Slashdot Mirror
K6-3 on Monday
This Monday, AMD will unveil the K6-3 at
400 and 450 MHz. The chip will have an on-chip 256k L2 cache, and
will go in existing Super 7 motherboard. The chip will probably top
out at 500 MHz shortly, but the chip should be produced into Y2K.
The chip reputedly performs like Pentium *3* of equivalent
clock, or even outperforms it with enough cache. People
like me have a decision to make - I have a K6-2 333 with 1MB of
L2 cache, and need to decide whether or not I should save up
for a K7 (hopefully SMP...) or just go for it and buy a K6-3. Thank
William Rhodes for the heads up
More power, Right Now.
Says it all.
I _REALLY_ want the K7. The k6-3 might be nice for :)
some, but...ooooh that sweet K7'ness.
This is great, if the price is right. I'd be tempted to go get one.
Does anyone know how much they will go for?
I just got my k6-2 400 about three months ago when it firt came out. Now, i have an itch to get the k6-3
As a matter of fact, yes. Save up for the
SMP box. It's worth it.
I am so happy that AMD is committed to staying with the Super 7 spec so I can upgrade to my heart's delight and not have to deal with getting a new motherboard!
Tristan McCann
trismcc@nh.ultranet.com
Simplified hydrodynamic coupled with heat transfer and turbomachinery.
I guess I should be saving up for an Alpha...
Haha yes I know it was a typo, but for some reason it amuses me to no end imaging the Slashdot people as Valley girls or something. Anyway never mind me :)
I play Quake II, 333 isn't enough!
I Want a K8, anyone know if K8 is gonna be 64 bit??
i recomend you wait for the K9's the K8's dont look like their gonna be all they are cracked up to be. :)
I'm amped for this CPU. This will probably be the best price/performance out there once the existing supply of Celery 3A dries up, which won't be long now.
And the juicy bit, of course, is that unlike the C3A, it supports 3DNow!, which (despite the goofy name) is something usable today, immediately. As opposed to that KDI or whatever Intel is shipping these days (is anyone even paying attention to Intel any more? They seem to be reaching the limit of their Superiority-Through-Spending-A-Fortune-On-Fab strategy, and certainly haven't done anything interesting from an architecture standpoint in ages).
...in that the fastest shipping x86 CPU will, for the second time in the last three years, be an AMD CPU. (With the exception of the Alpha, which isn't strictly x86 at all, despite some great software [FX!32] that makes it compatible under NT).
Because of the shoddiness of the engine, it needs more CPU than any single human has a right to own merely to be playable.
And it'll force them to compete on merit rather than on a brand name. ("It's a Pentium, it must be better than a Celery^Hon!", *chuckle*)
One thing to remember when fitting a CPU is to use _heat transfer compound_ between the heatsink and the cpu top. It's surprising how many people (even shops, here in the UK -maybe it's on purpose) don't take this simple step, and then get all riled up when their CPU lifespan is shot. The reason I mention this in conjunction with the K6 stuff is that, while with the new Pentibums, the fan tends to be attached already, when I bought my nice K6-2 400 a while back, I had got the fan, heatsink and compund myself, and was fitting them with some other people watching, and they didn't know what the stuff was...
(BTW - I've never had _any_ problems with AMD CPUs - but I'm always careful about proper heatsinking)
Celeron 300As only have 128k L2 cache which makes a duel setup a waste of time and money. The processors will spend most of their time waiting for data from memory.
If simulation is your bag, specifically finite elements, I would suggest you try some of the up wind methods to improve your convergence times. Next, I would suggest you get a workstation with parallel processors and a c++ complier optomized for parallel excution. I work with FEA pretty regularly and PCs seem to be only useful crude meshes and linear constitutive relations.
m0s8025@acs.tamu.edu
If simulation is your bag, specifically finite elements, I would suggest you try some of the up wind methods to improve your convergence times. Next, I would suggest you get a workstation with parallel processors and a c++ complier optomized for parallel excution. I work with FEA pretty regularly and PCs seem to be only useful for crude meshes and linear constitutive relations.
