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Reply 20 of 39, by appiah4

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tpowell.ca wrote:
I agree with both of you appiah4 and swaaye. In terms of performance in that period, the PIII really creams the K6-III on a perf […]
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I agree with both of you appiah4 and swaaye.
In terms of performance in that period, the PIII really creams the K6-III on a performance/megahertz basis.
And I cannot deny that the 440BX chipset was a masterpiece. On my K6-III, I regularly reach down for the RESET button, but I fondly recall my PIII-500 running rock solid in DOS and Windows 98.

I guess I was hoping to stretch the usefulness of the K6-III beyond late era DOS games.

Well.. It kind of depends on how far you are pushing the Socket 7 and with which chipset I suppose. With (Super) Socket 7 I don't get into AGP at all, barring the use of a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP which seems to be the most reliable AGP card ever I suppose. I'm not that limited for options as I have a ton of PCI 3D cards to pick from ranging from a Voodoo2/SLI to a Radeon 9250. I also tend to stick to the 430TX chipset and I find the system is incredibly reliable. The issue is 64MB cacheable RAM, of course, but that doesn’t seem to be a huge problem as I use my K6-2/2+/3 systems for 1998 and earlier, and 64MB is often adequate for that.

Oftentimes I find myself questioning why I am using a K6-2, I could of course use just a Socket 7 MMX or a 66MHz Bus Pentium II instead. Which is a fair question, to be honest. I don't really know the answer myself. I always find it difficult to choose between a K6-2 vs a Pentium II for a 1997 build, or a Pentium II vs Pentium III for a 1998 build. 1999 and onwards is much easier.

Last edited by appiah4 on 2018-07-20, 09:44. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 21 of 39, by canthearu

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Yeah, I got an Azza PT-5IT motherboard with Intel 430TX chipset. It came with a cyrix 6x86-200mx but I put a pentium 200 into it.

Solid performance and reliability with either processor, even if the motherboard is from a second class manufacturer and 20 years old.

This midrange is kinda where the socket 7 systems are good.

Reply 22 of 39, by swaaye

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appiah4 wrote:

I also tend to stick to the 430TX chipset and I find the system is incredibly reliable. The issue is 64MB cacheable RAM, of course, but that doesn’t seem to be a huge problem as I use my K6-2/2+/3 systems for 1998 and earlier, and 64MB is often adequate for that.

Maybe you're aware of this but any K6 with L2 on die will cache your RAM beyond 64MB. The motherboard's cache will still only cache 64MB but it hardly matters in this case.

Reply 23 of 39, by infiniteclouds

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F2bnp wrote:

I finally decided to swap that K6-III+ for a VIA C3 Nehemiah 1200 at 1500MHz and a 440BX board with an ATA66 Promise controller. I went from obscure to even more obscure, at 1500MHz (15x100) these C3 Nehemia chips run about as fast as a PIII 733 🤣 . It's certainly a nice upgrade over the K6-III+ though, I'd say it's just as compatible with older games.

I agree -- while I don't think I was able to get to 1.5ghz on my 1.2 Nehemiah with default voltages -- these systems are infinitely better than a S7 in flexibility for a few reasons.

1) The Nehemiahs can go a bit slower than the K6s into perhaps 386 SX territory and obviously much faster on the top end.

2) With the right board you can change the front-side bus, multipliers and caches all from software -- no jumpers or even BIOS. With my board's 8 FSB options (from 50 to 133mhz), 25 multiplier choices and Cache, I-Cache and Branch Prediction toggles you're talking almost a thousand combinations for speed settings.

3) Slot 1 means you have the added flexibility of popping CPUs in and out with ease. If I want smoother 486 to Pentium 100 scaling I'll use my Ezra-T -- typically Nehemiahs and K6s suffer a jump from ~486-33 speeds directly to Pentium 133 and that misses an important sweet spot for a lot of games, it seems. Finally, if I want more power I can pop in a Pentium III cartridge, or even a Tualatin on a slotket.

Reply 24 of 39, by gdjacobs

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Revolter wrote:
shamino wrote:

P2/P3 systems aren't as flexible at slowing down

I find the late P2s and early P3s to actually be more flexible than the K6-III's due to their wonderful chipset throttling capabilities nobody seems to have heard about due to the lowering multipliers craze 😀

My P3 time machine can plow through the most speed-sensitive titles (Ultima VII, Battlezone 1980, Prophecy: The Viking Child, Bubble Ghost, Robocop 3...) with a hit of a hotkey, while still being able to run some games from 2004 😈

You should talk apples to apples, here. Throttle uses ACPI functionality, so lots of K6 plus chips will come mounted on a board that supports ACPI as well.

