AMD K6-3 Preview

Performance

The Socket-7/Super7 Test System Configuration was as follows:

• AMD K6 233, AMD K6-2 350, AMD K6-3 450 (engineering sample)
• FIC PA-2013 w/ 2MB L2 Cache
• 64MB PC100 SDRAM
• Western Digital Caviar AC35100 - UltraATA
• Matrox Millennium G200 AGP Video Card (8MB)
• Canopus Pure3D-2 Voodoo2 (12MB)

The Pentium II comparison system differed only in terms of the processor and motherboard in which case the following components were used:

• Intel Celeron 300, Intel Celeron 300A, Intel Pentium II 400, Intel Pentium II 450
• ABIT BH6 Pentium II BX Motherboard

The following drivers were common to both test systems:

• MGA G200 Drivers v1677_426
• DirectX 6

The benchmark suite consisted of the following applications:

• Ziff Davis Winstone 98 under Windows 98 & Windows NT4 SP3
• Ziff Davis Winstone 99 under Windows 98 & Windows NT4 SP3
• Ziff Davis Winbench 99 under Windows 98
• Quake 2 v3.17 using demo1.dm2 and Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo
• Unreal using Lothar's FPSTimeDemo test (run 10 times for each test)

All Winstone tests were run at 1024 x 768 x 16 bit color, all gaming performance tests were run at 800 x 600 x 16 bit color. 3DNow! support was enabled when applicable.

For the in-depth gaming performance tests Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo was used to simulate the worst case scenario in terms of Quake 2 performance, the point at which your frame rate will rarely drop any further. In contrast, the demo1.dm2 demo was used to simulate the ideal situation in terms of Quake 2 performance, the average high point for your frame rate in normal play. The range covered by the two benchmarks can be interpreted as the range in which you can expect average frame rates during gameplay.

Windows 98 Performance

Windows 98 has always been the Pentium IIs domain in terms of overall performance simply because its L2 cache performance would increase with every clock increase, unlike the K6-2. With the L2 cache of the K6-3 being on-chip, Intel has been booted from the top of the charts, and replaced by the third generation K6 processor. At 350MHz, the K6-3 gives the Pentium II 450 and Celeron 450A a run for their money, at 400MHz AMD already has the fastest business processor, and at 450MHz, the K6-3 sees no competition at all. Even under Winstone 99, a benchmark that seems to perform better on Intel processors/chipsets, the K6-3 still comes out on top by a fairly large margin. An 8% performance differential exists between the K6-3 450 and a Pentium II 450 under Winstone 99, a difference that is expressed as a 12% gap under Winstone 98. The bottom line? The K6-3, clock for clock, is, without a doubt, faster than the Pentium II in business applications.