P5WD2 Premium with an Intel 630 64 bit cpu working in a 32..

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 19:00:27 GMT, whoizzy@whereizzy.com (whoizzy) wrote:

>If anyone is knowledgeable, does the extra meg of L2 cache get
>used in a 32 bit operating system? I know that the 800 series
>dual core processors which have 2 megs of L2 cache and used
>independently for each core (one core doesn't use the other).
>
>So, I was wondering if in a 32 bit system, using a 64 bit cpu
>whether or not the system has the use of 2 Meg L2 cache, or does
>one have to be actually operating in 64 bit to make use of all
>the L2 cache....
>
>Still patiently waiting for DDR2-800 to be released to complete
>my self-imposed father's day present...
>
>thanks...

Basically the cache helps keeps the CPU from having to go through the
northbridge to the main memory which is a lot slower then the on-die
cache, so the bigger it is the better for overall performance.

AMD64 doesn't use a northbridge, the memory controller is right on the
CPU, more cache here may be less important since latency is very low.

Ed