m0s8025@acs.tamu.edu
Hey, my P166 has delivered excellent performance /. on while my art's rendering. :)
for the 2+ years I've had it. Hell, I can even
play (and enjoy) Unreal on the thing. I'm still
itching for the K7, though, for my ray tracing
and fractal work. Clock speed always helps the
number crunching. This P166 still has a number
of years in it yet. I'll need something to
read
those are prices bulk purchases of the chip (like OEMs, etc). It'll be a bit higher for the average joe. Still, compared to a similar PII it's more than a deal (as long as you don't need FP). I also wouldn't expect the price to drop any more than it normally would when the K7 comes out. It is more likely that the K7 might be priced a little higher (still less than PIIIs to be sure, not to mention those insanely priced Xeons). As the article says, AMD will probably plan on selling the K6-III to lower end users while marketing the K7 to the higher end. Wait till Christmas 1999 and get yourself a (then) cheap K7 SMP box.
Ah yes, a K2k multiprocessor machine. Dual 1Ghz K2k with a full 1MB on die L2 cache and 2-4MB L3 cache. That along with 2GB RDRAM and a couple 18GB HDs should just barely make the minimum hardware requirements for windows 2002.
You kids all talk like Intel's just going to sit back and watch as AMD takes the entire processor market. Get real. When AMD releases its K7 with the 200mhz FSB, Intel will bring out something faster. Thats the way it works. And if the K7 fails (there IS always a chance), AMD is SOL. They are resting a lot on the K7 and if it doesn't float, AMD go bye-bye. Intels janitorial
budget is probably twice the size of AMD's entire R&D departments budget. Don't get me wrong, I run an AMD and an Intel system, and I'll be the first to go get a K7 when it comes out. But quit thinking that the current top processor company is going to sit idle while another company passes them by. Not gonna happen.
Just my $0.02.
You can have you AMD or Cyrix or whatever. I'll stick with Intel thankyou very much. You see, I like my systems stable and with the imitation x86 chips you just never know when it's going to freeze up your system.
I have P233MMX and I don't feel like paying $260 for a new motherboard and a K6-2 400. P233 Does it all. I don't play games. I don't run a mail server with 50000 users. I don't run a 1.000.000 hits per day web server. All I do is to use it for school, occasional C hacking, web, pr0n ... And quake2 is very playable, specially if you got a decent 3D accelerator.
I recall in that the early pentiums had a nasty bug that would cause them to freeze. They also had several problems with floating point arithmetic. Later, pentium pros turned out to have a flaky FP too - they had a bug related to processing 80 bit floating point numbers.
I never heard that AMD chips had anything like it.
your just another poor sap that bought an AMD chip and doesn't want to feel like an idiot because your too poor.
Sure, that would explain why my system has been up for the past 3 days without a problem. Before that I don't know how long it was up because I took it down to install the 2.2 kernel. Sure the older imitation chips but for that matter so did the pentium. I think you've been watching too many intel commercials...
-Anonymous Loser
If reliability is all that you're after, then you'd be well off with an Intel 486 DX4/100 with extra cooling throughout the computer. The thing is, that most people aren't THAT far into stability. I've found my Cyrix 5x86-100 to be very stable. It's not that you have to go Intel, but instead it is that you have to make sure you're buying a chip that's gone through a few revisions, and is verified to be stable. Also, a lot of systems have unstability because of heat problems. It's often more reliable to run at lower clock speeds. If you don't need the extra cpu, then there's little reason to go at full clock speed.
Here here. AMD, and its pathtic little chips, are really starting to bother me. Their chips lack the QUALITY that intel represents. I've never had a problem with an Intel CPU, but have had countless problems with both Cyrix and AMD. I view AMD chips as disposable. They're the Supermarket-brand of the CPU industry. Pathetic.
AMD chips are of poor quality, and I'll never buy one for any serious application. Maybe in a cheap router, or an MP3 player that sits on a shelf, but not for anything else.
AMD sucks
333 would be way too slow for my tastes. I've seen analyses take several days to run on an HP C360. The machines have 1.5 gig of RAM, too. But hey, your planes are still flying 'cause of this shit, so...
Why doesn't AMD have any info about the K6-3 on their web site? Intel's site is plastered with Pentium III propaganda. You would think AMD would do the same with a major CPU release such as this, but looking at their site, who would know that the K6-3 even exists?
Granted, this may all change come Monday morning. In the meantime, someone better call in Mulder and Scully. (Better yet, just call in Scully, and skin as many cows as she needs for her wardrobe...)
