Asus P5A-B and K6-III 400MHz

[Stan]

Hi

Any problems with that combination ?

Thanks

Stan

[scotter]

no they work very well togather but I would go for the P5-A not the A-b with the P5A-B you only get 3 pci slots if thats all you need then go for it thats the board I have
But i wish now that I would have gotten the P5A instead just for the extra pci slots [img]/forum/smile.gif[/img]

[Stan]

Thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately, I am stuck with the P5A-B as I already have this mobo.
For the moment, I am running a K6-2 333MHz and I was thinking of changing the CPU.

Stan

[scotter]

that's a hard one if ya do think i would go for the k6-2-500 the k-3's only realy shine on a board with 1 meg or more of L2 cache it's a toss up betwwen the k-3-450 and the k-2-500 the 500 is cheaper and I got a feeling amd is gona be coming out with some new K chips soon with the .18 die and higher speeds probably right after the new year.
price wise and performance wise the 500 is probably the one for this board [img]/forum/smile.gif[/img]

[Peter M]

Actually, it's exactly the other way round.
The K6-2, not having an internal L2 cache, gains performance noticeably with a larger mainboard cache.

The K6-III however brings its own 256 KB of full-speed L2 cache, degrading mainboard cache to L3. Mainboard cache size and frequency are a lot less noticeable than with a K6-2.

When going for a high-clocked K6-2 or -III, make sure you are sold a new 2.2V unit, not an older 2.4V type. The latter draw huge amounts of power, and older boards might hiccup on that. The 2.2V types are down 30 percent on total power draw at the same clock speed.

Regards, Peter

[pickel]

Peter: Are you saying ,with the bios upgrade,
I have a Biostar M5ALA rev 1.1 which has the 100bus and multiplier to 4.5, I'd be able to just plug it in and it would work??? The bios upgrade of ,I believe, April 1999, mine is August 1998, supports the K-6-2 and K-6-3 to
450Mhz. Sounds like I could get the cheaper
chip and improve my performance without a lot of trouble. Currently I have a K-6-2 3D 300mz
@ 350Mhz. What ya think ? [img]/forum/smile.gif[/img]

the pickel

[scotter]

the amont of onboard does make a diff with the K6-3 chip the more the better here are a few web sites that have done bench marks showing that it does http://www.super7.net/cpus/AMD/k63rev1.htm http://cpusite.examedia.nl/docs/k6-iii_review.html
quote from the last page
AMD's newest chip isn't a revolution, but is surely faster. In business-applications it will beat a Pentium III. However it's weak FPU hasn't changed, although it's masked in some cases by its fast L2 cache. It's performance gives you in many cases a 10% overall performance increase over a K6-2, so it's definitely worth it.

The L3 cache won't help you much, although with 1MB or 2MB boards it should give you a few % extra. The FSB-setting remains important enough to ignore. Therefore when overclocking I can only advise to go for FSB.

[Peter M]

Hi again.

scotter, sure the amount of onboard cache still makes a difference with K6-III. But that difference is a lot less visible than with K6-2. You originally said the opposite, which is just wrong. Besides, "it's" != "its". You're a bit hard to read.

pickel, if you have 4.5x multiplier, you have 5.0x, 5.5x and 6.0x as well. Your Biostar will take you a lot further than you thought. If that board is somewhat older, make sure you use a 2.2V type processor. Some older high-clocked K6-2 and K6-III were 2.4V and drew quite a lot of power, so to improve your safety headroom, use the newer ones that draw about one third less. If Biostar says a 450 MHz K6-III 2.4V is safe to use, then a hypothetic 550 MHz K6-III 2.2V would also be OK from a voltage supply viewpoint ...

[Jeff7]

Works fine for me - somewhat. Only problem is that the 3.3v part of the motherboard (RAM, AGP, CPU I/O) is set to it's minimum - 3.5v. That is causing everything to run a bit toasty. Asus tech support hasn't ever even responded, and as yet, no one knows of a reason for this. Otherwise, works great.

[Peter M]

It's a very common practice to have the I/O voltage regulated to stay in the 3.4V-3.6V "VRE" bracket rather than the 3.15V-3.6V "STD" one. Some older Pentiums run better (or at all) with the former setting, K6-300 needed that, and since it's just a narrower window within the same range, all other stuff won't get hurt.

The jumper to set STD vs. VRE finally disappeared when Intel TX made it onto desktop mainboards. Stupid move, since the TX, being a notebook chipset in its original intent, drives the ISA bus with 3V signals instead of 5V. This caused manier compatibility problems, and a quick fix to improve that was to run the IO on VRE voltage, raising signal levels a couple of tens of volts.

Regards, Peter

[lanewan]

Guys, I have a K63-400mhz with 2 Meg DFI on Brd. The tech says to run the voltage at 2.2v and not 2.4v It runs at lot cooler but what am I missing having it at 2.2 instead of 2.4?......Lan