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Date:      Fri, 26 Feb 1999 18:44:31 -0600 (CST)
From:      Chris Dillon <cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us>
To:        "Joe \"Marcus\" Clarke" <marcus@miami.edu>
Cc:        FreeBSD User Questions List <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Pentium III support?
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.05.9902261836380.11218-100000@duey.wolves.k12.mo.us>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.05.9902261413350.20784-100000@jaguar.ir.miami.edu>

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On Fri, 26 Feb 1999, Joe "Marcus" Clarke wrote:

> I just bought a Pentium III 450 (call me crazy), and I'm curious is a 686
> CPU config would work for it.  Anyone in core devel look over the
> architecture yet?  Should it be supported?  Thanks.
> 
> Joe Clarke

If I can believe what I have read on the Tom's Hardware web site, the
Pentium III is just a PII core with the SIMS instruction set added
(which is similar to the 3DNow instruction set on the AMD K6-2
processors).  You will see absolutely no performance improvement from
a PIII over a PII unless any software you're using specifically
supports SIMS.

The upcoming K6-3 has me waiting anxiously, however, since it should
have a noticeable performance improvement over the K6-2 because of the
on-chip L2 cache (256k) running at core clock speed (it is still a
K6-2 core, AFAIK). The K6-2 has already given all of the Intel
processors a good run for the money, and I'm rather hoping the K6-3
will provide no reason to buy a PII or PIII.  :-)


-- Chris Dillon - cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us - cdillon@inter-linc.net
/* FreeBSD: The fastest and most stable server OS on the planet.
   For Intel x86 and compatibles (SPARC and Alpha under development)
   ( http://www.freebsd.org )                                       */




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