K6-III was never excellent. It was a short lived overpriced option for desperate socket7 users unwilling to do the sensible thing and upgrade whole platform (brand new Celeron 300A + 440BX motherboard cheaper than just the K6-3 cpu alone). Paper launch in February 1999 with first real chips shipping in March. First K6-3 to show up in Japan was K6-III/400 at hilarious 35,500 yen = $295! https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990313/p_cpu.ht... This is the price of full Pentium II 400MHz or over four almost year old by this point and still faster Celerons 300A.

By January 2000 prices corrected to saner bus still delusional levels https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/20000108/p_cpu....

K6-III/450 14,550 $140

K6-III/400 8,980 $85

Celeron 300A $57

First time Duron shows up in Akihabara is June 17 2000 https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/20000617/p_cpu....

Celeron 533A 10,570 $100

Duron 600MHz 9,990 $95

K6-III/450 24,800 $236 haha whats up with that price? Either AMD stopped shipping already and its leftovers or its a sucker tax for ss7 owners wanting to max out.

K6-III/400 14,800 $140

K6-2/550 7,949 $76

K6-2/533 5,970 $57

K6-2/500 5,350 $50

Week later https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/20000624/p_cpu....

Celeron 533A 9,980 $95

Duron 600MHz 9,480 $90

K6-III/450 24,800 $230 AHAHAHAHAHA

K6-III/400 15,800 $150

K6-2/550 7,940 $76

K6-2/533 6,700 $63

K6-2/500 5,300 $50

Looks like by the time Durons showed up nobody was bothering to stock K6-3, only 3 vendors in Akihabara had them. Those crazy prices werent limited to Japan, Poland September 1999:

Pentium III 450MHz 1260 $308

Pentium II 400MHz 943 $231

Celeron 366MHz 348 $85 (300A missing from the list, but was still available and selling cheaper)

K6-III/450 1108 $271 HAHA

K6-III/400 877 $215

K6-2/400 397 $97 haha

K6-2/350 230 $56

For a brief moment in 1999 AMD pretended K6-3 was equal to Pentium 2/3 and tried to price it accordingly but market corrected them swiftly. There was a 1/3 performance gap between K6-3 and overclocked Celeron.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080418185205/http://arstechnic...

https://web.archive.org/web/20070918073530/http://arstechnic...

https://web.archive.org/web/20070918135927/http://arstechnic...