K6-2/500 vs P3/550

[jchristman]

Okay, I know they are both archaic cpus but if I upgrade from a K62/500 to a P3/550 512k how much of an improvement will I see? In general? I just want to know if its worth the trouble as I got the mobo for free. I'm mostly a gamer using a geforce2/64mb. Also, if I do this with my current drive, will Win98 recognize the new mobo or will I end up reloading Windoze. Thanks in advance.

 

[HardWareBoss]

Wow I thought I had an old chip. With Athlon 500. Why don't you upgrade your system. Since your into gaming. You need a better Vid card for todays games. Unless your playing the old stuff.

 

[Nights_L]

a big improvement you will get
BUT
even thought it's a big improvement, I still suggest you to get a new system (XP1800+, P4 1.8G at least) if you are a gamers, then it will be BIG BIG improvement from K6-2 500

 

[Titanion]

Try and find a K6-2+ 550... they are out there for under $50.00... but see if your motherboard works for that cpu... not all do. Research the cpu. The K6-2 plus is way better... but it is on par with the P3 550 I think...

But the other posts are correct... what kind of an XP can you get for $50.00, an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ at least, I think. But if you are not up for upgrading ram, power supply, case, motherboard, and lots of fans, think about the plus. I both build a completely new system and got a K6-2+ 550 cpu (it overclocks great to 600 and 616 MHz), and my friends use this old computer... there is some lag over a lan on newer games, but for a lot of older games, it is still a great setup.

<font color=red><b>To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.</b></font color=red>
John Milton, <i>Paradise Lost</i>, II 262-263

 

[Crashman]

In games you'll see up to a 50% gain, mostly due to the K6 series extremely weak floating point. I had a K6-III that couldn't compete with Celerons in certain games due to the weak floating point.

Of course the PIII 550 with 256k cache would be even better than the one with 512k cache, because it would be the newer Coppermine core processor with full-speed on-die cache instead.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>