Showdown at the MMX Corral

We said further on in that sidebar that as certain performance problems relating to chip sets and BIOSes are eliminated, " the K6 will be a potent competitor to the Intel CPUs." Based on our testing, we conclude that, in general, the K6 competes with the Pentium II almost clock-for-clock in integer performance but definitely lags behind in FP and MMX performance. As we said in the Lab Report, the K6 box we tested -- XI Computer's Xi K200 MTower -- "turned in a composite performance score nearly identical to that of its MMX Pentium counterparts." (Also check out our June issue, page 26.) But AMD is slightly behind Intel in offering top clock speeds: The Pentium II is available (albeit in very small quantities at very high prices) at 300 MHz, while the K6 currently peaks at 233 MHz. AMD says it will have a 300-MHz K6 by the end of the year. Intel might be at 350 to 400 MHz by then. So Intel has about a six-month lead in highest clock speeds. -- Editors