Here's the question. Is egcs up to snuff on alpha
these days or is it still half speed of the $$$ compiler? The one that costs more than the box.
making a chip is not only a matter designing it, mass produce the darned thing and hope people will buy it. One need to synchronize the software developers and secondary hardware developers so that by the time the actual new chip is ready for mass productions, everybody is ready to utilize it.
so bearing that in mind, It is not a normal practice to keep major new design a secret. cause than it will become like alpha chip, all muscle but takes awhile for people to know how to use it.
So since intel doesn't introduce anything to top off K7, aside from the faster PII and IA64. then one can conclude intel does not have anything.
of course there is the case of "transmeta", but than again intel doesn't employ Linus so.... heh heh......
My gateway is AMD 486dx4-100 running Debian. It NEVER crashes (well, except for the fact that I used to run win95 on it a long time ago...). I'm also running a www / ftp / mail server on it. See for yourself: www.happypenguin.dyn.ez-ip.net
char x [5] = { 0xf0, 0x0f, 0xc7, 0xc8 };
main ()
{
void (*f)() = x;
f();
}
The K7 is NOT another x86....
the 400 mhz k6-2 is slower than 366 mhz celeron. Let's see what k7 brings. But don't forget coppermine and williamette!
I heard one guy needed 5 fans for his pentium 3 box. That's not what I call reliable and the sound sucks.
Man I have to get a new processor, this P133 overclocked to 166 is making me feel old. Maybe I'll win the lottery this week.
"like", like, predates valley talk by at least like 20 years man. And maybe even like longer than that...
MKnepher
josefk@wenet.net
oh I missed the news that Gateway is gonna ship AMD pc's in the US-not just Japan. That's big news.
Anyway, push for 3dnow! support for linux and BeOS (they both use the same compiler but don't forget drivers and apps. Of course, kni is better but hey-give people what they want
It's also using a different architecture so the kernel will have to support it specifically
and there are more NT apps for intel than alpha NT. So don't blame MS too much-they want cross platform too. They're just stuck with all the win98/95/3.1/DOS stuff that's out there
maybe they'd pull off a celeron and do a k6-4? :)
I have had this happen on more than one occassion while buying a new MB and cpu rig: Asking the technician (although I must use this term loosly in this scenario) whos dropping my cpu in my MB to make sure he applys heat transfer compound and having him look at me and say "what the hell is that?" followed by my reply "Nevermind. Cancel that order. Ill be shopping somewher else."
I have owned 5 AMD systems at this point and never had the first problem. AMD's are very stable reliable chips. If youve ever owned one youd realize that.
Cyrix is a different story however. Ive never actually been dumb enough to buy one for myself but plenty of my friends did and they all regreted it.
Maximum range of cached addresses is determined by the TAG cache, not the main cache, so even a machine with 16k cache could conceivably cache 6 gigs of ramspace. These are 2 seperate issues, so keep that in mind whilst checking.
How much speed increasment over my current PII-505 MHz will it give?
Is it possible to turn off the x86 compatability
and run it in the real "native mode"?
FACT: My anus twitched 0.2 centimeters while I read :)
your post.
FACT: I have 6 arms full of love.
FACT: You're probably right -- I'm just real tired
and wanted a quick laugh.
Bye!
But damn, will it play Commander Keen real slick, eh?
At first, having never had a non-Intel CPU, I was
nervous about running the K6-2...but in the time
I've had it (September 98?), it's NEVER given me
cause to worry or doubt it. I was able to throw
together a 266 Mhz box with 48 megs of RAM for only
$220. (And some parts from my old box.)
Your view of AMD CPU's is QUITE distorted. It's a
shame it seems you were hurt somehow to make you think this
way, as it's entirely without basis. Either that,
or you're just trying to rattle a few cages.
The only time my machine was "unpredictibly unstable"
was when I was overclocking it. Otherwise, my
AMD has been EXTREMELY stable.
"Wonderful story Brodie. I've noticed you've stopped stuttering."
"I've been giving myself shock treatments."
"Up the voltage."
:)
As I am stuck in the world of FORTRAN for some of my projects...
Do you know how much better the Digital Compiler is than say g77? I guess I should go bench mark hunting... BBL
even without software that uses kni, the p3 will still beat the k6-2 at any speed. In fact any celeron will too. Now you can argue that intel is competing against itself with the celeron but you can't claim AMD is any better
What does your comment have to do with someone asking about a DEC Alpha?
