Super7 Video Accelerator Comparison - Part 1: High End Gaming Solutions (June 99)

In the past, the words High-End Gaming and AMD never mixed, unfortunately this was the case for AMD users prior to the release of the K6-2. The AMD K6-2 marked the introduction of the first truly competitive non-Intel CPU that could excel at games, that very processor has evolved into what has finally become a viable High-End Gaming Solution. While there are some users that won't drop their Celeron or Pentium III systems for anything without an Intel Inside sticker, the fact of the matter is that AMD is much more of an alternative now than they were just a year ago. But what is AMD's version of a High-End Gaming Solution?

Currently there are two flavors of AMD CPUs that can fit this description, the K6-2 and K6-3. The current fastest AMD CPU that is available for retail purchase is the K6-3 500, however at a pricetag of over $400 it doesn't fit the budget of most Super7 users. The next best options are the K6-3 450 and the K6-2 475. Both processors share the same requirements, a 2.4v core voltage setting and support for the 100MHz FSB (K6-3 450) or the 95/105MHz FSB (K6-2 475). The price difference between the two is under $100, a quick search on the net will reveal that the real world difference is around $60 - $80, which is a considerable amount of money when you're already dropping a few hundred down on an upgrade. Bringing us to the next question, what's the difference between the two?

The K6-2 475 has the clock speed advantage over the K6-3, however the K6-3 450's on-chip 256KB of L2 cache operates at a frequency 78% greater than that of a normally clocked K6-2 475. For gamers, L2 cache isn't an important consideration, with most of today's games relying heavily on FPU calculations the speed of your processor's L2 cache isn't that important. Most graphics accelerators, however, that are heavily CPU dependent may experience a benefit in upwards of 10% by the increased L2 cache frequency of the K6-3 over the K6-2.

If you want the fastest overall solution, the K6-3 450 is faster than the higher clocked K6-2 475, unfortunately that performance boost comes at a cost to you. Another thing you may want to keep in mind is that the power drawn by the K6-3 (courtesy of its on-die L2 cache) is considerably greater than the K6-2. An unfortunate fact associated with quite a few Super7 motherboards is that they cannot reliably supply ample current to the K6-3 450 in the most stressful of conditions (i.e. when all DIMM banks are populated, etc…) which can lead to stability problems. As Tomshardware recently confirmed and as AnandTech reaffirmed, there are issues with the FIC PA-2013 with 2MB of L2 cache and the K6-3 that are related to this very issue. For this reason, AnandTech's standard Super7 test bed was modified to provide for an Epox MVP3G-M (1MB) instead of the standard FIC PA-2013 (2MB) MVP3 based motherboard.

This first article will concentrate on the performance of the latest graphics cards on the two fastest AMD processors (excluding the K6-3 500 which was just recently made available). The test systems were configured identically and a full system configuration disclosure was made in The Test section of the article. Let's get on to the performance…