Check out
http://www.realworldtech.com/index.cfm

They have great info on using AMD K6-III on older motherboards. The K6-III has 256 KB (!) built-in L2 cache, and is hence less dependent on bus and memory speed. The performance is thus still good on old boards.

Are you playing any flight sim on your upgraded Asus TX97&K6-400 (F2, F4 or EAW alike? Did you get any good frame rate on these Sims? Can you give me a brief information about your system (RAM type, 3D card brand, BIOS version, system seting)?

Sorry for so many questions.

One of the shortcomings of the K6 family of chips is that they have subpar FPU performance. The Athlon rectifies that problem with a kick-a$$ FPU which is just as good (and better under some conditions) than the Intel P3's! FPU performance is of course crucial for running flight sims.

Just ask away... :-)

But, I'm sorry I can't give you advice on any of the recent sims, although my old sims (from around 1997) got a nice boost. Su27 Flanker 1.5 got even smoother, EF2000 2 was playable in high-res, and I could turn JSF up to 640x480 (still one of the nicest sim that one!)...

Still waiting for my Flanker 2 copy, and expect that I will have to get a new graphics card to turn the graphics up. Currently, I have a old Matrox Mystique (still have no games that exploits its 3D capabilities though --- what an irony... :-) I'm considering a Savage4 PCI, or some of the other PCI solutions.

My RAM is standard 64 MB, 66 MHz memory (60ns).

Upgraded the BIOS a while back, to 1.08 I think. I don't think it supports the memory optimization in newer K6-2/III, though (CTX core?).

If you have the money, AMD Athlon is probably the way to go, as AA suggests... there's no good reason to buy Intel these days...