What happened to the K6-III?

[Rigoletto]

>ahem< the situation might be different for americans but in europe here you never found them since the Athlon came out. Now you only get 500MHz K6-2.
I would have thought that the &quot;slow&quot; 500MHz would need the cache of the K6-III to get the most out of the slow clock to compete.
So why did the K6-III die?
a) not the cheapest chip AMD could produce for the bargain basement. In a confused slot, a half way house.
b) the extra cache bumped production costs up rather high for what it is- maybe even above duron.
Does anybody remember the wild rumor days when the K6-III was supposed to be better than the PII?

Does anybody actually have a K6-III here?

 

[Noriaki]

The Duron happened to the K6. Far superior performance to the celeron, hell the thing has 90% the performance of an Athlon, and it costs as much as a K6-3.

Seriusly though,
Are you sure that's not a K6-2+ 500 ?

The K6-2+ has 128KB Ondie L2 cache, so it's got half the L2 cache the K6-III had, the + is also .18um instead of .25. There is in fact a K6-III+ with 256KB Ondie L2 cahce at .18um, but I don't think they are very popular.

Edit: I think the K6-2+, K6-3 and K6-3+, might actually be on-package cache, not ondie...not that you probably care

 

[Rigoletto]

I thought L2 cache was on the mobo for K6-2 and 256K cache on chip for the K6-III. The CELERON had 128Kb cache.
Does anyone know why Intel's rivals had such probs making a competitive (or even a real) FPU?

 

[Vegito]

I actually have a european version of k6-3 333Mhz @ 2.2V oced to 375Mhz using 75x5. It's decent. Durong = faster &amp; CHEAPER than a K6-3

 

[hungrypete]

no huge lossm I ran a k6-III 400 for about 6 months and it sucked pretty bad, especially compared to a P2 400. And I'm not *sure*, but I'm thinkin the cache on the motherboard was referred to as L3 cache. I bought my K6-3 for like $50 almost a year ago, and last time I looked on pricewatch they were in the $250 range...... ouch...... Anybody want to buy a $250 k6-3 400 from me?

 

[Rigoletto]

Hey forcesho don't let GUTB or alnoor see the word &quot;durong&quot; because they will love it!

 

[Noriaki]

<< I thought L2 cache was on the mobo for K6-2 and 256K cache on chip for the K6-III. The CELERON had 128Kb cache. >>


That's all right. And the mobo's cache is called L3 for K6-3, but the K6-2+ also has onchip L2 cache and mobo L3 cache. It just doesn't have as much onchip L2 cache as the K6-3.



<< Does anyone know why Intel's rivals had such probs making a competitive (or even a real) FPU? >>


They didn't, nothing from Intel can match FPU power with the Athlon/Duron, and the K5 was on par on with the Pentium..for some reason the K6 just seemed to have a weak one..

 

[Rigoletto]

But Cyrix too also had poor FPU. They still do if you look at their recent efforts the MIII and the Samuel (on tom's hardware I think). Is it hard to design an FPU?

 

[StanTheMan]

Yep, I'm using K6-III 450

 

[SkyDiver]

Hey guys,
I'm using (on 2nd computer) a K-6 III 400 upgrade chip that was converted for a Socket 7. It was a nice bump up from the 233Mhz that my MB stopped at.

SkyDiver

 

[CQuinn]

I have a K6-III 450 (at home), and performance-wise, most of my software treats
it as a P-II equivalent. I get the same integer performance, but slower
FPU performance. It feels just as responsive as the P-III 600 I have at
work, but the home system has more memory and better parts.

Noriaki, the K5 and K6 had the same FPU core AFAIR. It was on the Athlon
that AMD upgraded that design.

I got this chip to upgrade a Socket 7 board long before the Athlons came
out; and it's kept me going steady while I saved up for the Thunderbird.