Powerleap PL ProMMX K6-2 333

Performance Issues

There are a few things that must be considered before looking at the actual numbers. Remember that most K6-2 benchmarks out there are based on the Super 7 motherboard platform, which means support for 100MHz bus speeds and AGP graphics cards. Obviously, these things cannot simply be added to existing motherboards. Thus, these benchmarks will be running on a 66MHz bus with PCI graphics cards. That means that the cache will also be running at 66MHz, 33% slower than what AMD intended for the K6-2.

The cache speed issues can be taken care of in the future if Powerleap decides to release an upgrade kit based around the K6-3, which features 256KB on chip, full speed cache. It has been demonstrated time and time again that cache speed is much more important than bus speed, so the K6-3, with its full speed cache, would make the bus speed a moot point. The current voltage/clock multiplier adapter should be fully prepared for the K6-3 upon its release.

Business Performance

Performance of the Powerleap PL-ProMMX K6-2 on this TX motherboard is pretty close to that of a K6-2 on a brand new motherboard. It is limited somewhat by the ViRGE graphics card used and the 66MHz cache speed. Nonetheless, the performance increase is clearly quite large and the difference can definitely be felt right away.