lol i saw one Strange thing in My PC (P3-Cpu: Cyrix3 750 Mhz) / CPU-Z show My Level2 (L2) Cache Is 16 MB !!!!! Compare it with Intel Extreme Quad Core QX9770 With 12MB L2 Cache !!!!!

U can see it in My ScreenShot / Is It True??!! Its Realy 16MB ??

Edited April 8, 200818 yr by Arash

Naa, sure it´s not correct, check this out.

Wow a P3 architecture chip! You know size of cache does not matter THAT much right lol..couldnt resist!

Wow a P3 architecture chip! You know size of cache does not matter THAT much right lol..couldnt resist!

Actually... cache sizes can matter quite a bit depending on what you're doing. I've written programs that end up with a good 30% boost in speed from simply using a CPU that had twice the cache.

The larger the L1 cache, the fewer times the CPU has to hit the (much) slower L2 cache as it can store more data in it's faster L1 cache. The larger the L2 cache, the fewer times the CPU has to hit the (FAR SLOWER) system RAM. Nanoseconds might not seem like a lot in human terms, but 8-10ns for RAM access is an eternity compared to 1-3ns hit on L1 (and even 3-5ns hit on L2). The CPU will (theoretically) not have to restart/refire instructions as frequently, and if you have a lot of cache and run a lot of data (or multiple apps with decent data sizes), you can cut down on cache-thrashing (which is probably worse than a cache miss, speed-wise).

IIRC the VIA C3s have a 64KB L2.

Wow, definitely haven't seen one of those for a while. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.