Date: 19990716 From: Clint Hamilton To: Multiple recipients of list Chipdir-L Subject: Re: Computers Devadas Menon wrote: >Declan Moriarty wrote: >>Why is everybody staying away from the IBM/Cyrix 6x86? > >NS has sold its Cyrix unit and is getting out of the business. Personally I >have found that the Cyrix processor is slower than the equivalent clocked >AMD processor. > >>How do you control these fast processor clock & bus speeds? I see 350, 400, >>450, & 500 Mhz computer chips all running 100 Mhz bus speeds, and I wonder. > >The bus s[eed and processor speeds are not the same. 100MHz is the current >fasted bus speed, as far as I know. > >>Have you any thoughts on AMD K6/2 vs Pentium 2 vs Celeron? I AM NOT going for >>the P3, the one with the serial number inside, and not for Intel if I can avoid >>it. But the Pentium 2 seems to have a cpu cache, which would certainly be an >>advantage. > >The best buy today is the AMD-K6/2. It is equivalent to the P2 product and >probably close to p3 (and a lot cheaper!). I have run a 350MHz K6/2 >overclocked to 400 MHz without any probles. By the way one can easily over >clock p2 and Celeron to p3 speeds, since apparently all three are made on >the same line by Intel. Hi Devadas and Declan; I think I can clear up a few things here. The Cyrix chips are not rated the same way as AMD and Intel. Cyrix are rated by PPR which is pentium performance rating. All chips rate higher than there posted cpu speed. Example would be a 200mhz intel or AMD, it may have a PPR of 233 or 266mhz. But AMD and Intel will still conservatively call it a 200mhz. Cyrix on the other hand will call it a 266mhz, making people think they are getting a 266mhz cpu, when they are not. The fastest fsb (front side bus) speeds now are 133mhz, and when the AMD K7 is released, AMD along with it will have to release a proprietary motherboard along with it because this cpu will operate at 200mhz bus speed, and no one makes a board like that at this time. You get your cpu speed by multiplying the bus speed times the Jumper settings : (66mhz bus speed X cpu multiplier of 4.0 is what you would do for a 266mhz cpu). A multiplier of 4.0 on a 100mhz fsb would be 400mhz, etc. Jumper settings are on the boards and range from 1.0 up to 7.0 or even higher. To run bus speeds higher than 66mhz, it is recommended that PC100 sdram is used since it is tested at 100mhz fsb, some of the higher quality PC100 will work fine at 112 and 133mhz bus speeds, and some of the better standard sdram, like PC66 will work at 100mhz bus, although it has only been tested at 66mhz bus speed. A cpu is overclocked by increasing the jumper setting, OR increasing the bus speed it operates on. Intel pentiums and Intel Celerons of the past couple of years are clock locked, and will ONLY overclock if they are put on a higher bus speed. Example would be; I have a Celeron 300a, I cannot overclock (oc) it by increasing the jumper from 4.5 (which they all are) to a 5.0 or 5.5, because all 300a's are locked at 4.5. So, I have to oc it by raising the bus speed on my motherboard from 66 to 100mhz, therefore mine is oc'd to 450mhz. You can only do this with good batches of celerons, or any manufacturors chips for that matter, some will oc and some will not. I got lucky and got a celeron from maylasia, which most of these will oc quite good. to do this you must have the PC100 sdram memory. All celerons are made to run, that is, only warrantied by intel to work at 66mhz bus. Pentiums depending on the speed, are made to run at 66 or 100mhz bus. A 400mhz PII is a 100mhz fsb chip, and the 433mhz celeron, still is a 66mhz fsb chip. Amd's are 66 and 100mhz bus, depending on what speed you get. Amd's are not clock locked. All celerons AFTER the 300mhz have L2 cache, BETTER than the pentiums because in the PII's the cache operates at HALF chip speed and on the celerons in operates at FULL CHIP SPEED. The celerons have 128k of L2 cache and the PII has 512k of cache. So the difference, well you probably won't see it. On some operations the Pentium (PII) will do better, and on others the celeron will do better than the PII. There are two celeron 300 cpus, the 300 with NO cache, and the 300a which has the 128k cache. Celeron 266 has no cache. PII's and celerons usually perform better than the AMD chips on gaming and graphics intensive applications because the amd has a weak fpu (floating point unit calculation). On other apps, you won't see any difference. With the K6-3, this is no longer the case. In some apps, the K6-3 will outperform the PII and celeron all together, and the K7 will blow them away according to early benchmarks. The PIII (pentium III) is a waste of money unless you are a hardcore gamer, or do computer animation for movie studios, or something like that, and even then, the performance increase is minimal. Only about 10-15% increase. There are only a couple of games out that even take advantage of the PIII's 70 or so new instructions on the chip. It is a toss up as to which is the best buy, it's either the AMD K6-2 350mhz (which is cheaper than the amd 300mhz) or the celeron 300a or 366mhz. The 300a usually is more than the 333 and 366, because so many will overclock to 450mhz. The 366 for some reason, is less than the 333 alot of times. The amd's are cheaper, but the celerons will give you a little more performance on games and graphics apps. (applications). The K6-2 is not equal to the P2 (PII), but the K6-3 is, and even better on some apps. AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) is a separate company from Intel. AMD's are a socket 7 chip and celeron's and PII's are a slot one, OR now they have them in a socket 370 form. K7's are a different socket altogether, a slot A I think they are called. Older pentiums, or just "pentium" cpu as they are called are socket 7. Real old ones are socket 5 and even older are socket 3. Any more questions feel free to ask me. -Clint Clint Hamilton Orpheus Audio/Video & Computing PROBLEMS EMAILING ME? PLEASE RE-TRY- ISP IS BAD Website Server has been down: http://www.hotyellow98.com/orpheusavcomp Fax: 209-882-9602 Louisiana