Why K6's?

Discussion relating to Socket 7 hardware.
jpnjim
Newbie K6'er
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 8:00 pm

Why K6's?

Post by jpnjim »

Hi,
I just found the K6Plus site today, very nice, tons of great K6 info. :banana

I know why I like K6's (I think), what got you guys started,
and why still use older technology?


I still have my old 1247 Compaq laptop, it's running XP, and the K6-2 400 is slightly clocked to 431.3.

Data transfer rates @ 156mb RAM max (128+32 -8 for video) are slow, so I'll try to pickup a 3+ chip, slightly clocked to 500ish.

I know anything newer is faster (I'm typing this on a AMD Turion64 Machine), I just like the idea of a 'Hot Rod' lappy 8)
Jimmy
Jim
K6'er Elite
Posts: 1745
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2004 7:10 pm
Location: Toronto

RE: Why K6

Post by Jim »

Welcome onboard. I guess we all have our own reasons for still messing with K6s. My original reason was that was all I could afford. That has changed; but they are still adequate for what I do; and once bitten by the bug, well ....

I would also note that when you get your 3+, you will get much better video, (i.e. DVD playback), if you clock it to 600 MHz @ 2.1v., which most of them will easily do.
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
User avatar
kalabok
Senior K6'er
Posts: 147
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 11:40 am
Location: germany

Post by kalabok »

well,

i started with an old AT box which i thought i could use during my studies. i was messing arround with edo rams, scsi cotrollers and stuff just to run it fast enough for me. now its a kind of madness ...
speaking about the 3+: i think this one is quite good for your 500ish:

http://cgi.ebay.com/K6-III-400-ATZ-1-6V ... dZViewItem
DonPedro
K6'er Elite
Posts: 578
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:11 pm

Post by DonPedro »

jpnjim,

replacing the k6-2 for a k6-3+ will give you a big speed-boost, but if you can spare some more money then try to install more memory. windows xp "needs" at least 512mb to run smoothly (if not overloaded with too much apps running at the same time). this will give you an even more satisfying performance improvement. if you then are not run out of money spend some on a fast harddisk. if you still are using the original hd then I guess you get 15mb/s at maximum. I would suggest to use a samsung m80 model. very fast, inaudible, and no heat at a very good price. the olnly problem might be that your ide-controller bios is not able to use the whole 80gb.
User avatar
anomic
Newbie K6'er
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2007 4:37 am
Location: Lelystad, The Netherlands
Contact:

Post by anomic »

In '95 I bought my first Pentium 75 with 8MB mem and a 850MB HD, 1 MB pci video. In '97 I upgraded the mainboard to an Asus tx97-e and overclocked the P75 to 120 MHz WOW! I bought a 233 MHz pentium mmx, and overclocked it to 292 MHz (3.5x83 not very stable). That was the maximum for this setup.... maked me feel bad .... I wanted more power, but the Pentium won't let me do so (locked @ 3.5 multiplier). I hated it, because I don't want to waste my fine Asus TX97-E board, and Intel forced me to do so by switching to slot1 processors at that time. HURRLLL INTEL!

Then, I read about the k6-2 with unlocked mutipliers, and the k6-2 300 was available for a reasonable price, it overclocked stable to 375 MHz WOOHOO! I was in the race again! Later I got the k6-III 400 which I popped off the cap and it ran for a long time @ 500 MHz, 2.7 volt. This box became my first server which ran for a few years. I changed the Asus TX97-E for a Asus P5A-B, and replaced the K6-III for a K6-III+ ATZ 400, which runs fine @ 2,1 volt @ 600MHz. It still is my server, running 24x7 in a colocation and doing a fine job.

AMD was there for me at the right place/right moment. Where Intel let me down, AMD gave me new opportunities. When a friend of mine bought a PII 350 MHz for al lot of $$$$$ I blew him away with my old trusty TX97 and K6-III 400 @ 500 :D That's why I love K6-III :-)

So I think it is typical for computer freaks from year 1995 ~ 1999 that AMD makes itself beloved. AMD gave them a chance to make a fast computer without the need for buying a complete new crappy slot1 system for much $$$$.

Mike.
User avatar
swaaye
Junior K6'er
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Aug 24, 2006 1:53 pm

Post by swaaye »

I think there's an attachment to K6 CPUs because of their underdog legacy. They weren't really that great compared to P2/3, but they were so much cheaper. BTW, I don't really think K6-3 was that great at all because it was more expensive and only really matched P3 in desktop apps....

If you weren't into 3D gaming though, a K6 could make a very capable system. They weren't ideal at all though if you wanted to play games that hit the FPU and memory subsystem hard.

And the system platform really kinda sucked. That was the worst part about K6 systems. Near-useless AGP slots, slow RAM access, instability in general, questionable USB, slow PCI... Intel really was the better platform across the board, until you factored in price!