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Reply 25 of 39, by Revolter

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gdjacobs, that's true, but I was under the impression that VIA chipsets didn't handle the chipset throttling well - reportedly introducing some stutter and input lag on later stages (62.5% and up). No info on the ALI chipset, though.

I actually have a couple of Socket 370 VIA boards heading my way so I could verify that for myself (and hopefully replace my current i815 board - which throttles a 600Mhz P3 like heaven, but lacks DDMA or PC-PCI the VIAs have).

Whichever the case may be - all I was saying is that you do not need an unlocked multiplier or a switchable L2 cache to play those games at perfectly correct speeds (although the hardware-encoded solutions like these are much fun indeed).

Celeron 800, 512MB, GeForce2 MX, ES1938S/DB S2, Windows ME/DOS 6.22

Reply 26 of 39, by feipoa

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tpowell.ca wrote:

I guess I'm just surprised at how slow a K6 overclocked to 550MHz really is.
I tried playing Jedi knight II Dark Forces and it is far from being a demanding game yet even with a Voodoo3 3000, it lagged at 1280x1024.

tpowell.ca wrote:

I guess I was hoping to stretch the usefulness of the K6-III beyond late era DOS games.

Would a Voodoo5 award you anything on this system at 1280x1024 compared to the Voodoo3?

In response to another poster concerning the Nehemiah at 1500 MHz and voltages. I found that my Nehemiah runs solid at a little over 1400 MHz without upping the voltage. I want to say the stability faltered at around 1480 MHz and stock voltage.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 27 of 39, by appiah4

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swaaye wrote:
appiah4 wrote:

I also tend to stick to the 430TX chipset and I find the system is incredibly reliable. The issue is 64MB cacheable RAM, of course, but that doesn’t seem to be a huge problem as I use my K6-2/2+/3 systems for 1998 and earlier, and 64MB is often adequate for that.

Maybe you're aware of this but any K6 with L2 on die will cache your RAM beyond 64MB. The motherboard's cache will still only cache 64MB but it hardly matters in this case.

I know but I have no K6-2+ processors, they seem to be rather rare. I would love a K6-2+/400 though.

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Reply 28 of 39, by Repo Man11

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appiah4 wrote:
swaaye wrote:
appiah4 wrote:

I also tend to stick to the 430TX chipset and I find the system is incredibly reliable. The issue is 64MB cacheable RAM, of course, but that doesn’t seem to be a huge problem as I use my K6-2/2+/3 systems for 1998 and earlier, and 64MB is often adequate for that.

Maybe you're aware of this but any K6 with L2 on die will cache your RAM beyond 64MB. The motherboard's cache will still only cache 64MB but it hardly matters in this case.

I know but I have no K6-2+ processors, they seem to be rather rare. I would love a K6-2+/400 though.

If you're in the US, there's a seller on Ebay listing K6-2+ 500 MHz chips for $17.00 + $3.00 shipping. I've a low voltage K6-3+ 400 that runs @ 500 in my Asus TXP4.

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 29 of 39, by feipoa

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On a side note, it would be interested to see the profile of users here on Vogons, that is, quantity of US users vs. non-US users. Non-US users ordering from eBay tends to increase the price double or triple, rendering such listings as no-go's.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 30 of 39, by oohms

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F2bnp wrote:

I finally decided to swap that K6-III+ for a VIA C3 Nehemiah 1200 at 1500MHz and a 440BX board with an ATA66 Promise controller. I went from obscure to even more obscure, at 1500MHz (15x100) these C3 Nehemia chips run about as fast as a PIII 733 🤣 . It's certainly a nice upgrade over the K6-III+ though, I'd say it's just as compatible with older games.

Yes please tell us more. I see a few lower speed Nehemiah cpus on ebay, but are they upwards multiplier unlocked too? Do boards require tualatin modding to use them etc etc

feipoa wrote:

On a side note, it would be interested to see the profile of users here on Vogons, that is, quantity of US users vs. non-US users. Non-US users ordering from eBay tends to increase the price double or triple, rendering such listings as no-go's.