Really, I want to know.
Methinks you were out a' trolling and spotted a good place to set in.
my point was that 3 days is nothing to brag about. i've had win98 up for over 30 days without problems, but we all know how unstable that is.
According to the AnandTech site, it becomes L3 cache...sweet deal :)
I love all the FUD. Stuff like "P3's are overheating garbage that need 1001 fans to make work" or "K6-2's are unstable, crap yield garbage". Honestly people, if either were the case, the companies would be LONG out of business.
Look at it this way:
Intel = Expensive because they tend to put out higher priced stuff. A P2-450 HAS to be expensive, the 512k of cache has to run at 225 MHz.. More then that, Intel likes the ability to run the CPU's a bit above and beyond what the clock rating says. Why else would 300A's run at 450?
Consequently, look at AMD. The only reason they can still be afloat is that they're a GOOD, VIABLE alternative. They please the people, doing stuff like continuing to support older architecture like the Super7, but at the same time not being locked in the past, playing with stuff like 3D-Now! and making old L2 cache L3 cache (:
The two need each other to exist. Intel to push ahead and AMD to challenge what they can, putting out cheaper and better. Look at it this way, it's REAL competition that's leading to REAL advancement. Without it, I'd wager we wouldn't have Celerons or K6-3's or anything. Be glad we have competition like this. Wouldn't it be a better world if the OS market was like this? MS actually TRYING to keep up with us? (: Anyway, I wandered off topic. just keep this in mind, it's GOOD competition.
It runs 'em like SHIT. The K6 runs those Inform
games like an 8088 with a potato shoved up it's nose.
And Wing Commander 1? Ever play it on a Pentium 200?
IT'S THAT SLOW. MY GOD. WHERE IS MY RUBBER DUCKY?!
Sounds too much like the E2k (that Russian chip).
I read somewhere that although the Xeon's cache runs at full processor speed, it is still much slower than the integrated cache. Makes sense, and in that case, the K6-III may be faster than a Xeon in some circumstances. Also remember, the K6 core is VERY cache-hungry. It benefits a lot more from lots of fast cache than the Pee-II (or III).
I'm still running a system on an old Am486DX/40. It's my firewall box, runs 24/7...I've got about two years of use on it now, and it was second hand when I got it. Never had a problem.
i had been running AMD processors since they were 386, and never, never, had a problem.
im a big AMD fan.
And by the way. AMD runs most software faster than Intel, i never play quake, so, for me, AMD rulez.
There are reasons for some people to upgrade to faster processors today. I, for one, use gcc to compile newer versions of gcc (a *lot* -- I develop the code, so it's not just when I want to upgrade), and different passes within gcc are either memory- or CPU-bound. A faster CPU will only help the memory-bound passes a little (with larger/faster caches), but will improve the performance of CPU-bound passes linearly. GIMP, CAD, and SPICE users all also need fast processors. There are people who need to solve NP problems which fit comfortably in L2, and a 2x improvement in CPU performance equals half as many hours (or days) to solve a particular instance of a problem.
I'll be the first to admit that we're in the minority, but we do exist. If what you meant to argue is that there is no reason for most people with fast processors to have fast processors, then I'll agree with you entirely. I'm awful glad that they keep upgrading their systems, though, else the high-performance components I need would get priced beyond my ability to pay.
-- Guges
our 150 machine CPU cluster using K6/300 and K6-2/350 CPUs thinks that you are wrong
Yes, why is it everyone here is so pissed off? I think email communication will be what starts WWIII.
Man, everyone can get so WILD when they don't communicate face to face.
Anyway, here is my opinion.
Don't get a K6-2, K6-3 or a Pentium III. Get a Celeron and overclock the badboy. These chips ROCK, and are cheaper than a K6-2.
And for anyone waiting for a K7, I personally think you'll be waiting a long while. Look at all the problems AMD had with AGP. With so many changes to their platform, those systems will be unstable for the first few revisions.
> Cyrix is a different story however.
I'm afraid I have to concur with the beef about Cyrix. I don't want to propegate any more non-Intel FUD, but I wound up with a faulty 6x86MX PR200 that took months to replace.
