I recently got a hold of a K6-III+ 450MHz from TigerDirect.com for $58.98 after shipping. Not a great deal considering a Duron 600MHz will set you back the same amount, but the problem is that the Duron 600 doesn’t run on Socket 7. For a Socket 7 CPU, $50 for 450Mhz and 256KB onboard L2 isn’t all that bad, considering a straight K6-III 450MHz cost almost $100 only a few months ago. The reason for this review isn’t simply to give you the stats on a K6-III+ 450Mhz vs. the old CPU in the system I was testing, a K6-III 350MHz. It was to show you just how far $60 can go in Socket 7.

It has been known that most Socket 7 motherboards have a Maximum Rating of 100Mhz FSB with a 5.5x multiplier, yielding a Maximum CPU speed of 550MHz. Thanks to advanced thinking on AMD’s part, all of the K6 processors since the K6-2 CXT core have seen the 2.0x multiplier on the motherboard as a 6.0 multiplier. Back in the K6-400Mhz days, this was to give 66MHz FSB owners the chance to run the CPU at 66Mhz*6.0=400MHz. Kudos to AMD for forgetting about this setting in it’s K6-X+ line of chips, because that gives us the ability to push this little bundle of Socket 7 joy to 600MHz, or higher depending on the FSB Supported on your motherboard. There have been stories, some with proof, of getting upwards of 700MHz out of this line of chips with the 112 and 124MHz FSB and by removal of the Aluminum Heat Plate.

Please be advised that the following picture is 100KB, and therefore might take a while to download for you 56K modem users or less. If there was a way to compress this image while maintaining quality, I would do just that, but I have not yet found a way.