AMD K6 2 550 v AMD DURON 750 REVIEW

"AMD K6 2 550Mhz v AMD Duron 750Mhz showing the perfomance increase you will get when you upgrade from the old Amd K6 2 processor to the modern Amd Duron processors. Software used during testing was:- PC Player Direct3D, Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena and Wintune 1997."

A few years ago the AMD K6 2 was the cutting edge of performance, it was installed in millions of PC's across the world and even today has a large number of very happy users. It introduced 3Dnow to the world and when Intel abandoned Socket7 in favour of various other chipsets it was the only cpu which offered good performance for Socket7 users. Later AMD released the K6 3 and the K6 2+ and K6 3+ series of mobile processors at various speeds but these were sold in very limited numbers. Then along came the Duron, it offers almost Athlon performance at incredible prices, Socket A is an obvious upgrade path for loyal AMD users. Please keep in mind that the Duron is running at 750mhz and the K6 2 at 550mhz. Strictly speaking two cpu's of equal speed should of been used for the test but the highest speed available for the K6 2 is 550mhz and the Duron cpu used for this test can't be underclocked to 550mhz.

So how much faster is the Duron compared to the fastest K6 2?

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

PROCESSOR	AMD DURON 750 MHZ
	AMD K6 2 550 MHZ
VIDEO CARD	PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX 32MB AGP
NVIDIA DRIVER	DETONATOR v6.50
MOTHERBOARD	JETWAY 663AS PRO
	GIGABYTE GA-5AA ALI ALADDIN V REV 3.2
MEMORY	128MB PC-100 SDRAM
OPERATING SYSTEM	WINDOWS 98 SE
DIRECTX VERSION	v8.0a

WINTUNE 97 CPU

ALU MIPS

	1857
	917

FPU MFLOPS

	482
	328

AMD DURON 750 AMD K6 2 550

COMMENT - "Even though the Duron is 200mhz faster than the K6 2 in real terms it's over twice as fast as the K6 2. To get the same performance as the 750mhz Duron the K6 2 would have to be run at 1100mhz which is impossible for this type of cpu, the max stock speed for the K6 2 is 550mhz.
So why is the Duron 750mhz over twice as fast as the k6 2?
Socket7 is old technology and it's showing it's age, it was never designed to run processors at such a high speed. Also the K6 2 has only 64k level 1 cache and no level 2 cache at all. Compare that to the 128kb level 1 and 64kb level 2 cache of the Duron and it becomes clear why the Duron is over twice as fast as a K6 2 and the Duron has a 200mhz speed advantage over the 550mhz K6 2."

WINTUNE 97 VIDEO

800x600x16

	321
	159

800x600x32

	242
	126

AMD DURON 750 AMD K6 2 550

"In the 2D test the Duron was twice as fast as the K6 2 at 16bit and 32bit. Screen updates were fast with both cpu's and the difference in performance couldn't be seen in the real world."

PC PLAYER DIRECT3D

640x480x16

	149
	90

640x480x32

	143
	84

1024x768x16

	111
	78

1024x768x32

	105
	70

AMD DURON 750 AMD K6 2 550

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Direct3D HAL
Gourad Shading Model
Solid Model
Textures Enabled
Fog Enabled
Dithering Enabled
Antialiasing Enabled
Bilinear Texturing Enabled
Transparent Textures Enabled
Perspective Enabled

COMMENT - "The Direct3D scores were much closer than I would of imagined. At 640x480x16bit and 32bit the Duron was 59fps ahead of the K6 2. At 1024x768x16bit and 32bit the difference had shrunk to only 35fps. The K6 2 performed very well and all of the scores were over 60fps which is impressive."

QUAKE 2

640x480x16

	174
	80

640x480x32

	162
	80

1024x768x16

	135
	76

1024x768x32

	97
	74

AMD DURON 750 AMD K6 2 550

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
3dnow OpenGL Driver
Demo1.dm2 benchmark
Fullscreen enabled
Texture Quality Full
8Bit Textures Disabled
Sync Every Frame Disabled

COMMENT - "The added horsepower of the Duron gives it a commanding lead in this test, at 640x480 it's over twice as fast as the K6 2 which is stuck at 80fps. As you increase the resolution and colour depth the difference in performance between the cpu's becomes smaller as the video card plays a more important role in performance. At 1024x768x32bit the Duron leads the K6 2 by only 23fps. Both the K6 2 and the Duron score well over the 60fps mark for smooth gameplay."

QUAKE III ARENA

FASTEST

	126
	55

NORMAL

	115
	40

HIGH QUALITY

	85
	36

AMD DURON 750 AMD K6 2 550

COMMENT - "The Duron takes a MASSIVE lead of 71fps over the K6 2 at the fastest setting, the K6 2 is clearly not powerful enough to run newer games.At the normal setting the Duron is almost 3 times faster than the K6 2 and at the high quality setting the Duron is still over twice as fast. Quake 3 requires a very powerful fpu and high memory bandwidth which the K6 2 clearly doesn't have. However with tweaking it's possible to reach 60fps with the K6 2 but you have to reduce the geometric and texture detail right down."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Default GLdriver
GL Extensions on
Fullscreen on
Demo001 Benchmark

FASTEST QUALITY
512x384 Video Mode
16Bit Colour Depth
16Bit Texture Quality
Vertex Lighting
Geometic Detail Low
Texture Detail 50%
Bilinear Texture Filtering

NORMAL QUALITY
640x480 Video Mode
16Bit Colour Depth
16Bit Texture Quality
Lightmap Lighting
Geometic Detail Medium
Texture Detail 75%
Bilinear Texture Filtering

HIGH QUALITY
800x600 Video Mode
32Bit Colour Depth
32Bit Texture Quality
Lightmap Lighting
High Geometic Detail
Full Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering

CONCLUSION - "So is the AMD K6 2 550mhz a worthy upgrade or should I get a AMD Duron?
If you mostly use old games or 2D applications then I see no need to upgrade to a Duron. if you can obtain a cheap K6 3 then it will make an excellent upgrade. If however you want to play the latest games or watch DVD movies then the K6 series of processors is no longer powerful enough and I recommend you get a Duron. It will give you excellent gaming performance and you can pick up an AMD Duron 750mhz for £40 which is an amazing price to pay for such a powerful cpu. AMD had a winner with the K6 2 and they have done it again with the Duron!!!"

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