AMD versu Pentium...

G?i Thnh (Economist) v Tu?n Anh (con)...cc: Anh Son( Sonpwc)
Hụm nay, tụi c? tỡm m?y bi v? AMD v Pentium d? cho m?i ngu?i h?t bias v? Pentium v AMD... Tụi tỡm du?c nhi?u bi bỡnh lu?n l?m nhung bi m tụi dớnh kốm ? dõy l bi m tụi cho l cú tớnh h?c thu?t nh?t...
Nhung khi ? Vi?t Nam, tụi v cỏc b?n c?a tụi ch? du?c nghe núi, gi?i thi?u, v s? d?ng chip Pentium. V hỡnh ?nh c?a chip Petium dó in vo trong d?u l m?t chip duy nh?t t?t... Tụi cung cú suy nghi nhu v?y. Ngay c? khi tụi dang dựng mỏy tinh cú chip AMD K6-3D...
N?u khụng cú bu?i tranh lu?n v Ph?i ng?i nghe nh?ng l?p lu?n khụng d? s?c thuy?t ph?c c?a Economist v Tu?n Anh con, thỡ tụi cung s? khụng tỡm ki?m nh?ng thụng tin v bi?t du?c nh?ng thụng tin dỳng d?n v? con chip cua mỏy tớnh c?a tụi...
Tụi mu?n núi v?i cỏc b?n r?ng, chip Pentium khụng ph?i l con chip duy nh?t m chỳng ta cú th? s? d?ng...

2. AMD K6-III


by Paolo Corsini

Last Update: 7 May 1999



AMD K6 CPU has been launched in April 1997 and it has been the first CPU on the market of the sixth generation followed, a month later, by Intel Pentium II. This processor soon showed high performance with integer calculations (at that time the competitors were Intel Pentium MMX and Pentium PRO CPUs as well as the new Pentium II), with performance with floating point calculations as choke point. In June 1998 the model K6-2 has been introduced with some difference in comparison to K6.
Production process at 0.25 microns: to be true this technology has already been implemented in the versions at 266 and 300 MHz of K6 available on the market starting from April 1998, but these are not popular on the market;

Bus frequency at 100 MHz: K6-2 has been the first Socket 7 CPU *****pport this bus frequency with advantages in terms of general performance;

Introduction of 3DNow! instruction set: to reduce the performance gap with game applications in comparison to Intel CPU, AMD introduced a set of 24 instructions called 3DNow! within the CPU Core. The introduction of 3DNow! instructions represented the first innovation in the x86 architecture since its introduction.

In February 1999 there has been the third evolution of the K6 series, with the introduction of K6-III model; this CPU has been created integrating 256 Kbytes of L2 cache within the Core of K6-2 CPU. Following are listed the technical detail of the two CPUs.

K6-2 K6-III
Socket Socket 7 Socket 7
L1 Cache 64 Kbytes (32K data; 32K istructions) 64 Kbytes (32K data; 32K istructions)
L2 Cache from 512Kbytes to 2 Mbytes, depending on
the motherboard used, working at bus frequency 256 Kbytes, inside the cpu Core;
working at clock frequency
L3 Cache - from 512Kbytes to 2 Mbytes, depending on
the motherboard used, working at bus frequency
Core voltage 2.2V (2.4V for 450 and 475 Mhz versions) 2.4V
Clock frequency 300-333-350-366
380-400-450-475 Mhz 400-450 Mhz
Bus frequency 95Mhz; 100 Mhz 100 Mhz
Core type CXT CXT

K6-III CPUs must be installed on Super 7 motherboards, that is those including following requirements:

Bus frequency of 100 MHz;

AGP slot for video card;

Power voltage of 2.4V (2.2V for K6-2 CPU).

