K6-3+ 500ANZ

sylvan2626 · Post by **sylvan2626** » Sat May 28, 2005 11:05 pm

Anybody used this CPU (K6-3+ 500ANZ)?

How is it for overclocking?

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Mon May 30, 2005 11:28 pm

I have seen them for sale on E-Bay. (At very high prices). I know nothing about them. Since you don't seem to be getting much response, probably most people here are in the same situation. The general consensus is that the 450ACZ is the best. If you have the cash to spare and want to experiment, then try it and let us know how it works out. Otherwise wait until one of the experts here, (there are several), sees your post and answers.

sylvan2626 · Post by **sylvan2626** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:59 pm

This one will soon be on the table for experimentation. I plan to first piddle with the 1.6V K6-III+ first (listed in another thread at this forum), then drop this 500ANZ in my MVP3G2.

sylvan2626 · Post by **sylvan2626** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 11:16 pm

Plan to start this test soon!!!

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 5:48 pm

Well how did it go? The price suggests that this is a very good processor; but there is not much hands on experience using them, to judge by what I have seen posted about them.

TA152H · Post by **TA152H** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 10:41 pm

Sylvan,

One problem you may be aware of, or may not be, is that not all motherboards work properly at 550 MHz. I remember back around 2000 buying a K6-2 550 and being really angry with AMD for making a defective processor. I ordered another, and voila, another defective processor. Both failed on two motherboards, so obviously it was AMD and their crappy quality control. Well, not exactly, I found out some time later that AMD never expected to release 550 MHz at .25 so while motherboards supplied the multiplier, the processors did not work. They did work fine at 500 MHz though.

I have a wonderful MVP3G5, rev 2, that simply would not run at that multiplier. Great motherboard, and the rev 4 does work at 550 MHz, but that one flaw makes it junk to me.

So, if you have trouble making higher clock speeds, that might be the cause. If you have a newer revision probably not, but I thought it was worth mentioning since I had a problem with a very similar motherboard.

I may buy a 500 ANZ myself, just because I want one. I normally like to buy the best/final processor of a line I like, but that may be the 550 ACR or the 500 ANZ. 50 MHz for .2 volts makes it unclear. But, since I can not find any new 550 ACRs, the 500 ANZ may be as close as I can get.

Also, the 450 APZ (1.7v) is a fine processor. I only have one, but it ran at 600 MHz 2.0v under horrible tests (my 400 ATZs booted OK, but failed the more rigorous test even at 2.1v). I may have been lucky, but if you can get one cheap, it might be worth a try.

sylvan2626 · Post by **sylvan2626** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 11:41 am

Jim,

Much to my chagrin, I have not yet started my testing with this CPU.

I've got only one case and have to swap out components if I opt to change motherboards. I wanted to try this CPU on an EPoX MVP3G5; I have an EPoX MVP3G2 in the case at the moment while I piddle around with the K6-III+ 400ATZ. I got tied up getting my niece's PC ready for this school year, and in the midst of that task, I hit the "Delayed Write Failed" error on my PC (MVP3G2). Looking at possible solutions for that.

TA152H,

I have several SS7 EPoX boards, so thanks for the heads-up on multiplier settings. EPoX Tech Support tell me that their boards (EP-MVP3G-M, EP-MVP3G2, EP-MVP3G5, and EP-MVP3C2) will only support up to 500MHz CPUs. Interesting in light of your comments. (I thought that maybe it was related to no "official" support for the "plus" K6 processor.)

However, I have a couple of 550MHz K6-2s and a couple of 550MHz K6-2+ CPUs and want to see what happens when I plug them in on of my EPoX boards. I have the latest EPoX BIOS (non-Beta) flashed on extra chips.

I could do my 500ANZ trials on the MVP3G2, I guess. Probably would need to do something about the RAM. I currently have 384MB on the mobo and it is a mixture of 3 modules of 128MB each. One is a Micron PC100, one is an Apacer PC133, and I'm not sure what the third one is.

