AMD's K6-III Shifts Into Overdrive

3DNow Software Is Heavy on Games, Light on Business

Like its predecessor, the K6-2, the K6-III comes equipped with the 3DNow instruction set. 3DNow speeds up complex 3D imaging and improves audio compression as well. To benefit from 3DNow, you need both a processor and an application that support it.

As of early March, AMD claimed that 100 programs use 3DNow. This is great news if you use your computer for entertainment, since most of these programs are games. But of the 100 programs, only 5 are business applications, such as IBM's ViaVoice 98 and Viewpoint Data Labs' LiveArt 98 illustration program. (Even programs not designed for 3DNow may benefit if they make use of Microsoft's popular DirectX version 6.x graphics application programming interface, which supports the K6-2's and K6-III's 3DNow instructions.)

And yes, 3DNow definitely improves a program's performance. We ran the Compaq and Micro Express K6-IIIs through a suite of tests and games with options to support 3DNow turned off and then on. We saw improvements of 6 to 13 percent in games' frame rates. But the real difference was in a beta version of the 3DMark 99 Max gamer's benchmark, where the Compaq's score jumped from 1692 to 3190.

But 3DNow faces competition from Intel's 3D instructions, the Streaming SIMD Extensions, or SSE, which are supported in the Pentium III (see our story on PIII-enhanced software). A Pentium III-450­equipped Micron Millennia ran our Plane Crazy and Motocross Madness games tests 25 percent faster than any K6-III system we put up against it.

The Pentium III got at least some of that boost on Motocross Madness from SSE. Motocross Madness can make use of DirectX 6.1, which supports both 3DNow and SSE. For the moment, 3DNow has the advantage in program support--it has, after all, been out longer than SSE. But with Intel's greater market share, don't expect that lead to last.

Nevertheless, 3DNow won't become obsolete anytime soon. Major games and multimedia applications will probably support both standards for the foreseeable future.