Would appreciate any comments on a comparison between PC systems based on the AMD-K6, and Pentium II chips. I'm particularly interested in internet and office-type software performance differences.

I've been following the various AMD k6-2 vs Intel Pentium II tests with some interest, and when it comes to office and internet software there is genuinely very little difference between them. I use my PC for gaming and 3D graphics mainly, where the PII in some respects has the edge, but for more conventional uses such as yours I would recommend the K6-2 for it's higher "bang for buck" ratio. Clock and FSB speeds are important for office software etc. whereas FPU is far more important for more demanding uses, and K6-2 and PII are equal in Clock and FSB departments. As you seem to be interested from a neutral point, I can only assume you are thinking of upgrading to a new mainboard soon, and would absolutely recommend the Super7 (and thus K6-2 and soon K6-3) route if you feel yourself a competant computer user and are willing to download a few patches and updates, and the Slot 1 (and thus PII or CeleronA) route if not. The AMD K6-X route has a definate upgrade path in the K6-3, whereas Intel seems to want to phase out Slot 1(which had only really just come in...)(Super Slot 1... now there's an idea...), certainly the reasonably priced CeleronA route (in favour of putting the CeleronA chip on a new and deeply obscure, but cheap mainboard system called Socket370), which is quite sad, and bodes ill for them, I fear. But I digress, internet performance is highly unlikely to be affected much by processor speed much, so long as it's reasonably fast (even the Winchip and Cyrix chips are okay for internet stuff).Memory is a much more important factor with the internet, and in the end only modem(or whatever) speed really improves your performance. If you want detailed CPU reviews and comparisons though, the best place I can think of to go offhand is www.anandtech.com, which has great info and reviews on all sorts of hardware stuff.

AMD gives an equal bang for very small bucks

You have to take into consideration that when you have an AMD chip, you have crap math performance, which would be detrimental to the performance and compatability of any sort of winmodem I would shell out the extra bucks for Intel just to alleviate yourself of having the problems with buying non-intel. Intel created the X86 architecture...who would you rather buy from, the people who created it, or the people who try to copy it

The AMDK6-2 is definatly thge way you should go.. It sounds like you are more interested in office apps, the AMDK6-2's give the same performance (if not better) in that area. As for the PII blowing away the AMD in it's Floating Point Unit (FPU).. I wouldn't call 4% "blowing it away". The PII will cost on average twice as much as the AMD. I just put a system together using the AMDK6-2 350 and I'm happy as hell with it's performance. I used the TYAN Trinity MB and a name brand RAM.. If your interested.

I use two systems for WP, general office and games - a desktop PC with PII 350 and a laptop with K6-2-333. Both systems are identically specified apart from the CPU ie they both have 64mb RAM, 4.2GB hard disk and a similar software installation. Despite the slower clock speed, the AMD is noticeably faster at Windows, word processing and general office work. The PII may have the edge in games, but this could be due to its superior graphics card. Both machines absolutely bury the previous laptop I used - a Pentium P166 MMX machine. My subjective impression is that the AMD is superior to the PII at the same clock speed.

I have 3 systems. An AMD K62-300, PII-300, and a MAC. comparing the first two, i would have to say that the AMD chip has the edge over PII. Both loaded with excat same software, the AMD is a much better performer in every way