Turns out the cache was bad, but isolating this problem and then convincing the vendor to replace the chip took Herculean effort; they kept telling me that Active Desktop was at fault and that I should reinstall Windows. Ugh.
They did eventually fedex a new chip, but this one was an IBM with a slightly higher core voltage. No problems since, though my next purchase likely won't be a Cyrix.
According to some info at The Register and some
Japanese web-site, the K6-III (not K6-3, BTW) may
use a 2.3 volt supply and use an internal voltage
regulator.
did you know that intel pII/celeron chips can patch the cpu microcode by storing a small bit of code in the bios thats loaded at boot time?
maybe thats why you dont hear of processor bugs in the pII.
if AMD has any sense they will do the same thing with the K7.
The last time AMD beat out Intel in any given processor generation was with the 386DX-40 vs. Intel's 386DX-33. AMDs floating point is terrible (actually so is Intel's) and they have always lagged Intel at any given clock speed and generation. Sure you can find some isolated benchmark that will 'prove' this or that but the truth is that Intel's chips are more reliable and faster than AMD's at any given clock speed. And they are also more overclockable. Don't just take my word for it though. Visit some sites (like www.tomshardware.com) for other experts who can share the same results. The current king of the hill in x86 land is the 450mhz Xeon. The Alpha is not at all an x86 processor but I know what you are trying to say anyway (that it can compete with certain apps running under FX32!). It is insulting to the Alpha community to refer to it as an x86 type processor. BTW - I'm an AMD fan just waiting for them to mop the floor up with Intel (hopefully) when they release the K7 later this year.
Why worry about upgrading the CPU if you already have a P6 type processor? You can be better served by getting good video and SCSI drives. I benchmarked a SMP Xeon 400 system with a typical video board (something from Riva I think) against my Pentium 100 with a Intergraph RealiZm (aka DEC Powerstorm 4D60T, and similar to Intergraph 2200S) board and again with a Diamond FireGL-4000 board. The P5 kicked the bits out of the Xeon by a huge margin (like 150% faster) for 3D. Your disk subsystem is important too. So you can take a PPro dual-processor box (which can be built very cheap right now) and add a SCSI disk and good 3D card (the 4D60T retails for over $4k but I bought some {7} new for $300 each then resold them for profit). Good deals can be found on yesterdays show-stoppers and when you know what to look for, you can build a very fast well-balanced system that will have great performance overall instead of just in 2D or whatever.
Good thing MS wants cross-platform enough to kill the NT PowerPC port due to lack of funds from Motorola. And I'm sure a similar relationship was established with Digital for the NT Alpha port.
how about:
... run Slashdot.org.
:)
Is the K7 a whole new architecture, or just another x86? I'm wondering if we'll have to wait for the kernel mongers to have to develop for it, or if Linux (or any x86 OS) is usable right away.
Heh, another case of "I didn't read the article, everyone recap it for me" ...
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I am currently running a PPro/200 machine, primarily for developing music software.
I'm definitely at the point where I want more horsepower - so these articles on Slashdot are very interesting.
Does this new AMD chip do floating point anywhere near decent? Is it going to ever catch up with the Intel line in terms of FP power, or am I just better off sticking with Intel for my FP-hungry apps?
I don't know too much about the non-Intel alternatives... I got this PPro/200 a few years ago because it was the best thing for my music stuff... if there's an alternative, I'd sure like to know.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Appreciate it. I'll wait for the K7 before I decide on non-Intel chips for my uses.
In the meantime, might be interesting to overclock my PPro, if it's possible...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Thanks, I'll check into it. It may be fun, though this system already overheats if I don't turn on the drive-bay fans I've installed ...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
FUD is used improperly a lot of the time, but the root of this thread was the very definition of FUD. Uh-oh, what if you don't buy the known quantity Intel? You might have crashes. AMD and Cyrix processors are unstable. No one ever got fired for buying Intel. Etc. Sure, I too have noticed the proliferation of the term "FUD," but in this case it first perfectly.
(of course, "first" doesn't fit in that last sentence as well as the word "fits" does. dumb tyops.)
Posted by Mr. Assembly:
It has always been backward compatiblty that has kept intel in business (and Microsoft for that matter). So you can keep all that big investment in software that you have. If it wasn't for that we all would have macs on our desks and intel would be a company that made toasters.
Posted by Mr. Assembly:
You should use silicon grease. The reason for this is that it removes all the tiny air bubbles that prevent heat transfer from the chip to the heatsink.