Ordering from the US isn't too bad. Some smaller sellers don't ship globally and shipping is higher, but I had no issues ordering my K6 and other smaller parts

Newer games like jedi knight 2 often run on windows 7, either out of the box or with a small patch. Everything else is either old enough for my K6 to handle well, or i have a higher spec windows 98 system, but I haven't yet found any games that only it plays and not the K6 or my windows 7 desktop

DOS/w3.11/w98 | K6-III+ 400ATZ @ 550 | FIC PA2013 | 128mb SDram | Voodoo 3 3000 | Avancelogic ALS100 | Roland SC-55ST
DOS/w98/XP | Core 2 Duo E4600 | Asus P5PE-VM | 512mb DDR400 | Ti4800SE | ForteMedia FM801

Reply 31 of 39, by gdjacobs

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Revolter wrote:

gdjacobs, that's true, but I was under the impression that VIA chipsets didn't handle the chipset throttling well - reportedly introducing some stutter and input lag on later stages (62.5% and up). No info on the ALI chipset, though.

Might be worth investigating. Even if there are problems, tweaking Throttle might alleviate them somewhat. For that matter, I'm tempted to do some experimenting with my C3/BX machine to see if Throttle makes Deathtrack and Chopper Commando viable.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 32 of 39, by j^aws

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tpowell.ca wrote:

Are there any known computer games that require more than a 486 can afford but are speed sensitive such that a fast P4 could be an issue?

Here are 3 examples:
- Magic Carpet (~P75)
- Wipeout XL (~P200)
- Cybermage (~PII 500)

There are ways of slowing down P4s, ideally with ISA slots, using a combination of Throttle.exe via ACPI and direct throttling via CPU registers.

I'm personally not a fan of Throttle.exe as it does not behave equivalently to direct hardware slowdown. I've tested demoscene software that needed slowdown, and compared against direct hardware slowdown (L1D, FSB etc.) with Throttle.exe, and graphics corruption could be seen using Throttle.exe.

However, if you are using a game and it looks smooth enough, then I guess it's no big deal. In that case, you might as well use DOSBOX.

Reply 33 of 39, by appiah4

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feipoa wrote:

On a side note, it would be interested to see the profile of users here on Vogons, that is, quantity of US users vs. non-US users. Non-US users ordering from eBay tends to increase the price double or triple, rendering such listings as no-go's.

Well, I'm from (Eastern) Europe and the K6-2 is a rarity herabouts, the K6-2+ as far as I know does not exist.

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Reply 34 of 39, by gdjacobs

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The K6-2+ exists as does the K6-III+. They were die shrinks with integrated L2 cache, intended for use in mobile applications.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 35 of 39, by appiah4

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gdjacobs wrote:

The K6-2+ exists as does the K6-III+. They were die shrinks with integrated L2 cache, intended for use in mobile applications.

I'm of course talking about the local market 😀 they may as well not exist because I never saw any and sure can't find any locally.

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Reply 36 of 39, by feipoa

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appiah4, could you have ordered them online from somewhere non-local? By early 1999, I was buying most computer parts online.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 37 of 39, by oohms

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I count on having to buy most rarer parts from overseas. My K6-3+ was bought ~6months ago off ebay from a guy who sourced a lot of them for embedded use and re-pinned them. The K6-2+ and 3+ were very popular in the embedded market

DOS/w3.11/w98 | K6-III+ 400ATZ @ 550 | FIC PA2013 | 128mb SDram | Voodoo 3 3000 | Avancelogic ALS100 | Roland SC-55ST
DOS/w98/XP | Core 2 Duo E4600 | Asus P5PE-VM | 512mb DDR400 | Ti4800SE | ForteMedia FM801

Reply 38 of 39, by tpowell.ca

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Well, I will say this, for DOS and for non 3D games in Windows 9x, the K6-III+ is quite nice as it requires little to no active cooling.
Even in a hot room, mine runs just 10deg over ambient with a small fan at 1000 rpm while clocked at 400MHz.
I got lucky and managed to snag a 1.6v model with a TDP of <10W.

I think the voodoo 3 consumes more power. 🤣

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Reply 39 of 39, by matze79

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Uff a Pentium II is a lot better then a K6 in terms of Software combatiblity and also fpu speed 😳

K6-2/3 requires a decent mainboard to be a performer.
So a BX440 will always give you less hassle 😁 Except for these early VIA Apollo Things.. 😳

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