The
AMD K6-2 was probably AMD's most successful and popular
Socket 7 processor. It sported the extended
3D-Now! instruction set and was very, very cheap. Although it could not compete speed-wise with the
Pentium III series, it ran rings around the
Pentium II and
Celeron offerings at the same price. Unlike the Celeron, the
K6-2 ran
very hot and could hardly be
overclocked at all without the application of large
pelzier coolers and other such over-the-top methods. (Although the way things are going, I would expect all
entry level PCs will have refridgeration units built in in a few years time).
The K6-2 had the additional bonus of AMD's close working relationship with 3dfx (back when they were good), leading to very nice accelerated versions of Quake 2 designed for this chip and the Voodoo2 graphics card. For an outlay of practically nothing I was able to maintain a decent games machine for well over two years based around these chips. Although the FPU was a great improvement on the doddering K6 and K5, it couldn't really compete with Intel's ever-increasing performance. It was eventually succeeded by the Athlon (K7).