G400 and AMD K6/2-400: Degraded Performance?

[Mbwun]

I've seen little snippets of information here and there regarding degraded performance of G400's with AMD CPU's. I am currently getting lower 3D performance out of my G400 than the Voodoo Banshee that it replaced! Is this true?


System Specs:
AMD K6/2-400
AOpen AX59 Pro Motherboard (VIA VT82C598AT/VT82C586B (MVP3) AGPset)
Diamond Monster Sound

[paul]

Swapping my k62-350 (@400) to a k63-450 (@500) yielded zilch in games. Fastest opening 2d windows and task switching, though. Check pcmag's cpu comparison. I wasted my upgrade money, should've bought a cel500 or big buck Athlon. Of course, they released issue 2 weeks after I got new chip.

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k6-3 450 @500 - tyan 1590s bios 1.16 - wdac310100 - g200 mill sgram w/8mb upgrade & bios 2.6-20 PD 5.25 - AGP1x - 128MB 10ns sdram - sblive value 2.1 - 3com 3c905b-tx - cable access (28.8k for emergencies) - win98 service pack 1 + 2
dx7

[RAB]

I just upgraded from a K62-350 to a K63-450 and the K63-450 is much faster. I also started over with a new hard drive and a clean install of Win98SE. Haven't had any problems with programs or games yet. (I have a network problem, but I don't think I can blame that on the K63.) I would buy a K63 again, but now that the K7's are nearly as cheap as the K6-3's, the K7 is the way to go. If you are having problems, I would suspect that year old Win98 installation that has picked up the garbage dll's of a hundred old programs you probably don't use anymore. My old K62 is still in a year old machine and it has far more problems than the new machine. Its time to reformat and start over if your K62 is more stable than the K63. BTW, did you remember to turn on Write caching in the BIOS for the K63. It works on the 3 but not on the 2.

RAB

[Gum]

I'm still sticking with good old K6-2 400 o/c 448...Plenty fast for me in 2D and I don't play "Break-Neck" speed First Person Shooting 3D games. War, Adventures and RPG games are what I crave on. I don't think I'll need all the 3-digits FPS generating CPUs to satisfy my needs. And that's the main reason for me buying a G400 16mb and not 32Mb Vanilla/MAX and of cos why I choose the really cheap K6-2 400... :-D

As for me, I'll be waiting for the Athlon Mobo issues to settle first before doing an overhaul upgrading to Athlon amd most probably an Asus K7 Mobo. I do have very good experiences with Asus Mobos.

It seems AGP4x, ATA66, or even Rambus/VRam are in the pipeline for next revisions of K7 Mobos to come before year end.


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AsusP5A, K6-400 @ 448, 128Mb Micron PC100 -8E SDRAM, G400 16Mb, IBM 16GP 8.4, Quantum ST 3.2, Toshiba 32X, HP CDWriter 7570i, RIC 17", ProLink WinScan Pro2000, HP Deskjet 710C, SBLive! Value, Altec Lansing ACS45 & ACS295

[This message has been edited by Gum (edited 04 November 1999).]

[Joel]

It all depends on what you are looking for in a video card, speed or image quality, and how you define 'degraded performance'. I have an AMD K6-2/400 and I am very pleased with the G400's performance on my system. It may not be the fastest in Quake based OpenGL FPS, pretty decent though, but it does do very well in 2D, D3D, and DVD playback.

Joel

[Joel]

BTW

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System Specs

[Mbwun]

Thanks for all the tips. Once I checked that all my BIOS settings conformed to what Matrox recommends, my perfomance improved greatly. My G400 was also sharing IRQ 10 with one of my NIC's. Luckily I had a free PCI slot (recently vacated by my old Guillemont Maxi Gamer Phoenix)in which to move the NIC, and that fixed that problem.

After running 3D Mark 99 Max, I found my results to be on par with other, similar systems. I get around 2760 for what it's worth.

[Buuri]

Paul,

How did you manage to oc your K6-3? I have the same and it just can't handle going over 450 at all..

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B