What happens when I plug it into my board with 1MB L2? Does that become L3, additional L2, or is it just dropped?
tugrul
It's always easy to come up with examples that prove one thing or another. When we're talking about matrix algebra and FFT's, it becomes easier yet.
The computational kernels for all of these algorithms are very easy to optimize for any given cache size and number of CPU's (and, for that matter, number of floating point units). If the code you used was optimized for 256K or 512K of cache and whatever cache algorithm the PII uses it doesn't surprise me that it runs badly on a Celeron A. 128K should be enough cache to get decent performance from a matrix multiply.
The FFT's an interesting case, since the radix 2 kernel only uses about 5 flops, so a lot of people use radix 4 and 8 kernels to reduce memory (or cache) traffic. Of course, the x86 FPU architecture gets in the way here; there simply aren't enough registers and the stack architecture's all wrong. Radix 8 and vectorized radix 2 and 4 kernels are an interesting exercise in register and pipeline management. Then there are the twiddles (nth roots of 1). So OK, I'll grant that the FFT is more cache intensive, but there are clever ways to tune it for different cache sizes.
In any event, I would not pick any x86 architecture for large FFT's. For more typical 1024 point FFT's, though, the Celeron has enough cache (128K is enough for about 8K complex points; divide that by 4 to allow for the twiddle factors and other cache busting stuff, and you're still at 2K). But again, the FPU architecture is all wrong.
Intel represents quality??
If quality always won we wouldn't have
Microsoft and we wouldn't have this bloody
x86 architecture that really stinks!
I always thought that the Motorola 680x0
was better, and I'm sure there were a lot
of other good alternatives out there.
Why would you want to upgrade from a 333 Mhz to a 500 Mhz computer today? The only improvement we're seeing today is entirely in the video acceleration and that's entirely rendered in hardware no matter what CPU speed you have. More and more audio is rendered strictly in hardware, too. The memory requirements of today's software far outstrip caches so you're still going to be at the 100Mhz limit for software. I've compiled video rendering software with maximum optimization on several UNIX boxes and the difference in software-only rendering between 150Mhz and 500Mhz is noticable but barely worth it. The flight gear page has some good benchmarks on the situation.
Actually, wouldn't the Xeon chips be the fastest
:-)
shipping x86 chips, considering that the Xeons
not only have integrated L2 cache, but they have
more of it than the K6-3?
Now, the fastest *reasonably priced* x86 CPU
is another matter entirely.
Games games games.
Games.
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
One thing we learned in my architecture class was that cache size is not directly proportional to speed increase, in either direction. For a given amount of memory, and assuming some things about cache-implementation, there's a certain amount of cache that provides optimal performance. Less or more than that will hurt performance. Too big CAN slow down your computer (albeit, probably not MUCH). It's too bad that nobody publishes tests for these things, so that we can know how much cache to get. Since money is an issue for me, and celerons have 128k of cache, period, I don't have much of a choice, but it'd be nice to know.
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
Reminds me of a friend who had a 486DX2-66, and his crystal failed, somehow, and so he got a new oscillator, but they didn't have the 33MHz crystals, he had to get a 32.5MHz crystal, so he was underclocking his CPU by 1MHz. 486DX2-65
Yay.
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
Funny, 166 w/o hardware excel runs at ~25-30 fps for me..
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I was pleased to find a nice glop of heat transfer compound on my K6-2 350 when I got my motherboard and CPU. Is there a type of compound or name brand that is better or has properties that are more desirable? If so I would definitely be interested on hearing opinions about this, seeing that this subject isn't talked about to much.
Thanks
No one knows about the K8, but AMD has said they are already working on it (as of a year or two ago).
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
Yeah...as long as you don't need to do any sort of division you'll be fine.
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
The moths might be getting let out of the old sporran one of these days!
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
K6-2 were no OpenPIC. Heck, the K6 were not OpenPIC. AMD abandonned OpenPIC with the K5, since no one ever made a MB (that I know of) to support it.
K6-3s are not openpic either. They will not SMP at all.
(Well, not without a whole lot of glue logic added)
Claude Angers
Back in the 166+ days, they got pretty hot and people who were new then (me) and didn't think alot about cooling had big problems.
