Why K6's?

Discussion relating to Socket 7 hardware.
DonPedro
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Post by DonPedro »

jim,

you are keeping a copy of powerdvd 4.0 (or "xp" as it also called)?

could you please check which version/build no. your copy is? I ask because I am desperately looking for a version BELOW the last build -2417 (which is also available as a patch on the maker's website to upgrade lower versions one might have on cd).

unfortunately I own only a cd with latest build and the bad thing with it is that it is not compatible with nt4, but any previous version is.
KenB
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Post by KenB »

DonPedro,

I just got around the pass thru cable of the Sigma card by just using the S-video out to a TV instead of trying to watch on a monitor.

Also, I tried to get an ATI Radeon 7000 card to work on the FIC-PAG2130 using WinDVD 4, but could never get it to work. Long story. So I never got to see that ATI decode.
Jim
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Location: Toronto

Post by Jim »

Peter, I have 3, 4, 5, & 6. The 3 might be a "Copy" so I can't give any build number info on it, Looking at the Power DVD 4 disks, (I have two of them), it says right on them : " Windows 95, OSR2, 98, 98SE, NT4 SP5+, 2000, Me or Windows XP" I also have 2 copies of WinDVD4 which came with some Powercolour ATI 7000 cards.

I have always preferred Power DVD 4 to the newer versions, because the frame advance in Power DVD 4 works accurately, advancing exactly 1 frame each time you use it. That enables you to capture movies frame by frame, then edit them however you like. Newer versions, the frame advance is more or less random 1 to 5 frames at a time.
Superpuppy 3
K6-3+ 450 ACZ (6x100)
DFI K6BV3+/66 Rev B2 (2 Meg) w/ 2x28mm Chipset Fans
2x256 Meg PC 133 Hynix SDRAM
1x 20G Maxtor (7200)
2x 80G Maxtor (7200) Ducted w/ 2x486 Fans Mount
52/24/52/16 LG CDR/RW/DVD
8/4/3/12/24/16/32 LG Super Multi
ATI 9000 aiw Radeon AGP
SB Audigy 1 MP3 Sound
CMD 649 IDE Controller
NEC USB 2 Card
DonPedro
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Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:11 pm

Post by DonPedro »

jim,

there is a misunderstanding. I am talking about program-version compilation-build number. you can get this number via right-click on the exe-file, tab version.
DonPedro
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Posts: 578
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Post by DonPedro »

kenb,

you need a dvd-sw-player from ATI, not just an ordinary serves-all player like windvd or powerdvd.

unfortunately it is not easy to locate the ati-player, ati does not offer them on their website, at least I did not found any player there when I searched for it a year or two ago.

with some luck you will find the player on original ati-cds that come bundled with the videocard.

if need be we can arrange that I offer the ati-dvd-player for download ....
Jim
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Location: Toronto

Post by Jim »

@ Peter : I should think that the disk saying right on it : "NT4 SP5+" would clearly indicate that NT4 with Service Pack 5 or higher would work OK; but if you really need the build number, the copy that I have installed on SuperPuppy5 is build : "4.00.1813".

Re ATI software, it is available at their site, though the links are obscure. If you go to the general section here, and look for one of my post threads titled "Paid a visit to ATI today", (Their head office is located in Markham, not far from where I live), you should find everything you need to know about how to locate various ATI software item downloads in that thread; though they are sticky about their DVD decoder, (don't know why, PowerDVD seems better to me), and they require you to stick an ATI disk in your CDROM drive to verify that you actually bought an ATI product in order to download the newer versions.
Superpuppy 3
K6-3+ 450 ACZ (6x100)
DFI K6BV3+/66 Rev B2 (2 Meg) w/ 2x28mm Chipset Fans
2x256 Meg PC 133 Hynix SDRAM
1x 20G Maxtor (7200)
2x 80G Maxtor (7200) Ducted w/ 2x486 Fans Mount
52/24/52/16 LG CDR/RW/DVD
8/4/3/12/24/16/32 LG Super Multi
ATI 9000 aiw Radeon AGP
SB Audigy 1 MP3 Sound
CMD 649 IDE Controller
NEC USB 2 Card
DonPedro
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Posts: 578
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:11 pm

Post by DonPedro »

jim,

yes, I know that the priint on the disk's sleeve says that the software is compatible with nt4, but this is only vaild if the build no. is below 2417. ok, is there any chance I can trade in something for a copy of your "1813" version?
KenB
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Posts: 58
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:22 pm

Post by KenB »

DonPedro,

Very generous of you, re the ATI player. However, I did that project about 2003-2004, and moved on a few months after that to just watching DVDs (from time to time) on my Sempron setup instead.

I'm actually sorry that I got rid of the Sigma card, though. I should have kept it. But it's water under the bridge for me, at this point.
DonPedro
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Post by DonPedro »

KenB wrote:DonPedro,

I just got around the pass thru cable of the Sigma card by just using the S-video out to a TV instead of trying to watch on a monitor.
Kenb,

how then did you manage to control a dvd's menue? once you leave out the connectin between the vga card and the sigma card the mouse pointer is not transmitted to the tv-monitor! how to navigate?
KenB
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Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:22 pm

Post by KenB »

Now that you bring it up, I think this was when I had an all-in-wonder card 128 card, that featured s-video in and out. I actually, may have used a monitor, but in "TV mode" using the all-in-wonder's s-video input.

