AMD K6-3 Preview

The Final Blow or the Calm before the Storm?

When the K6-3 is officially released, you can expect to see a processor that is highly competitive in price, more overclockable than the engineering sample AnandTech tested, and a real blow to Intels market share.

If you remember back to the release of the original K6, AMD stole the lime light from Intel for a full month before Intel released the Pentium II which restored the balance of power in favor of Intel. Intel has already announced that they will be releasing a few new processors in January of 1999, will one of those processors be a K6-3 killer? Theres no way to say for sure, however Intels upcoming Dixon sounds very familiar to the K6-3 (256KB L2 cache on-chip running at clock speed). Chances are, Intel wont sit around and watch themselves be trampled by AMD, however, from a price to performance ratio standpoint, especially for a K6-2 owner or a Super7 advocate, the K6-3 cant be beat.

Current Slot-1 owners will want to hang on to their investments, since the performance difference between a K6-3 and a Pentium II 233 isnt worth the hassle of migrating to the Super7 platform which still isnt completely solid when it comes to compatibility with next generation graphics accelerators.

Those of you looking to buy a new system may opt for a lower cost K6-3, then upgrade to a slot based Katmai or K7 in the future depending on how that comparison turns out.

There is one thing for sure, the K6-3 is an outstanding chip from AMD, AnandTech commended Intel on a job well done with their Celeron A, and likewise, congratulations to AMD on a job well done. The K6-3 probably wont last you through the year 2000 as the fastest overall processor, but itll definitely put Intel in check, and force prices down even further, which is what competition is always good for, in the end, it benefits us all, the consumers.

With that said, there remains only one question: Is the K6-3 AMDs final blow at Intel, or is it the calm before the storm the K7 will bring upon the microprocessor giants? Keep your eyes open, 1999 is bound to be an interesting year, the release of the Voodoo3, a new chipset from nVidia, Intels Katmaiand maybe even the year AMD pulls ahead of Intel and sets the pace for the microprocessor industrythen again, maybe not. Dont you just love suspense? ;)