I knew a lot less about motherboards back then, too, and could probably have picked a more stable one. BCM sucks!
my 2 cents...
-k
You know, I've been running AMD chips for the last
two years and have never had a single problem.
And I still get people asking me if I trust the
AMD chips instead of Intel. I am sick beyond belief of the "Intel is the real x86" garbage,
especially when Intel releases a chip like the
PIII that is all hype and no performance and then
pushes it with with idiotic commercials saying it
will "Make the Internet more fun." WTF!?!?? Get a
grip, Intel is not the only CPU manufacturer that has a clue.
1) K6-3 are not SMP they are OpenPIC I belive(K6-2 were)....but no openPIC boards exist.
2) K7's are not Super7, they are SlotA and have an entierly different chipset.
---------------------------------
My current chip is an AMD K6-2-350, my *THIRD* K6 Chip. Every single one of them has been as solid as a rock. I think that you had better check your facts before spreading your FUD around.
NT
Hmmm, Dual Pentium 166 sits running in the corner quitely chugging away, never a problem. Exactly when is it going to start locking up on me?
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
I just got done mod'ing them, and it works like a charm! Very cool... BeOS 4.0 even knows they're Celerons ;)
I'm gonna get a K7 with my next system. Hello, 200Mhz Bus!
AMD is really giving Intel a run for its money. Best of luck to them.
Plus, those K6 chips LOOK cool..
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"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
Well, I can counter that with my own experience.
Before upgrading my machine with a K6-2/300 in an EPOX/MVP3C mainboard, I tried some Intel chips in another series of mainboards. I had nothing but trouble with the Intel junk.
This K6-2/300 has never frozen, never failed to boot, never failed to detect devices, and so on. The AMD K6-2 is the best CPU I have ever had.
Although I'm sure the K6-3 is cool, I'm still holding out for a K7.
The K7 is not just another x86. They have completely redesigned the whole structure from hardware to software.
I read on CMP the P IIs have just a single pipeline structure and the K7s will have a dual pipeline stucutre combined with L1 and L2 cache and a 200 mhz bus to make it just fly past P IIIs.
Based on what I've read about the K6-3 with its onboard 256 KB L2 CPU-speed cache, the result could be nothing short of _superb_ performance.
Unlike the Celeron A's with their 128 KB L2 cache, the K6-3's 256 KB L2 cache has already shown superior performance for the same clock speed as opposed to the Pentium II/III series. For example, if you're running Quake II with the 3DNow! drivers, a K6-3 will result in performance that is actually _better_ than a Pentium II at the same 450 MHz, if www.anandtech.com's website claims are true. It'll be interesting to see if we will see patches for Quake II that will take advantage of the Pentium III; if that's the case, it'll be a VERY close contest indeed.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
..333 is not enough? Hydrodynamics simulations?
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
oh come on. It wasn't just because it had the word intel on the processor that caused your box to be up for 300 days. AMD has been around for a long time and they know what they are doing. I have owned AMD's since their excellent 486. I have never had a problem that was caused by the processor itself. They have always been very reliable and have always had the better price/performance ratio. Yes, i did buy an AMD because it was cheaper. It's also a very good processor. Unlike some people, i guess i don't feel like spending 140 dollars more for basically the same thing. (and don't bitch to me about FPU, it's FPU is fine for everything but games, and all games i play had 3dnow implemented anyway)
Damn, some people. You'd think people who are so obsessed about "choices" would embrace AMD instead of the "monopoly" of intel. Hypocrisy, pure hypocrisy.
Don't get me wrong, I run an AMD and an Intel system, and I'll be the first to go get a K7 when it comes out. But quit thinking that the current top processor company is going to sit idle while another company passes them by. Not gonna happen.
Once the king of the mainframe world, and replete with a bloated infrastructure and inbred complacency, no one ever thought this giant would have to wake up one day and actually face reality. Reality is that if there's someone smaller, better, and offers value, you'd best take them seriously. If anything, this simply reaffirmed that company size and customer base are no guarantee of continued success.
I've got a 300Mhz PII right now and it's pretty good except for when I play Unreal. My rule of box-buying is to wait at least two Moor cycles.
I'd say wait.
For me, it's disappointing to buy a new machine and then not be blown away.
Interesting how Intel doesn't seem to have anything in the works to answer the K7 challenge (other than advertising dollars). Check out the chip roadmap to see what I mean.
