2.6 Ghz: any reason to upgrade ?

**orangat** · 02-24-2006, 18:45

Originally Posted by LeftEyeNine

Technically you're right. But you have to admit that it was only a clock speed race a few years ago.

Nope your wrong again. Cache sizes have always increased in lockstep with clock speed along with other architectural improvements like higher fsb, EMT64, hyperthreading and core tweaks.

In fact sometimes the cache subsystem are adversely affected in newer steppings. The P4's L2 had a higher latency than the P3, the EE also had an increased cache latency, and the 2Mb Prescott's L2 latency is also higher which pretty much negates the inherent improvement with having a bigger cache. So 'technically' how could cache sizes been more important for performance?

Clock speed is just as if not more important than cache sizes in Intel's design philosophy with the P4.