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First post, by Hamby

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I just bought a Socket 7 motherboard with a 133mhz Pentium CPU.
The board is labeled "KM-T5-V rev 3.0"
On the back it's labeled "TEAN TN2 94v0"

I'm wondering if I can stick a K6-2 300mhz in place of the Pentium, and if so, what will be the effect? Will it fry it? Will it be much faster? Is it worthwhile?

Also, the Pentium 133 doesn't have a CPU fan. Does it need one?

I'm torn between keeping the Pentium or installing the K6-2.
While the Pentium seems closer to the mid-90s rig I'm trying to set up (though I intend going with Win98 instead of Win95 or WFW 3.11), it would be nice to have top-end power for the era.

I plan on running DOS games and some early Windows games such as Myst, Freespace, Crusader: No Remorse, Diablo I (II?).
I also plan on doing some programming, and run some apps such as Lightwave, Photoshop CS2 (or Photoshop 6; I think I have disks for both).
The board currently has 32mb of ram, but I think I can upgrade that to 256mb (which I want for A) Lightwave/Photoshop, and B) so I don't need a swap file on the CF card C: drive.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Reply 1 of 8, by Hamby

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Just came across this page:
http://www.elhvb.com/mboards/kaimei/km-t5-v_3 … kmt5v-rev3.html

it speaks of using a K6 with this motherboard (the first picture matches my MB exactly), but requiring a modification.

So I guess the answer is "maybe".

Reply 2 of 8, by The Serpent Rider

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It does not require any mods since AMD K6-2 will be perfectly fine working at 2.5-2.8v. That said, the board VRM will require additional cooling or it won't last long.

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Reply 3 of 8, by PC@LIVE

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I can tell you what I did, I put a K6-2 @ 400 MHz on a Siemens D1034, setting the switches to 2X (see 6X in the K6CXT) and FSB 66 MHz.
Unfortunately it is jumperless therefore only one VCore (not selectable), I measured in the 2.8V mosfets, missing the jumpers I can not add resistances to get lower voltages.
From what I know there are no mod. for VCore, so at the moment I use it that way. Although I would like to be able to lower the voltage to put a portable CPU (usually VCore 2.1V or less, up to 1.6-1.7V).
I changed the fan and the heat sink with one of the first 370-462 sockets, which is actually a bit bigger.
The mosfets of the VRM of the D1034, are switching so they heat up less than a linear VRM, changing the CPU heatsink should cool them better, in your case I would recommend an additional fan that blows on the mosfet of the VRM.
However, having unlocked your K6-2-300, you can set the multi you want, I suggest you proceed step by step, start by setting the lowest VCore (2.5V) and put the multi 3.5X (then 233Mhz) and see how it goes , I believe that an improvement in PC performance will be visible.
Afterwards if you want you can go up first to 266 (4X) and then even to 300 (4.5X), but I believe that already at 233 the heat produced in the VRM is noticeable, so at higher frequencies it will be even higher, which is why adding a fan.
Maybe the BIOS will recognize you as a simple K6, to me it recognizes it as K6-300 (instead of K6-2-400), but with CPU-Z I checked and it works at 400MHz, so everything is OK.
However, if your VX has linear VRM, I don't recommend putting CPUs faster, even if you can get it to go up to 300 it's enough, for that kind of VRM (linear) I think that at 266-300 you're already at the maximum limit.

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Reply 4 of 8, by Hamby

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The Serpent Rider wrote:

It does not require any mods since AMD K6-2 will be perfectly fine working at 2.5-2.8v. That said, the board VRM will require additional cooling or it won't last long.

VRM?

Reply 5 of 8, by HanJammer

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Hamby wrote:
The Serpent Rider wrote:

It does not require any mods since AMD K6-2 will be perfectly fine working at 2.5-2.8v. That said, the board VRM will require additional cooling or it won't last long.

VRM?

Voltage Regulator Module... but calling the Voltage Regulator Circuit a "Module" in case of Socket 7 motherboard is huge overstatement...

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Reply 6 of 8, by SSTV2

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Any VRM, whether it's linear or swithcing type, can be modded to output lower/higher voltage, it all depends on feedback voltage, usually set by resistor divider and fed into "ADJ" or "FB" pin of linear voltage regulator or PWM IC. Yours "KM-T5-V" uses linear VRMs, which are not efficient. According to cpu-world, k6-2 @ 400MHz consumes 17W~ of power at peak, your core VRM would heat up like hell, even if you lowered core voltage to 2.2V.

Reply 7 of 8, by PC@LIVE

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I took a look at CPU-World to see the Watts of the K6-200 and compare them with the K6-2-300.
The K6-200 has these values:

Minimum / Typical / Maximum power dissipation: 1.6 Watt (Stop Clock mode) / 12 Watt / 20 Watt

The K6-2-300 has these values:

Minimum / Typical / Maximum power dissipation: 3.5 Watt (Stop Clock mode) / 10.35 Watt / 17.2 Watt

So I don't know, maybe I can be wrong ??, but I think the K6-2-300 should hold it cooled well.

I saw that in that MB it is very easy to lower the voltage for the CPU, just add a resistor to a jumper and put it in the 2.5V jumper.
It would be worth to try the 40Ohm one first, I think the 2.17V should be OK.

I have never tried a K6-2 300 on a MB VX with linear VRM, so I don't know if it gives off a lot of heat, but it is also true that the K6-2 with a 2.2V VCore should be cooler than the k6 with Vcore 2.9 V

AMD 286-16 287-10 4MB HD 45MB VGA 256KB
AMD 386DX-40 Intel 387 8MB HD 81MB VGA 256KB
Cyrix 486DLC-40 IIT387-40 8MB VGA 512KB
AMD 5X86-133 16MB VGA VLB CL5428 2MB and many others
AMD K62+ 550 SOYO 5EMA+ and many others
AST Pentium Pro 200 MHz L2 256KB

Reply 8 of 8, by appiah4

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If your board can't do 2.2 or 2.3v just don't bother with a K6-2.

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