I guess if you're a rich man, go for the K6-3 and maybe get a few percentage real world difference over your K6-2. But I'm waiting for K7 - will be a big jump over my P166 :-) Which will be relagated to firewall/web server/file server duties to replace my 486DX2/66 which will probably become an X-terminal (like I need another one?)...
-t.
I'd think that we can push socket7 to at least 600
;) Woo
Jim
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow...
I'd love to be able to run dual K6-3s. They'll be so cheap... it would be the best deal. I know some people are ready to get dual K7s if K6-3s won't do SMP (which I'm sure they won't). However, I'm fairly sure that at least until next year around this time, K7 processors and motherboards are just going to be way to expensive for most people. Sigh.
He said, "You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you helped assemble the first NT supercomputer," and I cringed.
One of the disadvantages of chipsets that supported socket 7 at 100 MHz FSB was that they had a caching area size that was small, such as 128meg for the Ali chipset. That puts a ceiling on useful RAM expansion. While most won't need more than that, some do. With the K6-3 doing the cache on it's own now, my question will be what the caching area of this new cache control logic will be. The Intel Celeron in Socket 370, and the Pentium-II L2 cache, have an area confirmed to be 4gig.
Hopefully the K6-3 cache will run at full core speed even with a 100 MHz FSB.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
What happens when I plug it into my board with 1MB L2? Does that become L3, additional L2, or is it just dropped?
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Your existing L2 cache will become L3 cache.
-Wee
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I would wait for the first price cut on the K6-3 and buy then. That should tide you over for a while until the K7 has come down a bit in price.
BTW. You can now get Dual Alpha 21264 with 4 MB cache and 1 500 MHz processor for under 10K. Another processor is $3500 (about the same as a 450 Xeon with 2MB cache, but the Integer peformance is 75% higher and FP is 100% higher)
Yep, if your motherboard supports the K6-2 400(CTX core), then it will automatically support the K6-3, and the L2 cache on the motherboard will become L3 cache. This is according to AMD. I know that the FIC PA-2013 and VA-503+ will support this.
hmm, you know you have had too much caffine when you come up with something like this:
The names K...2K.
sorry.
aaaaaaaaahhh!!!! man... you have a way of looking into the future... That just hurts me to think of all that power.... heheheh... gotta get it when it comes out...
well well.. Im glad to see that all that Intel Marketing has you convinced that they are the best... "This way in??" How about "no way out."
How dare you compare a AMD to a Cyrix... Thats blasphemy... I hope those " pathetic little chips " keep bothering you.. because Intel is losing its monopoly while your polishing your Intel Inside...
Noone seems to care about the fact that a lot of Super-7-boards do not support core-voltages of less than 2.1 volts, which could result in the neeed for a new motherboard to run the faster types of AMD K6-3s which shall be produced in a .18-micron-process and therefore possibly need a core-voltage of 1.9 or 1.8 (or even less) volts.
Do you have any information on that matter? I did not find any.
regards
tabit
I think my super-7 ASUS goes up to 660 MHz at max. overclocking settings... wonder if it's ever gonna be used :-)
:-)
Otherwise, the K6-3 sounds just great for super-7 owners (and no, anandtech's comments that you don't need 100MHz fsb MB are kind of crap, because what older MBs will *properly* support 400+ MHz CPU speed?)
Btw, the current L2 cache you now have becomes L3, just like on alphas
Stop the madness, people! The classic Intel P166 is helluva fast enough. :-)
Portland Group sells one. However, C++ (and C) usually result in much slower code than FORTRAN 77 or Fortran 90. Besides, Fortran 90 is much nicer to program - for numerical programs.
For this kind of task, I would strongly advice against buying AMD chips - their FPU is very slow compared to Intel's. You would be better off with a PII or Celeron. K7 might improve thinngs, but it isn't released yet.
I run all my linux servers on K5's and K6 and K6 2's. Never have any sort of random reboots or lock up problems. Currently, the most important server has been up for over a month, last rebooted to add firewall support to the kernel, was up 20 odd days before that, and was rebooted for that to allow IP aliasing support in the kernel. Get your dork face off your PC and out in teh real world for a little while.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
It's about time AMD rolled out the K6-3. I'm confident it'll kick the Pentium III's ass. I'll probably end up building a few K6-3s for people.