I think.
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swaaye
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Post by swaaye »

KenB wrote:The argument against K6 above, re Win98/AGP, to me, is not much of an argument. I owned K6 in those years, and yes, it was not quite as fast in the FPU as a Celeron or PII/III, but paired with a decent Riva card or Voodoo card, they were TOTALLY acceptable. I would get easily in the range of 40-45 fps in Quake II with a 8MB Riva card on a 266Mhz chip. A Pentium would have done 20-30% better, but that K6 was nothing to sneeze at. And I never really had any problems with Win98 that I could not attribute to Win98 itself. And the fact that AGP implementation on BX boards was solid is nice, but that has nothing to do with AMD K6. AMD did not make chipsets, it was up to chipset mfrs to get that working. I think too many people were just trying too hard to get some video cards working that were not going to work.
The only reason (other than being an AMD fan or some such) to favor a K6 over a Pentium II or III, when performance and compatibility of the latter is greatly superior, is if the K6 is cheaper. And it was, until K6-III anyway. It was a great little CPU for most apps. It definitely had big problems with FPU-heavy apps though (not just games) because of its slow FPU and poor memory subsystem.

K6 is an integer processing monster. It is as fast or faster than a PPro or P2 of the same clock, I believe, for that. Its problems start to show though when you see the performance scaling problems resulting from it not having a L2 cache that scales in clock and is on a separate bus from RAM. This is one big part of why Pentium Pro and onward performed so well. K6 was bus bottlenecked and that L2 was always 66 or 100 Mhz. (Obviously excluding K6-3 here).

And yeah I know that AMD wasn't responsible for the chipsets. Still, you can't use a K6 without a motherboard and pretty much all of the chipsets for it had serious issues. Yeah you could get around many problems by sticking to a Voodoo3/4/5. Still, The fact of the matter is that AMD's CPUs were chained to some pretty lousy chipsets back then.

What really sticks in my mind even today though is how bad K6-2 ran UT. I used to play a lot of UT with friends at LAN parties back then and some of them had K6-2's. Nobody had K6-3, because it was too much $$. That is why they owned K6-2 in the first place: cheaper than Intel. K6-2 is a total dog for UT compared to a P2 of the same clock. Even running Glide through a Voodoo3. It really is the same with Quake 3. (K6-3 isn't much faster. I've run these games thru my K6-3+ 600MHz). Is it worth saving money and losing that kind of speed? It all depends on the person.

You bring up Quake 2. That is probably the best case possible for a K6-2/3 because of the AMD optimized executable. That actually might be the only game that had any considerable effort put into 3DNow... It was great too, but it took AMD themselves to get that done and it never really happened again unfortunately.

I'm not saying it's a bad chip. It was an excellent value for most people. But there are situations where it is not the most desirable CPU or platform... I have several K6s in my collection of hand-me-down CPUs and like to play around with them occasionally. It was an interesting era.
DonPedro
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Post by DonPedro »

What really sticks in my mind even today though is how bad K6-2 ran UT
well, I would say 40 frames at 1600x1200 by 32bits color, 2 AA anc 2x AF is certainly not "baaaad" (K6-3-600, GF-2 MX).
Jim
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Post by Jim »

@ Peter : I think that the reason the newer versions of PowerDVD do not have a consistant accurate frame advance, is probably the the move industry complained about that feature of PowerDVD 4. They don't appreciate people being able to capture their efforts frame by frame; and being able to edit them by resequencing and adding or deleting frames; thereby being able to reconstruct a movie from resequenced frames to come up with something different.

With appologies to jpnjim for being off topic.
Superpuppy 3
K6-3+ 450 ACZ (6x100)
DFI K6BV3+/66 Rev B2 (2 Meg) w/ 2x28mm Chipset Fans
2x256 Meg PC 133 Hynix SDRAM
1x 20G Maxtor (7200)
2x 80G Maxtor (7200) Ducted w/ 2x486 Fans Mount
52/24/52/16 LG CDR/RW/DVD
8/4/3/12/24/16/32 LG Super Multi
ATI 9000 aiw Radeon AGP
SB Audigy 1 MP3 Sound
CMD 649 IDE Controller
NEC USB 2 Card
DonPedro
K6'er Elite
Posts: 578
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:11 pm

Post by DonPedro »

jim,

I just tried the frame by frame advance again and I must say it actually does not advance by single frame. too much of movements between two consecutive "frames" can be seen considering that a movie goes at 24/25 fps. powerdvd4's technique however seems to be far better than that of powerdvd3 which shows even more change between two "frames".
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swaaye
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Post by swaaye »

DonPedro wrote:
What really sticks in my mind even today though is how bad K6-2 ran UT
well, I would say 40 frames at 1600x1200 by 32bits color, 2 AA anc 2x AF is certainly not "baaaad" (K6-3-600, GF-2 MX).
I compared a P3-450 to a K6-3 600 about a year ago. I was stunned to find that the P3 ran the game better in general. Higher lows in the frame rate and higher highs. UT just isn't 3DNow optimized well at all. I was running a Voodoo5 5500 with the Glide renderer. I don't remember what resolution I was running anymore. Probably 1280x1024 because I'd have been using my 19" CRT and that's the happy spot for its refresh rate capabilities.

I know UT has command line options for both KNI (SSE) and 3DNow so I wonder if it has more SSE going on or just uses the FPU a ton (bad for K6, not for P3). The game uses a lot of MMX too, but primarily for audio and the software renderer I believe.
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