level 3 cache?????????

[Soloman02]

level 3 cache????????? I thought there was only level 1 and 2 cache, is this something that has just come out?

----taken from alienware.com--------------

Intel® Pentium® 4 Extreme Edition

The Intel® Pentium® 4 processor with an advanced 800MHz system bus offers higher levels of performance, creativity and productivity. Based on Intel® NetBurst™ microarchitecture and built with Intel's 0.13-micron technology, the Pentium 4 processor delivers significant performance gains for use in home computing, business solutions and all your processing needs.

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with HT Technology Extreme Edition 3.2GHz 800MHz FSB 2.5MB Cache

Specifications

Processor Intel® Pentium® 4 Extreme Edition
w/ Heatsink & Cooling Fan

Speed 3.2GHz

Bus Speed 800MHz

Level 2 Cache 512KB

Level 3 Cache 2024KB

Special Features HyperThreading

 

[tech4hire]

For many years on older machines L3 cache was found on the motherboard and could be added in extra chips. Glad to see it on the chip.

 

[Zero Shift]

According to www.tomshardware.com
the (L3) cache doesn't seem to change much as far as performance is concerned on the Intel Xeon.
they were comparing a P4 3.06Ghz to a Xeon 3.06 with the L3 cache, and there seemed to be little (if any) difference in performance.

Then again, I heard recently that Tom's Hardware isn't as reliable a source as it used to be, so i'm not sure.

 

[spfd]

blah what the hell does teh cache do?

 

[Ken Masters]

Stores what the cache controller anticipates that the CPU will be processing next?

Wasn't AMD the first to have L3 within the processor housing?

 

[sur+]

Well, cache certainly does make a big difference. Don't believe me? Try comparing a Intel Celeron 2.6 GHz to a Intel Pentium 4 2.6 GHz. Celerons have a 128KB cache, if I'm not mistaken, whereas the Pentium 4 has a 512KB cache. Compare the two and see which one performs better. The small cache size is one of the many reason Celerons aren't very good, and why they're so cheap. tomshardware.com has been losing it's touch on reliability . The motherboard they were testing the Xeon was probably a piece of crap and a bottleneck.