothing.

philscomputerlab wrote:

I also found little benefit with the 3dnow patch. I used the one from falconfly which says "fastest for K6".

What's your next project?

The chip to keep is the K6-III+ 400 1.6V. There is a seller on eBay Germany selling them for 20 Euros. They overclock very well but are fast at the stock 400 MHz anyway. 1.6V is very low and so it runs cool and quiet.

Honestly I don't have a clear target of projects... Usually I just grab whatever cheap on ebay when I have spare time and money.
I was trying to break the minimum CPU frequency record for Windows 7/XP, but the xx97 boards I bought do not support ACPI and the 486 boards do not support Pentium OD 😵

lazibayer wrote:

The error popped out right after I launched quake2 before I timedemo anything. I guess quake2 plays demo1.dm2 every time it star […]
Show full quote

philscomputerlab wrote:

I don't think the demo version contains the time demo.

The error popped out right after I launched quake2 before I timedemo anything.
I guess quake2 plays demo1.dm2 every time it starts? I am totally new to quake2.
The demo version does contain a tiny toy demo, q2demo1.dm2, but far not intensive to prove anything.
The FPS "jumped" from 41.5 to 41.9 after using 3dnow patch 🤣
Anyway, I need to start selling those chips to fund my other projects 🤑

to make use of 3dnow, you need to change renderer setting to "3dnow software", "3dnow opengl" or "3dnow 3dfx", not just installing the patch.
in my experience, 3dnow software is around 25% faster than generic software, which is also what i use to stress test k6plus cpus. the 3dnow opengl renderer seems to really benefit only 3dfx cards, with nvidia or ati cards there is only around 5% boost over default opengl.