L2 cache ???????????

[spygamer]

How important is the size of L2 cache ?

I am not able to decide in between E4400 and E6420. These 2MB and 4MB cache respectivley.

[darklord]

Originally Posted by spygamer

How important is the size of L2 cache ?

I am not able to decide in between E4400 and E6420. These 2MB and 4MB cache respectivley.

The cache is not worth it especially considering the price difference.You dont see any substantial difference in day to day tasks because of the cache.

[assasin]

yup.the xtra 2MB L2 aint worth the xtra cash.E4300/E4400 r good proccies and if u want u can always oc them and get much better performance.

[sivarap]

E6420 65 nm 4MB L2 2.13 GHz 1066 MHz
E4400 65 nm 2MB L2 2.00 GHz 800 MHz

The FSB of 6420 is also high....How significant is the FSB value?

[deathvirus_me]

Originally Posted by assasin

yup.the xtra 2MB L2 aint worth the xtra cash.E4300/E4400 r good proccies and if u want u can always oc them and get much better performance.

Not necessarily .. L2 cache size hardly makes much impact for a noticeable performance ... under regular circumstances ... L1 size does make a difference ..

TBH , its not really worth the xtra bucks .. instead get a good mobo with that money , couple with a E4400 ... ur sure to hit 3.2 GHz easy ..

[weftr100]

Even I was thinking of the same thing.
Does the L2 cache size make any difference during gaming? Will a 2 MB L2 cache give better performance than a 1 MB one?

[deathvirus_me]

Well , it depends upon the CPU actually .. for example , for the Athlon64 models' .. the performance diff. between 512 KB L2 and 1 MB L2 was not noticeable .. but the newer Core2 Duo's really shine with 4 MB L2 ... so it finally depends on the processor architecture ..

[darklord]

With the IMC on A64, Cache didnt make much of a difference.Hence you see almost all models in X2 nowadays have 512 x 2 cache and very few have 1mb x 2.
The shortcoming of IMC in Core architecture is somewhat made up with loads of cache.This does not mean that the massive performance boost of Core architecture over K8 is ONLY because of the cache.