In het kort samengevat, de preview van Ananad Lai Shimpi
source:AnandTech
WHAT YOU GET
"If a higher clockspeed was all AMD would provide as an improvement over the K6-2 with the introduction of the K6-3, this review would have come to an abrupt end, however it's obviously not. Quietly learning from Intel's experimentation with the effects of L2 cache on overall system performance, AMD decided to take a stab at including a set amount of L2 cache on the K6-3 chip itself, and from AnandTech's expierence with the unreleased K6-3, it seems as if they put their money on the right bet. Looking at the K6-3 itself, there is one thing you'll notice off the bat, the K6-3 is around 1mm thicker than the K6-2...what's the reason for that? When Intel released the Celeron, the lack of any L2 cache dropped the processor's business application performance to below Pentium MMX levels. Turning the Celeron name into a success, Intel decided to include a full 128KB of L2 cache on the processor die of the Celeron, wich dramatically increased its business application performance, and brought rave reviews from all that touched the new processor, dubbed the Celeron A. AMD's decision was to include 256KB of L2 cache on the die of their K6-3, while leaving the rest of the design of the K6-2 (with the CXT core modifications) intact, making the K6-3 AMD's Celeron A, that's what makes up the extra 1mm in thickness on the K6-3 chip. There is a tradeoff between more cache running at a lower speed, and less cach running at a higher speed, and AMD decide to position themselves at the most strategic point, an almost perfect balance between quantity and performance. While the Pentium II has a full 512KB of L2 cache, it is only running at 50% of the clockspeed, and the Celeron A has its L2 cache running at clockspeed, however it is only outfitted with 128KB of L2 cache. AMD chose to include a full 256KB of L2 cache at clockspeed on the K6-3, something Intel will be doing in January with the release of the DIXON-processor. The problem with the original K6-2 was that the L2 cache was always locked down to the speed of your system's FSB frequency, in most cases, 100MHz, and realistically, at most, 125MHz. With the L2 cache on all K6-2 systems never rising above 125MHz (anything above 125MHz put too much of a strain on peripherals, and would crash randomly). AMD has a performance advatage over the Pentium II. When the K6-3 makes its debut, even the Pentium II 450's 225MHz L2 cache won't be able to keep up with the 350MHz-450MHz L2 cache speeds of the first K6-3's."
volgend deel: Finale
