Seti, K6 & SetK6

[blade47]

I read where a guy was using a program or patch called SetK6 and he said it improved his seti scores quite a bit with his K6-2. I did a search of the forums and didn't run across anything and was wondering if anyone had heard of it. I personally don't have a K6 but thought it might be worth checking into for the guys who do if it works.

From my understanding it improves the way the K6 accesses it's L2 cache.

It may be common knowledge and everyone may already use it but since I know very little about the K6 I just thought I'd post about it.

 

[Ken g6]

I'd never heard of it, but here's more for anyone who wants it

 

[BurntKooshie]

SetK6 is for the newer revision K6-2's. Basically, the ones that came out from late 1998 onward. The reason for this is because AMD tweaked the K6-2 core when they were designing the K6-III (they found some tweaks they could do to the core when adding the L2 cache). So the "new" K6-2's have what's called a "CXT" core, which is the same as a K6-III without the L2 cache.

It enables write allocate and write combining on the CXT K6-2's, and all K6-III's (K6-III's all have a "CXT" core). Helps performance out a little bit...but not a great amount.

[EDIT] Doah..maybe I should have read Ken_G6's link first It was answered there, but more concisely

 

[imported_Thunder]

The only time this is necessary is when you are running a machine with a BIOS that was produced prior to the CXT cores. I think that all of the major M/B manufacturers implemented support for the CXT core and produced BIOS updates for any motherboards with K6 support. Basically, if you don't want to flash your BIOS or you can't get a more updated BIOS, then this utility is useful, otherwise it does nothing for you.

You can check with your manufacturer and look for any BIOS updates that mention support for the K6-III or support for later K6-2's. (Very few of them actually listed the updates as support for the CXT core) a few may mention support for "write allocate and write combine" in the reasons for the update. An example of this would be from Epox's BIOS page for a EP-MVP3G-M motherboard that I have. They simply say "Added better BIOS support for AMD K6-2/K6-III 400 and 450 processors" which is evidently code for "We took this teeny, weeny cache change into account".

-Brian

 

[Sled Dog]

It's easy enough to find out if your bios is new enough or not, fire up setk6 with no commands and if it tells you that your write allocation is active or not. With my cheapo PC Chips board I need setk6 to use the allocate feature of my K6-500 CXT core. I believe it made a small difference with gamma, haven't tried seti with it off. I ues these commands, C:\SETK6\SETK6.EXE setk6 /on /M0:LFB /M1:LFB2,64M. Hope this helps...