About cpu's cache

[x1215]

Hello everyone, could you tell me how much performance difference between P4's L2cache 512kb & 256kb? Because I never feel there are any faster on the AGhz P4 cpu platform compared with AMDs.

THX

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

I dont quite understand what u mean.....but here goes nothing....

-Intel Pentium 4 Williamette had 256Kb of L2 Cache
-Intel Pentium 4 Northwood ('A' & 'B') have 512Kb of L2 Cache

as for performance difference...the Northwood (especially the 'B' but thats mainly cuz of the 533MHz FSB) is MUCH faster than the older Willy P4's......Willy's sucked major monkey nutz.......

as for the AMD's.......

-AMD Athlon XP (All versions to the latest Thoroughbred 'B') have 256Kb of L2 Cache
-AMD Athlon XP Barton have 512Kb of L2 Cache

The thing is the K7 architecture doesnt need such a big L2 cache size like the P4 does....theres just totaly different architectures.....thats why AMD used 256Kb for all there Athlon series CPU's for the Socket A platform until now....

The P4's got a big performance boost from the extra 256Kb for a total of 512Kb of L2 cache......the architecture needs more cache...its a very bandwidth hungry CPU......where as the AMD Athlon XP's use there cache more efficiently it hits the L2 cache less frequently than the P4's do...

Another reason why the Duron's even though only with 64Kb of L2 cache performed so much better than the Celeron's....the cache is not as important as the rest of the chip...

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>