New Mod Doubles L2 Cache On AMD's K6-2+ CPU From 2000

erek

erek

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"Since the K6-2+ and K6-III+ utilized the same microarchitecture, they were very similar. Only the L2 cache separated the two chips. The K6-2+ was a replica of the K6-III+ but with half the L2 cache. If this mod had been discovered 22 years ago, it would have been a gamechanger for sure.


All you have to do is relocate a capacitor to the right, as easy as it may look. For example, Fritzchens Fritz noted on Vogons forums how the K6-III+ has the bottom right-most capacitor installed to the right of the chip PCB. Meanwhile, the K6-2+ has that same capacitor slightly more left with a white-spaced opening remaining on the right.

Placing the capacitor to the same position as the K6-III+ allowed the K-2+ to enable the physically allocated 256KB of L2 cache fully. The modder confirmed that the CPU's cache level is fully functional and even noted his 3DMark2000 scores are higher.

But, enabling the additional cache isn't without some consequences. If you don't own a highly binned K6-2+ chip, it appears the chip can be unstable with all the cache enabled. Plus, there's also a chance the additional 128KB of cache is defective, which can cause further instability issues with the K6-2+."

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https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-mod-doubles-l2-cache-amd-k6-2-cpu-from-2000
 
Interesting, but actually not that suprising as AMD has done this plenty of times before deactivating parts of chips. It really depends if you get one that is fine and binned down or actually had defective parts. Sadly those K6III+ chips are rare, but if you have a board that supports them having the lvl 2 cache on the board act as lvl 3 cache is really nice.
 
FWIW, I read a bit of the vogons thread, and it's actually a 0 Ohm resistor, not a capacitor, which makes more sense. Configuring the die with a resistor is easier and cheaper than a laser cut or a fuse, and the resistor is under an IHS, so there you go.
 
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The entire K6 series of chips was really stellar at integer work. It was Quake and it's new dependence on float performance that kept Intel on top during that era (purely CPU discussion, not counting the oft times weird Super 7 chipsets). I had a K6-III-450 before moving over to Athlon and was very satisfied with it.
 
Hmmmm I still got my K6-2 333mhz in a drawer somewhere, my first cpu ever.
 
legcramp said:
Hmmmm I still got my K6-2 333mhz in a drawer somewhere, my first cpu ever.
Click to expand...
Me too, first pc i got as a teen myself. After coming from my parents pentium 200mhz i felt like this was the fastest thing in the universe! lol. I miss those kinds of jumps.
 
Loved mu K62-300. As far as my EPox Super 7 MB it spent a lot of time in the shop being diagnosed and back at home a fresh install of Win98SE was a few times a week endevour :ROFLMAO:
 
I was a shop tech at the time, so I kept my personal rig fairly up to date, and I was personally all in on AMD and the Super 7 platform. I remember moving from a K6-200 to a K6-2-266 and being amazed at how cool that chip ran. It almost seemed like it barely needed a heatsink or fan.

A lot of Super 7 motherboards were very problematic. In my opinion, Super Micro's Super 7 mainboards were the very best VIA mainboards you could buy (they made both an AT and an ATX board, both were equally excellent) and we very quickly moved into preferring those for Super 7 builds. You might have some driver compatibility issues because of the VIA chipset (and keeping up with the very frequent VIA chipset driver drops was very much a thing) but the board itself was rock solid. I recall being amazed at the time that Super Micro even deigned to make a retail-level non-server board, especially a Super 7 one. Even then, they were known for server and workstation boards.
 
I had a K6 III when they first came out. Nice chip. I eventually put it in a old AST laptop that had a Pentium 200MMX in it. Sure it ran at 233Mhz rather than 400Mhz but it ran cool and had all that extra cache to play with.

It was my first AMD chip...had many many more since.
 
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