L3 cache & Gaming... help

[farukool]

What exactly is L3 cache, and its worth for gaming ? i mean i know Atlhon II dont have any L3 cache (well, some are unlockables, but thats like playing lotery with a higher chance) and Phenom II does have L3 cache.

the question is what is L3 cache for, and if it does benefit gaming... ?

 

[saaiello]

L3 cache gives about a 10 to 15% performance gain.

L3 cache is like L2 cache its built onto the CPU its a little slower then the L2 but is larger in size. Look at the cache as a staging area for the CPU it will load data onto the cache for quick access to the CPU.

 

[farukool]

L3 cache gives about a 10 to 15% performance gain.

L3 cache is like L2 cache its built onto the CPU its a little slower then the L2 but is larger in size. Look at the cache as a staging area for the CPU it will load data onto the cache for quick access to the CPU.

like CPU's own RAM ?

 

[saaiello]

Exactly the RAM feeds the cache and the cache feeds the CPU. The cache is much faster then any RAM can be.

 

[simon12]

If you look at http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-processor-core-i3-athlon-ii,review-31934-11.html the Athlon 640 and phenom 940 are the same processor except the Athlon has no level 3 cache.

 

[blackhawk1928]

The Cache is basically the processors own little ram stash. Its very small but gives a big performance gain. If the process is to large for the cache it moves over to the much larger but also leagues slower...RAM. The reason cache is so fast is because latency is a fraction since it is located right on the CPU instead of traveling all the way through the motherboard to get to the RAM.