2mb or 4mb cache conroe

[ThinIce]

fully aware that the answer to this is going to be "wait for the benchmarks f00l" but is there likely to be a large benefit from having the 4mb cache conroe model over the 2mb one?

Really I'm most concerned on game performance, I'm aware that more cache = more performance but I think checking the pre-order prices theres the best part of £100 difference between the E6400 and the E6600

Are there any other differences aside from the clockspeed? - I'm happy just doing a bit of oc'ing if I'm unlikely to feel the benefit of that extra 2mb

TIA

 

[The_Prophecy]

The extra cache should give you a really good perfomance boost.... definitly go for the 6600. Don't bother with the 6700 though, it's the same chip as the 6600, just at a higher stock speed.

 

[1Tanker]

fully aware that the answer to this is going to be "wait for the benchmarks f00l" but is there likely to be a large benefit from having the 4mb cache conroe model over the 2mb one?

Really I'm most concerned on game performance, I'm aware that more cache = more performance but I think checking the pre-order prices theres the best part of £100 difference between the E6400 and the E6600

Are there any other differences aside from the clockspeed? - I'm happy just doing a bit of oc'ing if I'm unlikely to feel the benefit of that extra 2mb

TIA

According to this article, and much to my surprise, the extra 2MB of cache isn't as helpful as might be expected.


http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/17/IMG0017453.gif

http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=fr%7Cen&u=http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-10/intel-core-2-duo-dossier.html&prev=/language_tools

 

[The_Prophecy]

Maybe not now, but applications will probably be written to better take advantage of the extra cache very soon.

 

[m25]

fully aware that the answer to this is going to be "wait for the benchmarks f00l" but is there likely to be a large benefit from having the 4mb cache conroe model over the 2mb one?

Really I'm most concerned on game performance, I'm aware that more cache = more performance but I think checking the pre-order prices theres the best part of £100 difference between the E6400 and the E6600

Are there any other differences aside from the clockspeed? - I'm happy just doing a bit of oc'ing if I'm unlikely to feel the benefit of that extra 2mb

TIA

Conroes' architecture is much like that of Athlon64s than that of the speedy-but-dumb Prescotts. So in my opinion they will benefit much less from added cache than P4s did; it will be more the situation of A64s when even 512 vs 1024 does not make for the price difference.
Netburst architecture was more of a fail'n'retry fashion so the large cache would lessen this problem by providing more fast alternatives while in the new arch. it's much more efficient and for me they're putting 4MB of cache there only because they can afford it with the 65nm process.

 

[crow_smiling]

This REVIEW shows that the extra cache typically only improves performance in games. But the games were run at very low resolution, so it’s hard to extrapolate on whether this gain will be so significant when running at typical resolutions of 1280x1024.

Maybe not now, but applications will probably be written to better take advantage of the extra cache very soon.

You say probably, I say very unlikely. Software developers are going to focus on 64 bit development and better support for dual cores & quad cores before they even start thinking about cache size. You don’t typically optimize for a hardware feature that is going to be in a minority of systems, especially when there are the pressing concerns of 64 bit & multi core support biting at your ass.

 

[djkrypplephite]

Yeah, especially when AMD fanboys are going to be buying 512K chips.

 

[jaguarskx]

fully aware that the answer to this is going to be "wait for the benchmarks f00l" but is there likely to be a large benefit from having the 4mb cache conroe model over the 2mb one?

Too little data to give a good explanation for Conroe. In the case of the AMD S939 Athlon 64 X2 the difference between the X2 4200+ and the X2 4400+ was the amount of cache, but the clock speed was the same. In general the 4400+ did show the some performance gains over the X2 4200+. If you step up to the X2 4600+ that has the same amount of cache as the 4200+, but with a 200MHz increase in speed, then you are talking about a substantial increase in general performance even against the 4400+. Hence the higher model number.

For the moment I would say that it is the clock speed that you should be more concerned about.

 

[RichPLS]

I suspect similar to as the bm's show... that the extra 2MB of cache will improve in gaming and other similar taxing tasks, and in others, it will negate improvement... but generally speaking, more cache is better, hence reasons why Intel is outfitting speedier Conroes with 4MB of cache, because they know it will help performance...
So in closing and imho, get the E6600 with 4MB cache and at the lower clock speed, then you can crank up MHz, but you can not add cache later...

 

[shabodah]

Cache helps most with bandwidth issues. The uArch of the cpu itself helps little compaired to how the fsb or hypertransport is set up. Consider how cache works in a hard drive, same concept, different application. Thus, I would recommend getting your FSB up as high as possible regardless, then worry about your cache amount. a FSB of 667 with 2MB cache is going to do far worse than a FSB of 800 with 2MB cache and a FSB of 1066 will be even better if all other things stay the same.

 

[Heyyou27]

4MB FTW