The K5 in use

In use the K5 was not as bad as many people tried to make it out to be. In fact in our experience we have found it to be rather good. It will still run many of today's applications. We have seen a PR100 example in use with Windows 95 OSR2.0 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and were impressed at how well it coped with this demanding application. The K5 in our opinion could well keep up with any equivalent Pentium processor.

Where the K5 appears to be weak is in the same respect as the Intel Pentium now seems weak. It has just been outpaced by processors which have come later. This is of course no fault of the chip itself, but is due to the sheer speed in which the PC industry moves forward regarding CPU development. We at the Processor Emporium today would not recommend the K5 under PR166 for use with many demanding applications as it would probably begin to struggle with the demands placed upon it by Windows 98.

Don't write off the K5 yet!

There is though one area where the K5 can still have a bright future for a while yet. This is of course achieved by moving away from Windows based computing and into the wonderful world of Linux. All members of the K5 family would make the basis of some very good Linux PC's and coupled cheapness of the K5 on the used market can lead to a very affordable Linux box being built.

AMD K5, the verdict

As the K5 has been out of production for some time it can only now be purchased on the used market be it separately or as part of a used PC system. In our opinion the K5 makes a very good used processor that can still handle most of today's applications. We would though advise buyers to now only look towards the higher speed K5's as it is fast becoming an outdated processor along with the Intel Pentium and Cyrix 6x86.

AMD K5® , Technical Data

• AMD K6 page
• AMD K6-2 page
• AMD K6-3 page
• AMD K7 page