by D!ck

Alrighty, so this article wasn't actually anything to do with banding against slower-speed PC's, I only put that title in to annoy Phil!97, who threatened to write an article entitled: "Intel P133s are actually better than AMD K6-200 cus Intel rock and my lobotomy hasnt affected me one bit". We'll await that one then. But seriously, Intel CPU's have long been dominant on the PC market, and it's only recently that their omnipotence has been shaken. With the arrival of the K6 MMX-compatible CPU from AMD, shockwaves have been sent through the entire PC-retailing system. For the first time ever you can now buy a PC with decent all-round power that DOESN'T have an Intel CPU at it's heart. Alternative Pentium CPU's have been available for quite some time. AMD, Cyrix and IBM all released CPU's based on the Pentium technology but all three lacked in the Floating Point department. On paper the K6 is very impressive. Aside from being 20-25% cheaper than the equivalent MMX chip, it's also very compatible and pumps out slightly more power as the following table indicates. MIPS FPU Intel Pentium II @ 233Mhz 489 - AMD K6 @ 200Mhz 422 118 AMD K6 @ 187Mhz 397 112 Intel Pentium MMX @ 200Mhz 391 114 Intel Pentium @ 200Mhz 360 - AMD K6 @ 166Mhz 354 100 Intel Pentium @ 166Mhz 304 - Intel Pentium @ 133Mhz 246 73 (All CPU's tested on i430VX boards with 512k pipeline burst cache) Although - as mentioned - on paper (or ASCII as the case may be) AMD's K6 puts out more power, on FPU code that is specifically compiled for the Pentium CPU there is going to be roughly a 10% defecit. Pentium-specific titles include Quake and the popular rendering package, 3D Studio, for example, in our own tests a complex 3D Studio scene, 10,000+ polygons in 800x600 true colour, took 34 seconds to render on a K6, but only 31 on a Pentium 200mmx. All is not lost, however. Motherboards are improving all the time and the latest TX boards support new bus speeds. A bus speed is the speed at which your motherboard runs as opposed to the speed of your CPU, so while my CPU runs at 200Mhz, the board only runs at 66. With these newer boards there are bus speeds of 75 and 83Mhz, with 100Mhz in the pipeline (Tom at http://sysdoc.pair.com/ already has one to test, everyone should visit this excellent site), and this means that you can now reach speeds in excess of 200Mhz. "And your point is...?" I here you ask. According to Uncle Tom, the K6 is immensely over-clockable. Certainly, when I installed my chip, I was suprised that the machine was still able to produce cool air even when temperatures were around 30C outside. The K6-200 should easily be able to handle speeds of 225 (3x75) and 233Mhz (3.5x66 if your board supports 3.5), and even the rediculously speedy 250Mhz - 3x83Mhz bus speed. The only downer with running the chips at this speed is that the RAM is likely to fail under the strain if you're using EDO. For higher speeds it is recommended that you switch to 10ns DIMMS instead, most motherboards support at least one - equivalent to 2 SIMMS - and newer boards have two DIMM and 2 SIMM slots. Many even allow you to mix the types, although this would mean running your DIMMs at 60ns instead of 10 for compatibility reasons. DIMMs are also coming down in price, and there is little difference in the cost between SIMMs and DIMMs is roughly 10%, and is dropping all the time (as with most things on the PC) and will soon be reversed when DIMMs become the standard. No matter how much you protest it, CPU's are going to get faster and faster and more people are going to get left behing the cutting edge of technology, as is always the case. With K6-200's at around 160 pounds (CPU, Heatsink & Fan, inc VAT & Delivery) though, it's currently not too expensive to get a top-notch processor, which will go a long way to keeping you up to spec, especially if you can overclock it. Is overclocking immoral? Chip manufacturers would say so, but all they want to do is sell you the biggest, fastest and most expensive chip they can, so they're hardly likely to give you an honest opinion are they? Personally I would like to quote Terry Pratchett: "Yes,sir. I've given that viewpoint a lot of thought, sir, and reached the following conclusion: arseholes to the lot of 'em, sir." If your chip can run happily at these speeds then why the hell should you settle for anything less? The price difference between 166 and 200 CPU's is quite big, but it's nothing compared to the difference between 200 and 233. So, what problems have I had with my K6-200 since I got it? Er... well, none actually! True, I had to patch 3D Studio, but that applies to all 200Mhz machines, Pentium or otherwise. Nothing is different except for the fact that it's faster, so compatibility worry-warts can rest easy. One thing you WILL have to consider is the fact that K6 does not mean MMX as far as your motherboard is concerned. Not all boards will be able to handle the K6 CPU, so chances are that you'll have to buy a new motherboard as well, especially if your machine is getting on a bit. If your motherboard is MMX compatible then you are halfway there. The main thing to look for is Dual-Voltage compatibility, the K6 requires a Core voltage of 2.8v and an I/O voltage of 3.35v, whereas normal Pentium chips are 3.45v all the way through. This is a power-saving measure intended to reduce heat output and create chips that are more suitable for use in laptops, but it also means that, if you fail to change it and try to run the K6 at 3.45, then you're going to be left with a small and very expensive square-shaped lump. Just about all new motherboards support this though, if your board has jumper settings for P55C (Pentium MMX) then you should be fine.