Why buy a Rolls Royce when a Skoda is just as good? (AMD K6-2)

Member Name: ia_young

Product:	AMD K6-2
Date:	09/05/01 (505 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap, faster than my last processor

Disadvantages: not as fast as it used to be!

At some point last year, well more than a year ago, I decided that I needed to boost the speed of my computer a bit. I didn’t want to spend too much; I only really wanted to upgrade my processor. I had a look at what was on the market and I was quite restricted as the motherboard I had was quite old. It was a choice between an Intel chip, I am not sure what this was, and an AMD chip.

In the end what made up my mind was the price of the AMD K6-2 500 it was only £40. What a bargain, this could keep my computer going for another year or two, hopefully! I then had a few problems getting the chip as they didn’t make it any more, which means by now you can’t get it I should think.

** Installation **
It is not recommended that everyone change their CPU in their computer as they are sensitive pieces of equipment, but I have built PCs before so I didn’t worry too much. Just as long as I was earthed to the cage of the PC I would be okay. Inserting the new CPU was very easy, you can’t really go wrong, there is only one way the CPU can go in, denoted by the pins on the bottom of it. If it is going to fit it will just slip in.

** Problems **
Okay I said at the beginning that a £40 CPU couldn’t be bad, when I got home and put the thing in my PC, all easy, I thought yes no problems. Oh dear I spoke too soon, after doing this I was getting a weird message and it would let me get into Windows. After much fiddling about, at work I went to the AMD website, www.amd.com, there I found out that Windows 95 has a bug with the newer AMD chips over 333 Mhz. But the good thing was that all I had to do was to download a patch from the Internet. I got this home and in “safe mode”, that’s a joke! I ran the patch, hooray it worked!

The AMD website was really easy to use and I found what I was looking for in about five minutes. I don’t know what their customer services is like, but
if it is as good as the website then it must be quite good.

** 3D Now Explained **
What the 3D Now technology claims to do is "significantly enhance floating-point-intensive 3D graphics and multimedia applications". Which in lamens terms means that providing the software uses this extra technology you will get better graphics. If many producers of software have used this I don't know, I should think it would say on the box.

** My Thoughts **
Although you probably can’t get the AMD chip that I purchased if you are looking for a cheap upgrade to your CPU, AMD chips are perfect. The only thing that you need to do is check that your motherboard can accept the chip that you want to put in to it as the designs for the chip interfaces have changed and now the AMD and Intel interfaces are different. The latest CPUs that AMD are producing are the Duron series, which are very cheap and the more upmarket Athlon CPUs (which are also very cheap when compared to Intel).

** Update **
Since the writing of this I decided that I needed a more drastic upgrade to my computer (a new one basically). I have been very impressed with AMD, and can't even see myself touching Intel again, so I got myself one of their impressive Athlon Processors and equipment to go with. Review on this to come at some point...

Summary: