The K5's Debut

Selinda Chiquoine

A 75-MHz version of AMD's long-awaited Pentium competitor, code-named the K5 and now officially called the AMD5K86-P75, came to BYTE housed in a generic, midrange office system. To test the widely held prediction that AMD's chip would run 30 percent faster than a same-speed Pentium, and to see how its shrunken die size (resulting from AMD's new 0.35-micron process) effects this prediction, we ran our BYTEmark CPU tests. The 5K86-P75's integer score, 20 percent faster than that of a 90-MHz Pentium--44 percent faster when factoring in the speed difference--confirmed the prediction. Its integer scores are on par with those of a P90, although all the FPU-based results lag by more than half ( see the figure ).

Touted as a fifth-generation CPU, the 5K86's superscalar, super pipelined design also has sixth-generation traits, including a quad-issue pipeline with six parallel execution units and a four-way CISC/RISC decoder unit; out-of-order and speculative execution; dual reservation stations for each execution unit except the FPU; and register renaming. (For more architectural details, see "CPU Scorecards," November 199 5 BYTE, and "AMD vs. Superman," November 1994 BYTE.) Soon after the chip's release in late April, AMD already had a respectable list of K5 customers, including Acer, Atrend, CyberMax, Epson, ICL, and Luiski.

With Windows 95 hardware certification, a standard P54C pin-out, a compelling price ($75 for the AMD-P75 and $99 for the AMD-P90, versus $106 for 75-MHz Pentiums and $134 for P90s), and plans to ship 100-, 133-, and 150-MHz versions by the end of the year, AMD may finally enjoy some of the waning low-end Pentium corporate market.

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Where to Find

AMD 5K86-P75....................$75

AMD, Inc.
Austin, TX
Phone:    (800) 222-9323  or (512) 385-8542
Internet: 
http://www.amd.com

Circle 1044 on Inquiry Card.

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AMD's P75 Excels

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AMD's K5

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