Kevin and thread:
Another K6-3 Preview!
sharkyextreme.com
This is a great article! Some quotes:
<<Luckily there won't be a large teething process for the K6-3 to have to endure on the mainboard side of things as there was with the introduction of the K6-2. This time around the only prerequisite necessary for slapping a K6-3 into an existing Super7 system is that
the BIOS of the mainboard be flashed to support the K6-3's "CXT" core. CXT is basically a fancy term for the K6-2 400 and K6-3 400's write-combining ability, a feature that adds between two and four percent more performance in certain applications versus a non-CXT enhanced CPU if both CPUs are being run at an identical speed. (In our game-based benchmarks, the enabling or disabling of CXT via the mainboard's BIOS produced no difference in performance marks.)>>
I thought this preceding comment was interesting because it stands contrary to Anandtech's comments re: enabling or disabling the core.
* * *
<<Sharky Extreme talked to five major mainboard vendors this week regarding K6-3 support,and all of them indicated that their most popular Super7 mainboards will only need a simple BIOS flash in order to support either the K6-2 400 CXT or the K6-3 400. Good news, and indeed a welcome change from having to upgrade a user's entire machine simply for a new generation of CPUs.>>
I'm sure many k6-2 owners, myself included, are pleased to see this upgrade path supported.
Some not so positive remarks:
<<Without 3DNow! even the supercharged K6-3 400 is easily beaten in the gaming environment by Intel's standard P2-400. With support for 3DNow! within the very same games, the K6-3 overcomes the relatively poor FPU that AMD has equipped both it and the K6-2 with and shines as an extremely powerful gaming option. In some cases the K6-3 400 with 3DNow! support in the 3D benchmark being run equaled the performance of Intel's highest performance desktop offering, the P2-450.>>
On Cost and Bin Speed:
<<Sharky Extreme has learned that the K6-3 will initially ship in a 400MHz variant, with a possible 450MHz version following within four weeks of the initial 400MHz part's launch.
The K6-3 400's expected street cost will check in between $325 and $375 when it becomes available between mid to late February 1999.>>
On 3dnow Support:
<<With 3DNow! support shows the K6-3 400 to be one of the fastest processors we've seen,even eclipsing the Intel P2-400 in almost every application we tested with.
K6-3 performance comparisons to Intel's upcoming class of Katmai CPUs are difficult to make, mostly because no one really knows how the new KNI instruction set will affect gaming performance in the real world.
One thing is for certain, and that's the simple fact that 3DNow! has been out and about for software developers to toy with for over seven months now, a large advantage that Intel's developer relations personnel will have to work hard to surmount.
Even though Half-Life is a notable recent exception, most software development houses that SharkyExtreme has been in touch with have pledged support for 3DNow! in all of their 1999 products (Half-Life reportedly has a 3DNow! patch that's being worked on, expect it early next year).>>
-Scot |
