K6-3 has many more transistors because 256KB SRAM takes a large number of transistors. It is a K6-2 CXT aside from that on-die cache and its backside bus.

K6-2 500 is quite bottlenecked by the memory subsystem and that's why the K6-3 400 can beat it. K6-2 is throwing away many CPU cycles waiting for memory accesses. K6-3 is still bottlenecked by the memory subsystem but less so.

The motherboard cache should usually slightly help performance with the K6-3. However there could be some scenarios in which the extra cache level reduces performance because it probably increases main RAM latency to some degree.

swaaye wrote:

K6-3 has many more transistors because 256KB SRAM takes a large number of transistors. It is a K6-2 CXT aside from that on-die cache and its backside bus.

K6-2 500 is quite bottlenecked by the memory subsystem and that's why the K6-3 400 can beat it. K6-2 is throwing away many CPU cycles waiting for memory accesses. K6-3 is still bottlenecked by the memory subsystem though.

The motherboard cache should usually slightly help performance with the K6-3. However there could be some scenarios in which the extra cache level reduces performance because it probably increases main RAM latency to some degree.

Thank you I didn't think that L2 cache was that big.

On 3dmark99 and Voodoo3 3000 I have just tested a 2676 marks / 5800 cpu mark on K6-3 (almost 100/100+ with L3 enabled..). K6-2 500 with L3 gave me 2284 / 5586.

Gigabyte GA-5AX, K6-2-500 (afx), 128mb single sided kingston and a Matrox G400.

This setup gave me allmost 3100 in 3dmarks and more than 6000 in cpu mark.
Testing with 3D mark 99.

Yeah I suspect it's a mix of WinME and the 5AGM2 mobo quiet bad. Win98 was definetely faster but my pci nic only support Win98SE and up. 🙁

386SX wrote:

Yeah I suspect it's a mix of WinME and the 5AGM2 mobo quiet bad. Win98 was definetely faster but my pci nic only support Win98SE and up. 🙁

If you can source another and better Mobo, then grab it. It would be an idea to source some G400 and GF2 (TI or Ultra).
I can not give you any advice on what GF2 to get, as I only have a MX400 version, and it is installed in my FIC PA-2013.
Just don't go for WinME. Yeah. It has some nice features. It's just too darn slow for retro gaming. Win98SE is the way.

Socket-7 AGP boards sometimes have weak onboard power supplies for the AGP slot. I'd research this issue with respect to your particular board before trying a higher powered card like a GF2 Ultra. The MX series cards are definitely safe though.

Some of the better GF4MX cards are known to outperform the GF2 Ultra, but they'd also require newer drivers so maybe that would affect the end result with a K6. I remember I used to get better performance using old drivers on my K6-3 but that was a long time ago.

Well with this mobo I had various problems even with time correct hardware but I've read other threads... I pushed bios option to the maximun (sdram 8ns /2-3-3-6) plus L3 but not other things to tweak.

Regarding the vga I am using a Voodoo3 3000 as AGP1.0 latest real card I have. I also have a Viper II, Rage MAXX, G400, Savage 4 and Geforce 2 MX (first ver) but I suspect this one would ask probably too much on the mainboard considering the already hungry K6-3.
And I think that with this cpu/mainboard/subsystem other cards would be useless on performance side.

Not that I care that much about the mobo but it's my main pc actually.. 😁