Although the K6-3 400's introduction will herald a new age in AMD's product performance, it won't include enhancements to either the original K6-2's floating point unit, or 3DNow! instruction support. This doesn't mean that AMD won't continue to improve 3DNow! via software engineering, but it does put an end to some of the current debate concerning a rumored "Katmai New Instructions upgrade of 3DNow!" to compete with Intel's pending new CPU introduction set. It's clear to us after testing the K6-3 400 at length that 3DNow! is still vitally important for AMD to retain performance parity or even superiority in some cases with Intel's Pentium 2. Without 3DNow! even the supercharged K6-3 400 is easily beaten in the gaming environment by Intel's standard P2-400. With support for 3DNow! within the very same games, the K6-3 overcomes the relatively poor FPU that AMD has equipped both it and the K6-2 with and shines as an extremely powerful gaming option. In some cases the K6-3 400 with 3DNow! support in the 3D benchmark being run equaled the performance of Intel's highest performance desktop offering, the P2-450.
Here's a visual reminder of how 3DNow! works with most current and future 3D accelerator cards to provide a better gaming experience:
Sharky Extreme has learned that the K6-3 will initially ship in a 400MHz variant, with a possible 450MHz version following within four weeks of the initial 400MHz part's launch. The K6-3 400's expected street cost will check in between $325 and $375 when it becomes available between mid to late February 1999.
The dates and information above could change slightly, especially in the case of the K6-3 450. If AMD can produce enough K6-3 450s to warrant the announcement of its release at the same time as its lower powered sibling, they will. The motivation is simply that AMD senses an opportunity to crash Intel's Katmai CPU launch party in late February by introducing the two K6-3 CPUs the very same week, at prices that are much lower than the two Katmai CPUs will be upon their introduction.