Oh well, more to come (at a later date, 'cause today is my grass mowing day).

TA152H · Post by **TA152H** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:02 pm

Sylvan,

If you have later revisions of the boards, they may work OK. I would say that if your processors do not run at 550 MHz, it says nothing about the processor and something about the motherboard. All my ATZs ran at 550 MHz easily, although one gives me trouble now after several months at 550. But, if you get 550 and can not get 600, I think that would point to the processor.

One thing about RAM is how much is cacheable. With a 1 Meg cache on the motherboard, only 256 MB is cacheable. For the 2 MB boards you can cache 512 MB. One thing you might want to do is interleave the memory, and your BIOS may not support it. I had to use an interleave enabler for my motherboard and it helps memory access quite a bit, which is important because the MVP3 is absolutely horrible in memory throughput. Every little bit helps.

With regards to the ANZ, I see the prices are falling on them, so I am just going to wait a little longer. I am also curious about the ATZs they have, they are dated from 2002 and probably are better than mine, which basically suck. Right now the prices on the ANZ are 80/75. They used to be 100/100, about two months ago fell to 100/75 and last week the high seller dropped down to $80 so we are at 80/75. They are not selling them at all, I look at each offer and whereas they sold well before, no one is buying them now. I expect the price will continue to drop because of this.

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 6:00 pm

I hear you on the 1 case bit. Me I only have 1 station where I can power up a machine. (Though cases are relatively easy to come by. Go to the back door of just about any computer shop and you will find AT cases in the garbage.) True bargain, you get to pick and choose between dozens of styles, both in terms of technical advancement, (Clip in mounts?), and appearance. Recommend it highly, the owners of the stores do not usually mind, as you are reducing the amount of trash they have to pay to have removed, provided you leave things as neat as you find them.

sylvan2626 · Post by **sylvan2626** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 8:39 pm

Jim,

Same here on the one station/work area. I recently bought a KVM switch which will help the one station problem. Went by the one PC repair shop (I live in a small town) in the area and he contracts with a metal recycler to pick up his used parts.

Hmmm, maybe if I bug him enough, he will let me look at them first.

TA152H,

My 400ATZ will run at 550MHz, but I am currently running at 1.8V - slightly out of spec. To get 600MHz out of the CPU, I will have to go to 2.1V or greater - not willing to do that now.

Still plan to use low voltage and passive cooling eventually for this combo, which is in an Antec case with 120mm rear fan and an 80mm front case fan.

My BIOS from EPoX has memory interleaving (2-way and 4-way) as an option and I'm currently using 4-way. I would probably get better performance here if my memory were all of the same brand/speed/timing.

This SS7 stuff has been interesting so far, still got a ways to go. There are some BIOS options that I don't have a clue about.

TA152H · Post by **TA152H** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 12:22 am

Sylvan,

I have a Tyan motherboard that does not support memory interleaving in the BIOS. It is a great motherboard besides that, and I got it new. But, it leaves me a little cold that it did not support memory interleaving, or for that matter PCI latency. Still, it has been very, very stable. EPoX is my favorite maker of motherboards, I used to like Aopen but ran into a couple of lemons. I am getting nothing but EPoX from now on.

I tried passive cooling with my K6-III ATZ and could not get it to work. You can easily destroy the processor trying to, and I doubt you will ever get it working. If you hate fans as much as I do, just buy a VIA processor like I did. It will easily outrun an K6-III at 400 Mhz, use less power, and has much more modern I/O.

If you plan on going with two case fans, does that not defeat the purpose of doing without a CPU fan? They generate plenty of noise, and they are right on the edge of the case.

As far as running out of Spec, 1.8v is not. They are made on the same exact wafers as the 2.0v processors and can easily do 2.0v without any problems, like all the K6-IIIs can. Rating it a 1.6v was AMD's way of making a very low power processor for mobile manufacturers. It does not imply that this processor is any less capable of handling 2.0v than any other. But, with any K6-III, I would be really worried about going to high over 2 volts. I agree with you completely on that. You can probably get away with 2.1v, although even that makes me a little nervous, but 2.2v or higher is probably pushing it too high. My opinion anyway, I would never consider it.

