[berzerker]

What's L2 cache and what is it good for? does it help with performance in games? does it affect overclocking at all? how big of a difference is there between 256Kb and 1MB of it?

 

[Thumper]

How Stuff Works:Caching

That should answer ALL your questions

 

[PetrolHead]

The L2 Cache stores the CPU's instruction's until it is ready to be processed by the smaller but much faster L1 Cache.

You will notice a big difference in performance going from 256KB to 1MB.

 

[Kipper]

L2 cache is the memory between ur ram and ur CPU. The info goes from your RAM or HDD to the L2 cache before it goes to your CPU. Your cache guesses on what information needs to be processed next and puts it in the super fast L2 cache. Meaning if theres more L2 cache, more chances of guessing correctly = less tiem of searching through ram = a lot faster

EDIT: Dang, getting beat by ONE guy feels bad, getting beat by TWO feels worse....two AND a link....I should start living under a rockk..

 

[pauldovi]

There is a progession from slower to faster:

Hard Drive to Memory
Memory to L2
L2 to L1.

At each progession the memory gets faster, smaller, and more expensive.

 

[berzerker]

what would give me better gaming performance? A 4Ghz Celeron D with 256Kb L2 cache or a 3Ghz Pentium 4 with 1Mb of L2 cache?

 

[selectodude]

P4 would crush it.

 

[pauldovi]

The Celeron is a P4 with a crippled L2. The P4 is going to crush the Celeron anyday. BTW they do not make 4Ghz Celerons, and if you are comparing a max out watercooled Cely to a stock P4 thats not fair. You can easily get that P4 3.0 up to about 3.75Ghz on air. But the Cely would need water to get to 4.0Ghz.

 

[berzerker]

actually I was looking at getting a 2.4Ghz P4 and would overclock it to at least 3.0Ghz, and the Celeron is my own D 345 running at 3.96Ghz. and that's air cooled :-D

 

[Masta]

i just moved over to Intel from AMD and ill tell u this, you keep pushing a Pentium, it will keep on going, my athlon 64 could barely handle a 20% overclock, but my northwood runs at 3.4 stably, i just need better PSU