Powerleap PL ProMMX K6-2 333

The Test

This is what we've all been waiting to find out about the Powerleap kit and the primary reason for considering it as an upgrade solution. The Test System Configuration was as follows:

• Intel Pentium 133MHz
• Powerleap PL-ProMMX AMD K6-2 333MHz
• IDT Winchip 2 3D 200MHz
• Abit AX5 i430TX Socket 7 motherboard w/ 512KB Cache
• 2 x 32MB 10ns PC66 Hitachi SDRAM
• Western Digital Caviar AC35100 - UltraATA
• Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 - S3 ViRGE (2MB EDO DRAM)
• Metabyte Wicked3D Voodoo2 (12MB EDO DRAM)

This configuration was carefully selected to represent a fairly typical configuration that AnandTech readers might have.

The Abit AX5 was selected as a common motherboard that is not capable of taking a K6-2 due to voltage constraints. It's BIOS detected the CPU as a K6/3D processor and enabled Write Allocate automatically. The Powerleap kit was also installed in an Abit IT5H i430HX motherboard, where it also worked fine.

With RAM being so cheap these days, we decided to use 64MB SDRAM - any system with less than 64MB would benefit the most with a RAM upgrade before a CPU upgrade. Since the performance difference between SDRAM, EDO, and FPM is negligable, AnandTech chose to use SDRAM due to its abudance in today's market.

The Western Digital Caviar is simply an extremely popular hard drive and, again, systems with extremely slow hard drives would benefit the most by upgrading to a faster hard drive.

The S3 ViRGE was selected as a video card for its abundance as a video solution often integrated into motherboards and sometimes cannot be upgraded. A Voodoo2 was used as the 3D card in the system since anyone can add a Voodoo2 to their existing system for minimal cost and with minimal compatibility issues these days. For 3D gaming, a Voodoo2 will provide much more of a performance boost than a new CPU.

An IDT Winchip 2 3D was featured as an alternative CPU upgrade. The Winchip 2 3D uses 3.3V, which allows for compatibility, voltage wise with just about any Socket 7 motherboard. BIOS compatibility and clock multiplier issues remain with older motherboards, however. Check out AnandTech's complete IDT Winchip 2 3D Review for more information.

Other configurations should give approximately the same relative performance boost.

The following drivers were used in the tests

• Windows 98 built in S3 ViRGE
• 3Dfx Voodoo2 Reference Drivers 2.1
• DirectX 6.1

The benchmark suite consisted of the following applications:

• Ziff Davis Winstone 99 under Windows 98
• Quake 2 v3.20 using demo1.dm2 and Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo

All Winstone tests were run at 1024 x 768 x 16 bit color, all gaming performance tests were run at 800 x 600 x 16 bit color. 3DNow! support was enabled when applicable.