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Comm
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Advanced Micro Devices Upgrade The K6-2 3D 400 MHZ Solution by John Woody |
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Comm
Corner
Advanced Micro Devices Upgrade The K6-2 3D 400 MHZ Solution by John Woody |
| This hardware review concerns the Advanced Micro Devices
(AMD) K6-2 3D 400 MHZ CPU and EFA Viking 3 AT 66/100 MHZ clock speed motherboard
recently donated to Alamo PC Organization by AMD. In this review, I will
attempt to relate my upgrade installation procedures and problems, my performance
experience, and suggestions for other members to follow. As noted in my
Comm Corner column last month, the club is in the midst of finding the
best way to utilize the AMD CPUs and EFA motherboards donated to us by
AMD. We will be covering more on this issue as it unfolds.
Computer ModificationAMD had provided one unit to me for review purposes. I have made the upgrade modification to one of my machines. This is the Windows 98 problem machine, in which I have had the Com Port problems with for the last five months as has been mentioned in this column. As has been related, that machine would not communicate through its analog modem as I attempted to setup WinFax Pro v 9.0 on it. I had no problem communicating through my network to other computers and to the Internet through my router.This machine is a mini-tower with a 250 watt power supply. It is a generic case with two 5 1/4 inch bays and three 3 ½ inch bays. It has eight backplane slots and the usual LED lights for power on, hard disk in-use, and turbo performance. The old motherboard/CPU is not a shabby system in that it is a SuperMicro Computer Inc., AT style motherboard utilizing an Intel 233 MHZ MMX CPU in a Socket 7 connection. Other I/O cards include a ISA Creative 16 bit sound card, ISA Courier analog modem, PCI Diamond video card, and PCI 3Com 10BaseT NIC. The system also has an IDE Iomega tape backup unit with its own accelerator ISA card. It has an AT style Tandy fifteen year-old keyboard and a early serial Logitech mouse. I am using a USB case backplane connection with two USB ports, which plugs into the motherboard. There are two IDE Seagate HDDs, each formatted with FAT32. I use Windows 98 with Service Pack 1 installed. The OS has been upgraded to Y2K compliance. Applications include Microsoft Office Pro 97 and other Windows applications. There is a copy of Dragon Systems Dragon Dictate and Dragon Naturally Speaking Deluxe installed.
K6-2/Viking 3 Description The AMD K6-2 CPU uses RISC86 micro-architecture and has a 64-Kbps level-one cache dual ported in 32-Kbps data ports plus 32-Kbps instruction cache with predecode data. It is designed to run the installed base of x86 software including high performance graphics via its 3DNow TM MMX type instruction set. It has an IEEE 754- and 854-compatible floating-point execution unit. It runs 16-bit and 32-bit software for both Windows 95/98 and Windows NT operating systems. The AMD K6-2 series CPUs use 2.2/3.3 volts for core/IO voltages. The clock multiplier for the K6-2 for the 350/400 MHZ CPUs is 4.0x.The Viking 3 is a 66/100 MHZ AT style motherboard utilizing a Socket 7 CPU connection. The Viking 3 motherboard was tested and certified by AMD to work with the K6-2 series CPUs. It has three ISA I/O board slots and four PCI slots. This board also includes a AGP style video card slot. The board uses 168-pin DIMM style Random Access Memory (RAM) that can be installed in three DIMM slots. DIMM style memory can be installed one stick at a time. Jumper pinouts and plug-in sockets are labeled and well marked. It receives the usual four IDE devices via two IDE plug-in sockets. COM1, COM2, LPT1, AT style keyboard, PS-2 mouse pinout, IRDA connector, and FDD connector sockets are available. One multifunction connector handles the case and speaker pinouts. The board uses the VIA MVP3 board and SMC669 I/O chipsets for its functions. Connectors for AT or ATX style electrical board power are available. The EFA motherboard manual has good board diagram layout indicating where the pinouts and jumpers are located. The manual and the board seem to jive correctly. The AMD K6-2 CPU plugs into a ZIF Socket 7 type plug on the motherboard. The motherboard is designed as a classic Baby AT board making it easy to use as a upgrade device. It is fully Plug & Play compatible via the Award BIOS. This motherboard uses the Award BIOS setup EPROM software for boot and operation purposes. This BIOS software version is Y2K compatible. The BIOS is started at boot-up by holding the DEL key during the start process. There are twelve separate pages, which each address basic input/output system functions. Each of these pages require review at first start-up.