Athlon was such a massive turnaround for AMD. I don't think there's a big enough community for Slot A Athlons. :)
User avatar
tazwegion
Veteran K6'er
Posts: 349
Joined: Sat Jun 21, 2003 11:13 am
Location: Victoria, Australia

Post by tazwegion »

swaaye wrote:the system platform really kinda sucked. That was the worst part about K6 systems. Near-useless AGP slots, slow RAM access, instability in general, questionable USB, slow PCI... Intel really was the better platform across the board, until you factored in price!
Hey hang on a minute... let's be fair! the operating system of the day had a lot to do with the system instability, Win95/98 had 'shaky legs' at times no matter what flavour of processor/platform you ran on it (I noticed this on parallel s370 systems I owned at the time)

Additionally, chipsets were a big factor in the mainboard arena... claiming high FSB support but not delivering anything substantial until the advent of the MVP3/Aladdin V chipsets

swaaye wrote:Athlon was such a massive turnaround for AMD. I don't think there's a big enough community for Slot A Athlons. :)
I take it your more of an Athlon SlotA enthusiast then?
Image
User avatar
swaaye
Junior K6'er
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Aug 24, 2006 1:53 pm

Post by swaaye »

tazwegion wrote: Hey hang on a minute... let's be fair! the operating system of the day had a lot to do with the system instability, Win95/98 had 'shaky legs' at times no matter what flavour of processor/platform you ran on it (I noticed this on parallel s370 systems I owned at the time)

I take it your more of an Athlon SlotA enthusiast then?
Yeah, Win9x wasn't exactly a robust and stable bit of OS. But that doesn't excuse the pathetic AGP implementations on those SS7 boards, either. That was the biggest issue with them IMO.

In comparison, Intel 440BX had rock solid AGP 2x with AGP features that actually worked. You can run anything on a BX board. Hell, I have one set up right now with a FX 5950 Ultra on a 90MHz AGP clock (133 FSB)! VIA released how many AGP driver update attempts? ALI Alladin V had problems too (my friend never got a GeForce 2 to work without reboots in ASUS P5A.) Intel doesn't even have driver downloads for 440BX. It just works.

Really, you were best off with a 3dfx card in a SS7 board because 3dfx only used AGP as a sort of PCI-66. They kept it simple and because of that their cards worked pretty well. I'm sure NV, ATI, Matrox, and S3 stuck to AGP specifications, but VIA, ALI and their board partners couldn't apparently.

I've never actually owned a Slot A board. That's probably why they fascinate me. :) I had a few friends with them back in '99-00, but I was running my Abit BF6 + P3 in those times and too poor to buy lots of things to play with.

I've worked with lots of SS7 systems. They are ok usually, as long as you don't ask too much from that AGP slot. I own a K6-III+, ASUS P5A (dumped a babyAT FIC VA503+), and lots of retro stuff that I throw together once a year just for fun. K6's FPU is a bummer for games, and when you see a "crap" Katmai P3-600 (have one of those too!) run circles around your 616 MHz K6-III+ you realize this quickly. :twisted:
KenB
K6'er
Posts: 58
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:22 pm

Post by KenB »

I'll tell you why I like AMD K6.

I made a system based on one back in 1997 or so when it first came out. It was a 266Mhz model that I slightly underclocked to 250Mhz/100Mhz FSB. It was great. So one reason I like the K6, even today, is just plain nostaligia.

Another reason is that the K6 is actually still usable at the higher speeds like 450Mhz and above. Especially if it's a K6-II/III+ chip paired with a fast hard drive. Sure, it's barely fast enough to run XP, but it runs. And not too badly, really. In fact, many systems running one can use AGP cards, and can support up to 1.5GB of RAM and still fit in modern ATX cases. So, another reason I like it is that it can still be practical in some situations, unlike most 286 to early Pentiums, which cannot support large amounts of RAM, AGP cards or usually do not even fit into an ATX case.

Finally, another reason I sometimes like to try them out even today is the challenge of getting them to work on newer stuff than they were designed for. This is basically related to the second reason above. But because they are quite low-end by today's standards, it is sometimes a surprising and successful challenge to get them to run more modern software, like XP or some games or whatever.

Couple other reasons might be that some people find they will run quite happily on certain linux setups, and they are pretty low wattage CPU, usually.

Lots of reasons, I guess. In about 2-5 years, K6's will probably be almost totally completely useless for anything except retro/nostalgia reasons.

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.
KenB
K6'er
Posts: 58
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:22 pm

Post by KenB »

Let me give one more reason why I like the K6. It might seem lame, but hey, it's my opinion.

It looks cool! It looks better than Intel's simple repetitive purple proc by adding a cool aluminum heat spreader. The heat spreader on engineering samples was really cool, opting for a black anodized aluminum speader (too bad these did not go mainstream). The heat spreader also prevented cracked cores.

In keeping the design as Socket 7, AMD (along with Cyrix) proved that Socket 7 was 100% viable as a socket technology indefinitely, and basically reproved Intel's ridiculous excuse for going to Slot 1, saying that Socket 7 couldn't go much higher because of FSB/cache issues (pure crap, the real reasons were for locking out the competition). Later on, it would would be hilarious to see AMD imitate Intel's Slot 1 purely for marketing/PR reasons, only for both camps to go back to virtually the same Socket 7 design a couple years later (Socket 462 for AMD and Socket 370 for Intel).
Jim
K6'er Elite
Posts: 1745
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2004 7:10 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by Jim »

True.
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
jpnjim
Newbie K6'er
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 8:00 pm

Post by jpnjim »

Lotsa great posts, thank for the welcome guys!



I *upgraded* the Compaq 1247 to a Compaq 1692 (both laptops).
It allows a little more max RAM (160mb max vs 192 max), has a DVD drive & Active Matrix display.

DVD playback is an issue (was bad with the original 433 K6-2), that has gotten a little better with a K6-2+ 500 ACZ clocked to 550.
I'm thinking the Rage LT Pro video card is part of the problem too.

I'm also thinking about either slimming down the XP, or just swapping it out for 2K pro.

I've also been checking out the Asus EEE boards that have sprung up lately for some new laptop mod idea's.
There's alot of people playing with these things
(how cool would it have been if they had updated & used the K6/socket 7 to meet their 633/900mhz requirement instead 8) ).

Jimmy
KenB
K6'er
Posts: 58
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:22 pm

Post by KenB »

jpnjim,

I tried very very hard to get a 600Mhz K6-II+ setup with 384MB of RAM to playback DVD on a Win2K machine. I used an Nvidia Riva 128 card, and it was very close to working without hickups. but invariably, it would NOT work perfectly. I was using a VIA MVP4 chipset with settings to the absolute max, and concluded that the memory bandwidth was the choking point, not the CPU or video so much.

I gave up and just got a Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus decoder card. Beautiful picture quality (noticably better than any software decode or combination soft/hard decode I've seen), and only used something like 10-30% CPU.
DonPedro
K6'er Elite
Posts: 578
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:11 pm

Post by DonPedro »

jpnjim, kenb,

dvd'ing is in fact one of the really weak points of the socket7/k6 platform.

according to my experience whether you get enjoyable results depends on a lot of things:

1.) running the dvd-drive in DMA-mode is the most crucial thing
2.) getting your dvd-player to use OVERLAY-video mode
3.) finding the best driver for your videocard, dvd-wise. for example, I was using driver 30.82 for my nvidia gf-4-mx460 and the dvd-experience was rather choppy at a cpu usage of between 75 to 95%. when I switched to driver 77.72 cpu-usage went down to a comfortable 65 to 80%. watching dvd at this point is not 100% perfect but very enjoyable. bad thing, after some months from one day to another for a reason I don't know the performance dropped back to where I have been.
4.) choice of graphic card: a) ati is simply the best here, but what you need to release its suberb dvd-capabilities is an ati-dvd sw-player, which can really use the hardware. my experience is that watching dvd goes at a 20 to 35% cpu-usage.
b) I recently discovered that matrox cards (at least g400/g550 models) do a better job than nvidia-cards. I switched from my gf4-mx460 to a matrox g400 and I now watch dvds at 55 to 70% cpu-usage, which I really enjoy now (used cpu k6-3 at 550mhz, powerdvd 3.0, os nt4).
5.) using a sigma hollywood+ is another option. I agree you get great picture quality at incredible low cpu-usage. only drawback: because of the video cable that goes from the main videocard into the sigma-card, 2d-picture quality suffers such a big 2d-picturequality loss that I prefer to use the matrox card solution to display dvd-videos.
Jim
K6'er Elite
Posts: 1745
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2004 7:10 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by Jim »

To add a bit to what Peter has said, always having used ATI cards, (I am an ATIdiot), I was unaware that they have a performance edge where DVD playback is concerned. However, long ago, I found that using ATI cards with both a K6-2 500AFX on an FIC VA_503+ Rev1.02 w/ 1Meg Cache; and with a K6-2 550AGR on an Asus P5A-B Rev 1.04 with 512K Cache, that the K6-2 500AFX on the FIC board, provided noticably smoother DVD playback than the K6-2 550AGR on the ASUS board.

Since niether was overclocked, and both were using Power DVD 4, I concluded that Mobo cache size also is important where DVD playback is concerned. The ASUS setup had to be tweaked within an inch of its life to run smooth, whereas the FIC seemed to do it relatively effortlessly.
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
Post Reply