What happened

[Gamingphreek]

Everyone remembers back in the old days when Intel was the top dog. Then Cyrix came and gae it a run for its money and then just disappeared. What happened to Cyrix, weren't they bought by VIA. But how do their chips compare.

Remember back to socket 7. There was K6-2 and P-2. What happened to the K6-III. I supposedly massacred everything, so why did AMD take it back?

-Kevin

 

[Falloutboy]

the K6-3 was still slower than an equally clocked p2. it was also very expensive at the time for amd to make due to its large ondie cache. AMD never had a faster chip than intel till the first athlons came out

cyrix was bought by via and the decendedent of that chip is the via C3 series.

 

[DaNorthface]

I heard the K6-3 performed like an Athlon.. the reason it didn't go into mass was because they had the athlon out soon after

 

Z-80?

 

[TStep]

IIRC, by the time KIII came to market it was competing with the early PIIIs, and the speeds were much more limited.

 

[Falloutboy]

i thought the k6-3 was the same as a k6-2 with a bigger cache

 

[TStep]

I think it was a K6-2 with an ondie L2 cache

 

[jswjimmy]

k6=128 half speed cache
k6-2=256 half speed cache
k6-3=256 full speed cache

 

[henan]

didn't the k6-III have an additional L3 cahce, wich was the sole difference from the k6-2? Oh, and the change in name, suddenly all processors where "III", not "3"...

I still have a k6-2 350 that will run at 450. Awesone thing back in the days!

 

[TStep]

I think the L3 cache was the cache on the motherboard that was normally used as the L2 cache with the K6-2

 

[henan]

You were right jswjimmy, but the k6-3 had the option of adding L3 cache on the mobo. Maybe people didn't want to get new boards, so they didn't get the full performance gain. Still, the L3 was only 100 MHz.

 

[henan]

Originally posted by: TStep
I think the L3 cache was the cache on the motherboard that was normally used as the L2 cache with the K6-2

there goes my new board theory...

 

[gwag]

lots of misinformation in this thread:
K-6 64k L1 cache
K6-2 64k L1 cache
K6-2+ 64 L1 cache +128k on die L2 cache(full speed)
K6-3 64 L1 cache +256k on die L2 cache(full speed)
athlons out performed k6k3's and had 512k on chip L2 1/2 speed