Note how all the Super 7 motherboards for K6-2 CPUs, if including power voltage of 2.4 V, can use K6-III CPU too after updating the BIOS. There are some problems connected to the electrical features of the CPU; due to the integration of the L2 cache within the CPU Core, the requirements for a processor have been increased in comparison to K6-2, as shown here:

K6-2 K6-III
Current 7.35A (266 Mhz)
8.45A (300 Mhz)
9.40A (333 Mhz)
9.85A (350 Mhz)
10.30A (366 Mhz)
10.70A (380 Mhz)
11.25A (400 Mhz)
12.50A (450 Mhz)
13.00A (475 Mhz) 12.40A (400 Mhz)
13.50A (450 Mhz)

Maximum heat dissipation 14.70W (266 Mhz)
17.20W (300 Mhz)
19.00W (333 Mhz)
19.95W (350 Mhz)
20.80W (366 Mhz)
21.60W (380 Mhz)
22.70W (400 Mhz)
28.40W (450 Mhz)
29.60W (475 Mhz) 26.80W (400Mhz)
29.50W (450 Mhz)

Medium heat dissipation 8.85W (266 Mhz)
10.35W (300 Mhz)
11.40W (333 Mhz)
11.98W (350 Mhz)
12.48W (366 Mhz)
12.95W (380 Mhz)
13.65W (400 Mhz)
17.05W (450 Mhz)
17.75W (475 Mhz) 16.10W (400Mhz)
17.70W (450 Mhz)

Note the increased maximum heat dissipation (the maximum values remains however the same as K6, that is 233 MHz working at 3.3V with a value of 30.2W), which can be explained both with power voltage increased at 2.4V and high clock frequency as well as the power maximum request which achieves 13.5 Amperes with version at 450 MHz of clock.
It is important to check the Super 7 motherboards, above all if one of the first manufactured, to see if they can be used with K6-III CPUs; to do this you can read the readme file of the newest version of the BIOS; the certification for K6-III CPU ensures that the electrical part of the motherboard matches the power requirements of the K6-III so to avoid stability problems and misbehaviours. You can also install K6-III CPU on some Socket 7 motherboards including Intel 430HX and 430TX chipset with power voltage at 2.4V; these motherboards don't include bus frequency of 100 MHz, but this doesn't affect the performance as you can see in the following illustration:



Setting the 2x multiplier of the motherboard (multiplier included in all Socket 7 motherboards), the CPU multiplies at 6x so to obtain the clock frequency of 400 MHz (66x6) similar to what happens with K6 CPU and Pentium MMX which turn on the 3.5x multiplier when the 1.5x motherboard is set. You need to visit the Web site of the manufacturer and check the certification for K6-III (always with the problem above said of the maximum power), as well as the presence of a BIOS update which detects the CPU.
Using the 3DNow! instructions allows to speed up a series of operations related to 3D graphics with an increase of frame per second displayed by a 3D game; this doesn't happen with all kind of software, but 3DNow! instruction need to be supported. This can be done in three ways:

Implementation of instructions within the graphic engine of the game, code of the program: in this way you obtain the best performance even if it is difficult to implement as you need to set again the code of the application or use 3DNow! instructions from the beginning. The same results can be obtained using upgrading patches specifically designed.

DirectX 6: Microsoft API supports for 3DNow! starting from the version number 6; the limit to increase the performance is to see how the game programmers chose to use DirectX features which exploit the presence of 3DNow!.

Video driver: as the 3DNow! instructions are specific to speed the 3D graphic, you can implement them within the driver of the video accelerator; this is the easiest way to implement, but performance doesn't increase a lot.

The main limit of the 3DNow! instructions is a wide machine range (that is a number of PC including 3DNow! CPU) but a limited range of software; Microsoft API DirectX support 3DNow! instructions starting from the version number 6, but often game programmers don't use them or only partially; it refers to a more efficient support of the 3DNow! instructions starting from the version number 7 of DirectX. Practically, with 3DNow! instructions there is an increase of 10-15% of fps with DirectX 6 games even if the patch for Quake 2 specifically designed by AMD shows how the gain in performance can be higher if you use in the appropriate way the instructions:



Using a 3dfx VooDoo 2 SLI accelerator you can note an increase in performance, about 68% more at a resolution of 800x600 and 65% at a resolution of 1024x768 using K6-III CPUs; using a Riva TNT accelerator, the gain in performance is lower, between 15% and 20% depending on the resolution.