Installation ProceduresMy upgrade installation was undertaken with a little pre-planning. The first action was to make sure that I was grounded to keep the static electricity away from the CPU, I/O card, and motherboard electronics. I chose the 100 MHZ motherboard clock speed to get the maximum benefit from the 400 MHZ K6-2 CPU and 100 MHZ RAM. I opted to install a AGP class A50 Diamond video card in the new system to take advantage of the AGP style video capabilities. I also opted to increase the available RAM by installing a 128 MB SDIMM 100 MHZ stick of memory.The documentation concerning the motherboard jumper settings was straightforward. My upgrade installation procedure was to follow the directions included in the EFA Viking 3 motherboard setup sheet. The EFA instruction sheet was complete and fairly easy to understand. I simply removed the installed I/O cards and piled them in a corner. The old motherboard/CPU setup was then removed. I then used canned air to blow all the dust out of the case and power supply. I also attempted with some success to remember all the case cable pinouts. The Viking 3 board installed with no problems. The other components were returned en masse. I inserted the stick of 128 MB 100 MHZ SDRAM PC-100 RAM in DIMM slot #1. I then installed the CPU in the proper manner in the Socket 7 connector. Remember to align the CPU pins with the socket, looking for the CPU pins, which have been slanted and align them with the pin one corner of the socket. The remaining PCI and ISA I/O cards were re-installed in masse. The installation instructions recommended that these cards be re-installed one at a time to keep problems under control. I simply turned the machine on. It worked fine until it attempted to recognize my old serial Logitech mouse. No luck! I ended up installing the provided PS-2 I/O plug in a free backplane case opening and purchasing a PS-2 mouse. The PS-2 mouse may have solved my modem problem, in that after a re-start or two, the modem even seemed to be working. This is because the PS-02 mouse uses another IRQ in place of the serial mouse. The case cable pinouts are almost all back in place. I opted to keep the USB backplane connections from the previous setup. I seem to have made a mistake on the HDD LED, which will be corrected when I next open the case. The Jumper configuration setup was straightforward from the Viking 3 manual printouts. Settings for the 100 MHZ motherboard bus, the CPU type/clock bus settings, SDRAM clock, and power were included in the board setup. The 100 MHZ RAM should be 8 ns memory. The machine then ran without any further problem. My fifteen year-old Tandy keyboard works just like before. Even Windows 98 worked without any new problems. All the application software worked including MS Office 97. The only remaining problem was the COM Port problem I had previously had and it may have been solved with the new IRQ setting. The system cooks at 400/100 MHZ and loves 128 MB or RAM. Then, even the Com Port problem has disappeared. I can see the modem in the diagnostics test. I have not tested the USB ports yet. There is, indeed, no substitute for CPU speed, faster is better! I think that this review is important in that anyone with a little knowledge and/or help can make that ole last year's machine cook with the best of them. This upgrade method utilizes changing both the motherboard and the CPU, but using existing case and I/O components.
ConclusionsThere is definitely a performance increase in doing applications with this machine. My MS Office Pro 97 applications execute faster than before with the 223 MHZ setup. MS Word, Excel, and Powerpoint all work faster. The performance increase is evident in the use of both the MS Internet Explorer and Netscape browsers. Both load as fast as the Internet data arrives or is sent. A CD based video training program works in real time through my 16-bit sound card with no problems. The Dragon Dictates/Naturally Speaking programs work well also.I experienced no problems in getting the new setup to work, outside the serial mouse stoppage. It was probably time to change that 12 year old device out anyway. The BIOS defaults plus one or two changes I made were more than adequate to make the machine start up and run everything. I made no changes to the defaults in the BIOS and to the motherboard, except for memory and the PS-2 and USB turn-on. I did make three changes to the original setup which affect the current performance. One is the Diamond Speedstar A50 AGP bus, 8 MB SDRAM memory video card. This card is a step beyond my previous Diamond Speedstar video card. I took this action to gain the advantage of the AGP bus capability of the Viking 3 motherboard. The second change concerned changing the RAM memory from 64 MB to 128 MB. More RAM is always better, which may have changed my performance characteristics. This RAM change would probably have not been necessary for most of us. The third change concerned the replacement of the aged Logitech serial mouse with a generic PS-2 mouse. The PS-2 mouse evidently solved my on-going COM PORT problem by returning an IRQ to the Windows 98 assignment pool. I regained use of the internal Courier modem installed on COM3 using IRQ 4. The changes have had no effect on my LAN. I have no problems connecting to the other nodes or the server via the network. The AMD K6-2 CPU 3DNow!TM technology is an innovation to the x86 processor architecture and enhances floating-point three-dimensional (3D) graphics and multimedia performance in the same manner as the Intel MMXTM technology in support of Microsoft Windows-compatible personal computers and applications. The main difference between the 3DNow and the MMX technologies is the enhancements of the 3D performance. 3DNow incorporates MMX. This technology does not replace 3D graphics accelerator I/O cards, but does work hand-in hand with the card performance. The K6-2 CPU is fully compatible with all Windows software applications. The AMD K6-2 processor has the support of Microsoft and the independent software development industry. The processor works with Windows 95/98 and Windows NT. The K6-2 works with the Socket 7 and Super 7 motherboard platforms. The AMD K6-2 3D 400 MHZ CPU is priced at between $75.00 to $84.00 each on the street. The Viking 3 motherboard is priced at approximately $82.00 to $85.00. My cost of operation includes the Diamond video card and one stick of SDIMM 100 MHZ RAM. This cost was approximately $225.00. I am happy with the performance gains and believe that this modification is a cost effective method for upgrades of most systems. John Woody is a networking communications consultant specializing in small office, home office networks, training setup, and internet connectivity.
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