k6-2 or pentium 2

[bjc112]

my friend had a old old old....... IBM and just upgraded to a k62 500.. would he have been alot better off with a P2 500 or 450.. casue i hear that the k62 were pretty weak.. what do you think?? thanks in advance

 

[BigLance]

There isn't a P2 500 CPU. But I think a P2 450 would be better than the K6-2 500.

 

[bjc112]

thats what i thought.. becasue he has a vodoo 3... but the games.. are still horrible.. its almost like he doesn't have a 500 its like a 250.. i dunno though.

 

[Zach]

Yes the PII's would have been better, even at lower Mhz. K6-2's had thier cost to keep them competative, not speed.

 

[kyoshozx]

Well p2 has a better fpu than a k2, k2 makes up for that with 3dnow instructions. I would of went with a p2, because of an upgrade path to p3 later on. Anyway p2 only went up to 450mhz, 500mhz chips were p3's.

 

[TravisBickle]

ugh, K6-2 is a relic now. the problem is with the floating point unit. a Celeron 500 will be 50% better on floating point benchmarks.

 

[gtd2000]

K6-2's were marketed as = to P2's but the truth was they were not cutting the mustard in the 3D games department especially.

K6-2's are OK for gaming and probably about equal in office apps etc.

I've been down this road and know the difference.....

One of my friends had an IBM Aptiva E with a K6-2 300Mhz - it was so slow it was painful to use.

My old K6-2 300 on an Epox MVP3-E and later G revision was a flyer though

Then I saw the light with a Celeron 300A @ 450Mhz

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

K6-2 or K6-2+? The plus makes a big difference.

 

[bjc112]

just a k6-2 whats the difference??

 

[Tzen]

I'm thinking about putting a K6-2 400MHz in this old Aptiva. Currently it's got a K6 200MHz, so ANYTHING would be better than this. It's the best chip I can get without having to replace the motherboard. Aside from not having the money to do that right now, it has onboard sound and graphics which also would have to be replaced with seperate.

Tzen

 

[bjc112]

tzen.. it depends what you are using it for if you are using it for just simple office apps you are ok.. but gaming may be a little bit of a different story.. and if you get a video card get a cheap MX or Vodoo 3... you should get the most out of that chip with that setup.

 

[Rand]

In office application peformance the K6-2's were fine, in fact they were pretty good. It's their FPU performance that killed them. In gaming the k6-2 stinks unless the game has 3D Now! optimizations.
Also, beyond 400MHz or so you wouldnt see much performance gain as you ramp in clockspeed because the K6-2 at those clockspeeds was severely bandiwdth constrained, mostly from it's FSB speed L2 Cache on the mobo.

 

[Quickfingerz]

I would never get a k6-2 over a p2. I'd rather get a P2 400mhz than a K6-2 550 mhz.

The P2 is significantly fast clock for clock than the K6-2.

 

[JavaMomma]

the only reason i would see to upgrade to a K62 over a P2, or P3 is if he already had the Socket 7 motherboard and didnt want to spend much money.

K6-2 $40-$50??
vs
$100 new BX board
$60-$70 new Pentium 2, 3

I didnt get these prices from a page, just some assumtions of approx price.

 

[Tzen]

How do you guys think older games like Half-Life and Alien Vs. Predator will run on a K6-2 400MHz with an old 8MB Voodoo2? What about Diablo II? Right now Half-Life and AvP are too choppy to play and it sucks that they're just lying around collecting dust.

Tzen

Edit: Grammar

 

[bjc112]

well.. on his 500 with an vodoo 3.. they work ok at 640x480x16.. but still some chop but definatley playable.

 

[Vyle]

I wouldn't have went with a K62 or a PII. He should've kept saving his money and went straight to a Duron. PII 450s are hard to find. Pricewatch has them listed around $95. Not worth it.

 

[Noriaki]

<< my friend had a old old old....... IBM and just upgraded to a k62 500.. would he have been alot better off with a P2 500 or 450.. >>

Well if he had a Super 7 motherboard that could take a K6-2 500 then it probably cost him $30. And for a P2 he'd need a new board as well as the chip being more expensvie.



<< the k62 were pretty weak.. what do you think?? >>

They have a weak FPU, but until Quake3 came along I was very happy with my K6-2/350 + Voodoo3. Also DVDs were a bit painful on the 350...it was alright, but not great.

 

[Tzen]

Any other opinions?

Tzen

 

[Workin']

Amazing that it took like 20 posts before someone (Noriaki) pointed out the motherboard issue for upgrading.

Anyway - I have a Celeron 300A@464/Abit BH6/192MB RAM in one machine, and a K6-2-550/Soyo 5EHM/256MB RAM in another. The Celly stomps the AMD in every measure. Not to say the AMD is slowwww, it's perfectly acceptable, just slower than the Celeron. In fact I am running Win2k Advanced Server on the AMD box and the performace is really good, since floating-point isn't an issue for a file server.

 

[Zucchini]

bah, k6-2's are horrific, they may load word as quickly as a p2(almost), but thats about it. Put any stress on it and it starts to look like a p1, what it should be competing against. I had 2 systems, a k6-2 450 and a p2-400(oc to 450).. the p2 ate the k6 alive.

 

[Tzen]

The P2 is not an option for me unless I want to replace the mobo, which I don't. And if I was going to I'd just go to a Duron or Athlon. But, I can't afford that right now. I am on a K6 200MHz and the best I can get is a K6-2 400MHz. I was hoping for opinions on how it runs on older games and possibly some newer games like Diablo II.

Tzen

 

[Gunbuster]

If it has a Bigfoot HDD replace that before anything else.

 

[Viperoni]

Pretty much well most p2's would be better than a K6-2

 

[gtd2000]

I'd say any PII from 300Mhz up (on a good BX motherboard) will outpace a K6-2 series CPU.
The truth is that the different motherboards will have an effect on your end perfomance.

Tzen, does the Aptiva that u want to upgrade have the TX chipset? Are you planning on using a K6-2 which will then re-map the 2x multiplier to 6x? (6 x 66Mhz = 400Mhz)

If so - that combination should provide a reasonably decent performing machine - but don't expect it to be like greased lightning

If you are getting stutters in Half Life thats (probably) due to having insufficient RAM - when I first started to play HL I was running a K6-2 300 @ 336Mhz with 64MB of RAM on an Epox MVP3-E. It was also suffering from the stutters too occasionally. I added and extra 64MB of RAM and it was fine That may not be an option for you if you are running a TX chipset as I'm sure 64MB is the max that it can use??? The K6-2 played HL very nicely - but the game was smoother on my C300/450 setup