Using 3DNow! instructions with the rendering software leads to an increase in general performance even if limited to 12-14%; anyone use nowadays rendering through software, but this kind of test can show the average increase that you can expect turning on the 3DNow! instructions.



3D Mark Max benchmark allows to check the impact of 3DNow! instructions in rendering the polygons of the 3D scenes; turning on 3DNow! instructions lead to an increase in performance changing from 150% and 180%, a very high value. These data are only theoretical values as it can't be reproduced with real applications, but they clearly show how the appropriate 3DNow! instructions can speed up the processing of the geometry of the scene.

Using 3DNow! instructions doesn't affect only the increase of displayed fps; in fact if there are games requiring many fps to be played (such as Quake 2), there are some other which need less frames per second (think to graphical adventures); in these cases, 3DNow! instructions enrich a 3D scene, more details are displayed to increase realism without changing the number of frames displayed (more processing power available, more polygons inserted in the scene and processed by the CPU, more detailed scene).

Those who want to see a detailed analysis of the technical features of the K6-III CPU and 3DNow! instructions can find a rich documentation in .pdf format directly to the AMD site.

Processor Data Sheet K6-III (5.6 Mbytes)

Processor Data Sheet K6-II (4.5 Mbytes)

3DNow! Technology manual (664 Kbytes)


go to Intel Pentium III


Introduction: the evolution of cpu's market

AMD K6-III

Intel Pentium III

Overclockability

Test configuration
Business applications

High-End applications

3D Games

Conclusions






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Huang Huan

éu?c s?a ch?a b?i - economist on 17/08/2001 15:33:39

C?u có bi?t t?i sao AMD l?i c?n d?n 2 qu?t không. Hôm qua, t? và th?ng TA d?u không dám nói d?n di?m y?u này. V?i di?n ph?p phùng nhu ? Vi?t nam + nóng nó ch?y không ?n d?nh là dáng ng?i l?m r?i.
Xin l?i là mình chuy?n bài này sang box tin hoc d? các cao th? gi?i thích thêm nhé!
The Economist Vietnam
For more information, contact:
economist@ttvnonline.com

Ch?o cỏc bỏc
N?u so sỏnh t? th? h? K6 tr? xu?ng thỡ AMD khụng th? b?ng n?i Intel. Nhung t? K7 tr? lờn AMD dó cú c?i ti?n dỏng k? v? vu?t Intel v? 1 s? m?t d?c bi?t l? v? x? lý s? th?c. Hi?n nay ch? em dang dựng 1 mỏy Duron 800 v? 1 mỏy Pen III 800, mỏy Duron luụn ch?y b?ng ho?c th?nh tho?ng nhanh hon Pen III v? r?t ?n d?nh.
M?i cỏc bỏc v?o www.tomshardware.com d? tỡm thụng tin chi ti?t v? 2 lo?i chip n?y, dõy l? 1 site r?t uy tớn v? hardware trờn net. C? th? cỏc bỏc cú th? xem b?i The New Athlon Processor - AMD Is Finally Overtaking Intel, trong dú gi?i thớch khỏ rừ v? architecture c?a AMD K7 v? m?t s? bench mark v?i cỏc ?ng d?ng ph? bi?n cỏc bỏc ?.
éõy cung l? m?t v?i b?i hay:
Performance-Showdown between Athlon and Pentium III
The Celeron Killer -AMD's New Duron Processor
AMD vs. Intel: The best CPU for MPEG-4.
Pentium 4 vs. Athlon - Final Recount
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