Note that if you have a Super Socket7 you can use a 100Mhz bus, but then you might as well just buy a K6-2 anyway =). Back in 98 and I decided to run 3Dmark99Max, which you should note isn't the best benchmark for a Millenium2-8mb. However I was amazed to see the FPS games running smoothly and the CPU's 3D Speed came out as 3950, which is about twice as much as the PMMX233 had. Before the upgrade such things as DVD Movies, highly detailed 3D Scenes in Truespace, large Publisher98 documents and various other things had been a bit choppy. All of a sudden DVD Movies running in software (Millenium2 doesn't fully support DVDs) were next to smooth instead of 15Fps like previous, now they were 27-29Fps. The Truespace scene was navigable without any problems and Publisher98's document ran without any real glitch.

In doing all this something that I have known for many years as a die-hard up-grader once again came to light. Upgrading is a professional sport to many and it's a constant art of streamlining the system so it's not unbalanced, you can't just add one thing and expect the whole system to show any real change. Again this came to light, I quickly realised that in order to take full advantage of this CPU a PCI TNT card would be needed and so would a UDMA IDE HardDisk, next to that everything went as planned. The fact is a new CPU doesn't take away HD Loading times or the fact your graphics card might not support bilinear filtering =)

Analysis

The Spectra400Mhz is primarily suited to those in the Pentium75 - PentiumMMX233 bracket who want to update their system without any real hassle or money expenditure. At £175 (UKP) Inc V.A.T it's reasonably priced and considering the hassle it would cause you to take another upgrade path, then it's probably worth every penny. You can get it cheaper if you hunt, we clocked a £140 inc. V.A.T version in a trading magazine. Just remember that despite the CPU having the ability to run games, it's not actually for gamers as gamers would need the kit to go with it and that simply isn't available for the systems this is designed to upgrade. It is actually cheaper now to get an MB+K6-2-400CPU than it is for the upgrade, but that's not why it's there. This upgrade is just perfect for business systems that need bringing up to date with minimum hassle. It is possible to get PCI TNT cards and faster IDE drives for older systems so if you do want to be a bit of a gamer then it will work, although we didn't have anything to test that out, you just know it will work though.

Overall with a Spectra450Mhz just out the door as well, this is an easy and perfect upgrade for anybody wanting a quick 'Super Boost' to his or her system. Just remember you might need to add a better hard disk, graphics card and maybe even some more Ram to take full advantage of its power.

Evergreen Europe:- http://www.europe.evertech.com

Evergreen USA:- http://www.evertech.com

by Mark Jackson

Price - 8.5 Performance - 8.5 Overall - 8.7

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