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 2:33 am

TA152H: I am not sure what chipset the Tyan has, but if it is an MVP3 you can enable 4 Bank interleave through WPCredit. One catch to that is make sure your Ram is SDRAM, not EDRAM. They look very much the same.

sylvan2626 · Post by **sylvan2626** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 9:34 am

TA152H,

Most of my boards are EPoX, with the exception of two ASUS P5A and one PC Chips M598 boards (used for my niece's PC). I have been eyeing the Tyan S1598C2 as a possible board. My reason is that a user can jumper whether or not to have the memory clock operate synchronously (or not) with the FSB or the AGP clock.

Since you have the MVP3 chipset on the Tyan, as Jim says, you could use WPCredit for memory interleaving. Also could use George Breese's Memory Interleave Enabler program. Since I have interleaving in my BIOS, I haven't tried either program.

My prelimiary testing of fanless cooling has been encourgaging so far. By fanless I mean that my CPU cooling is passive (heat sink only) and will use case fans. My CPU speed will be modest, probably around 450MHz or maybe 500MHz. The core voltage is stable starting at 1.3V, and temps between 37Cel and 41Cel. The rear case fan is relatively slow turning, so it is very quiet. The front fan is 80mm and a little more noisy than the rear fan. The CPU fan is the loudest of all. When running as "passive", I unplug the CPU fan (may eventually try a larger heat sink). Motherboard Monitor keeps a constant check on the temperatures, and I have yet to trip its CPU temperature alarm.

As far as the Via CPUs go, I did look at the C3 and Socket 370 motherboards, but (I think I remember) that the C3 did not support SSE. I was looking at EPoX Socket 370 boards (big surprise, huh?). I like quiet systems, but also like multiple PCI slots. Did you look at my post earlier about the 2-in-1 PCI riser? The C5 in your solution does support SSE and is a speedier solution than mine. I would have to save my pennies, though, to cope with that initial cash outlay.

What kind of case did you put the board in?

Jim,

I think I remember that you have used both of the interleaving programs before. How difficult were the WPCredit program and the Memory Interleave Enabler to use?

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 3:30 pm

I was never successful with the Breese program; but it was my own fault. I tried it a couple of times, and both times wound up with cyclical booting. Had to use safe mode to get in to uninstall it. Later when I was using WPCredit, I was getting crashes when I tried to enable 4 Bank interleave. Finally I twigged that it was the RAM. Turned out that my only set of 3 matching sticks of 256 Meg were EDRAM. Switched to 2 sticks of Hynix and have used WPCredit to enable 4 Bank Interleave fairly easily since. The Breese program would be easier, however, the only catch is that I have found some of the tweaks applied by PowerTweak to be at odds with WPCredit, when I try to use both. Whether the same is true of the Breese program, I don't know; but it would be something to watch out for. The WPCredit settings I use are listed in extraordinarily boring detail in the software and tweaking section under the heading of "WPCredit as applied to a DFI K6BV3+/66"

TA152H · Post by **TA152H** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 5:03 pm

Jim,

I have no problem interleaving the memory, as I mentioned, but thanks for the information. I use a memory interleave enabler. Still, it sort of rubs me the wrong way this is not supported in BIOS. It is pretty basic stuff that should have been, as most users will not know enough to research this aspect. That was my point.

Sylvan, the new VIA processors do in fact support SSE. With regards to the S1598C2, it truly is a great motherboard, if you do your research. The MVP3G5 is a great motherboard just by using the BIOS. Oh, and you can forget overclocking past 100 MHz on it, it is not at all supported. But, like I said, very solid motherboard I am very happy with.

K6Plus

K6-3+ 500ANZ

K6-3+ 500ANZ

RE: K6-3+ 500ANZ